Living the International Style
HOUSE WITTGENSTEIN, VIENNA, 2015
Living the International Style is an approach to the ambivalence encountered in modernity.
“International Style” refers to a drive in classic modernist architecture, which originated in Europe in 1922 and would later be found throughout the world. The term was initially used as a title for a 1932-exhibition at MoMA and for the successive publication The International Style: Architecture since 1922, and it describes an internationalized form of architecture de-contextualized from the locale.
Such a clarity-oriented realignment for man simultaneously implies gain and loss. The dichotomy of modernity’s achievements lies at the heart of this discrete exploration. The works of this series can be ascribed to the 3 aspects LIVING / INTERNATIONAL / STYLE and aim at grasping the moment of transition. A continuous tightrope ride along the small boundary between freedom and uprooting, mass and individual, openness and translucency.
In the sense of this border-crossing, the Haus Wittgenstein (built 1925-1928 by L. Wittgenstein in cooperation with P. Engelmann) is, to say the least, exemplary. Its aesthetics are simple and sublime, colossal and weightless, translucent and hermetic, pure and elaborate. Wittgenstein’s philosophical and architectural project of isolating the “Speakable from the Ineffable”.
Dajana Dorfmayr, 2015Living
Constructed Site, 41 Sec. (Loop), Paris, France, 2014
Outshined, 37 Sec. (Loop), Home for the Aged, Austria, 2008
the
International
Style
Curtain Walls 2, 80/28/204, Mixed Media, 2015
