People using the collection
© Architekturzentrum Wien
2023–: Special project “Digital Cultural Heritage”
The Az W project “Experience Austrian Architectural Cultural Heritage Online” received funding in 2023–2024 from the BMKÖS’s “Digital Cultural Heritage” call for proposals. The aim of the funding program was to make Austria’s cultural heritage even more accessible to a broad national and international audience with the help of digital technology. Funding was provided for the digital preservation of collection objects, their digital recording, cataloging, publication, presentation, and communication, as well as the creation of online collections.
With the project “Az W Collection Online Meets Architectural Encyclopaedia,” we are linking digitized objects with our virtual collection, the Architectural Encyclopaedia, for the first time, thereby providing it with extensive illustrations. To this end, we are combining over 30,000 architectural photographs from our photo archives—by Friedrich Achleitner, Margherita Spiluttini, and Karin Mack—with metadata on around 20,000 buildings and several thousand biographical data sets on Austrian architects.
Through the newly established Austrian cultural heritage platform “Kulturpool Austria,” we will be able to supply the Europe-wide cultural data aggregator Europeana with a package of almost 20,000 photographs with extensive, standardized, open metadata—and for the first time as open content under a public domain license.
Within this framework, we are expanding our newly established collection database solution in terms of structure, functionality, and content. We are filling gaps in the inventory, supplementing holdings with important links, and rescaning a total of over 10,000 original photo negatives. The archive of Friedrich Achleitner’s index cards and photographs will be fully illustrated and completely digitally searchable by the end of the year. Thousands of previously unpublished architectural photographs will be recorded for the first time—including the entire collection of photographer Karin Mack. The Architectural Encyclopedia will become more female-friendly with the integration of entries on 200 female architectural pioneers.
With the renewal of our web infrastructure, which we are implementing at the same time, we are laying the foundation for the Az W’s online collection—an online collection database that is not merely an accumulation of objects, but rather opens up multi-perspective questions, new research opportunities, and new fields of communication for our users through networking.
Since 2022: Ella Briggs Research Project
Recent public discussions about the role of female architects in shaping Red Vienna and the influence of Austrian female architects who emigrated to Great Britain have drawn academic attention to Ella Briggs (1880–1977), a modernist who worked in Austria, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain.
A kick-off workshop in 2022 brought together leading scholars from the United States, Great Britain, and Austria to present their research on Briggs in a joint forum. The current research findings will be included in a publication to be released by Princeton University Press in 2025. At the same time, the Az W has compiled an estate inventory of Ella Briggs, which—as is typical for women’s biographies—brings together disparate traces of her work.
Concept and organisation: Monika Platzer (Az W), Elana Shapira, Despina Stratigakos
Since 2021: Pioneering Women Architects in Vienna
Little is known about the early days of women working in architecture in Austria. Individual names are known in professional circles, including Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Ella Briggs-Baumfeld, Friedl Dicker, and Liane Zimbler. These women made significant contributions to Viennese residential culture and the development of housing construction. To date, there has been no systematic examination of women in architecture in Austria. This project aims to collect individual works related to educational institutions or personalities for the first time and to systematically study the sources. The plan is to collect data on female architects who studied or lived in Vienna from the beginning of the 20th century until the turning point of World War II, and to further investigate their works and the development of their life stories.
In cooperation with the Az W, the existing encyclopedia of architects will be expanded to include the missing women.
Project partners: Research team Margarethe Schütte Lihotzky Center, Christine Zwingl (head),
Christine Oertel, Sabina Riss, Carmen Trifina, and Monika Platzer (Az W)
Hans Hollein (1934–2014)
Since 2016: Processing the Estate
“For sixty years Hans Hollein has been the most influential and internationally significant architect from Austria. No other Austrian architect has contributed to a similar extent to the international debate and the development of architecture.“ (Dietmar Steiner, former Director Architekturzentrum Wien)
Project team: Barbara Kapsammer, Monika Platzer, Katrin Stingl
In 2016 the Republic of Austria acquired the Hans Hollein Archive, the most important and comprehensive estate relating to the history of Austrian architecture in the 20th century. This archive was taken over by the MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst –and transferred to the Architekturzentrum Wien in the form of a permanent loan. This transfer set up a form of cooperation, unique between cultural institutions in Austria, the “Archive Hans Hollein, Az W and MAK, Vienna”. At present the estate, which amount to 300 pallets, is being sorted and inventoried according to museum standards.
Diploma Theses, Master Degree Theses, Doctoral Theses, Studies