Alien encounter: clad in a pulsating skin, Graz's new Kunsthaus is a spunky modern interloper that adds both to the life of the city and to its historic fabric

Architectural Review, The, March, 2004 by Peter Blundell Jones

As second city of Austria and capital of Styria, Graz's cultural significance is greater than its 250 000 population would suggest. Separated from Vienna by the Austrian Alps, it looks south to Italy and the Balkans, but also east across the Hungarian plain, a European crossroads. Once the royal residence, it has an old university and other places of learning. It was the birthplace of astronomer Johannes Kepler, and has produced other scientists of world renown. In recent decades it has enjoyed a leading role in literary culture as well as hosting an energetic and progressive architectural movement that has been admired across the world. (1)

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The need for an art gallery and museum was debated for decades, and at the height of the Graz architecture movement in 1989 one very nearly happened, with a major competition held by the regional government for a so-called Trigon Museum in the Pfaugarten. Won by a radical contextual proposal from Schoffauer, Schrom and Tschapeller, this would have been an impressive building, but it was cancelled for political reasons. A later proposed Kunsthaus carved into the Schlossberg, the acropolis, was again the subject of an architectural competition and also came to nothing. It took Graz's impending elevation to European City of Culture in 2003 to provide the final impetus. The competition was announced in 1999 and was judged in April 2000 by an international jury chaired by Volker Giencke. It attracted 102 entries including submissions by Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, Klaus Kada and Morphosis. The sole prize-winner was the proposal by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, the remaining prize money being divided equally between eight commendations.

The new site could hardly have been more prominent. Graz grew up around the Schlossberg, a steep defensible outcrop of rock next to the wide, fast-flowing river Mur. The main market place developed immediately south of this rock, connecting westward to the first bridge. Just across this bridge on the north side lies the Kunsthaus, fully visible across the river and enjoying some of the best views of the old city. The west bank has always been the less fashionable side, starting as a medieval suburb just like the south bank of the Thames, and placing a major cultural institution here is, as in London fifty years ago, a bid to redress the balance. The site's frontage to the street crossing the bridge was occupied by the Eisernes Haus (Iron House), a listed commercial building of 1847 with an iron facade of castings from Sheffield. This was to be restored and retained, along with some other old buildings to the west which preserve the traditional frontage to Mariahilferstrasse. The north half of the site had long been a car park, and a busy street lay between the site and the river bank.

The competition programme called primarily for flexible spaces in which to mount changing exhibitions of contemporary art (there is no permanent collection), offices for meeting, curatorial work and publication, a workshop and areas for reception and refreshment. A public garage was to be provided beneath the building, part of the deal with the department store Kastner and Ohler across the river who had owned the site. A lifespan of over a hundred years was mentioned, with some stress on the changing and unpredictable nature of artistic production, but the presentation of the submitted projects suggests that the greatest importance was placed on external image, for competitors submitted a model which became the sole vehicle for publication as photographed looking towards the corner connecting with the bridge. (2) An outspoken building was evidently expected, and some had Gehry's Bilbao in mind.

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Respect for Cook and Fournier's design, and for the wisdom of the jury in choosing it, increases as you examine the other proposals, many by highly talented architects. The context was irregular and complex even before the need to incorporate the existing buildings, making it impossible to impose an independent set-piece and precluding any straightforward symmetry. In addition, many competitors were obsessed with the problem of the road cutting off the building from the river bank. The conditions rather suggestively allowed cantilevering over it with a clearance of five metres, but it was forbidden to close the road or to interfere with the services beneath it.

Cook and Fournier kept within the site boundary, and their amoebalike form allowed them to follow the irregularities of the site while still producing a recognizably unified form. The continuous surface helped by removing the requirement for distinctions between wall and roof, eliminating all need for ridges, eaves and even changes of plane. Crucially, this also produced the convex underbelly which makes the amoeba readable from below, in contrast with the flat open entrance platform. The strong form remains dominantly there, yet the glass walls allow the public to filter through, to wait and meet, to buy tickets and catalogues. They can even enjoy a meal in the trendy cafe Les Viperes, which is set between the river view and the visitors rising to the galleries on the great diagonal travelator. It is a real public place, convincingly transitional and anticipatory.