The history and invocation of the Arche in Austrian Radical architecture thinking

Abstract

The architecture of the European Radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s is principally associated with the forward-looking principles of the architectural avant-garde. Scholarship on the movements emphasizes its futuristic and accompanying science fiction elements. While the importance of a visionary focus on the birth and development of the Radical movements is widely acknowledged, the same cannot be said for the connections of the visionary production to the architectural past. This article focuses on the Austrian Radicals and stresses their use of archetypal forms as a means to signify the difference between them and the preceding generation of Austrian modernists. In this sense the passing of editorial control of Bau from the Modernists to the Radicals is a crucial moment in the context of this article.