Monday, February 2, 2015
Vienna: Wirtschaftsuniversität
On arrival it was obvious that the whole campus of the university was an assemblage of modernist buildings, a playground for architects. I looked it up: the unversity itself was founded in 1898, but the new campus was opened only recently in 2013. "The campus features 6 main building complexes resting on approximately 25 acres (10 ha). The master plan was created by BUSarchitektur under the guidance of the architect Laura P. Spinadel. The buildings of the campus are designed by architectural firms from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Austria. The dominant element of the campus is the Library & Learning Center, which was planned by Zaha Hadid" (Wikipedia).
Hence the impression we had of a thoroughly cleaned, aseptic area populated by well-behaved, orderly, streamlined students.
Zaha Hadid's library was impressive indeed from the outside, raising the question what it would be like on the inside, since it was not obvious from the building's outlines, how the interior rooms could correlate to the structure. Luckily we were able to enter the building, although we were not registered students, and the interior presented itself with vast labyrinthine, vaguely organic, clinically white structures to get lost in. I told Ursula Stanley Kubrick would certainly have loved to make a film here, and she replied: "I rather think this building is inspired by Kubrick."
Outside a student reprimanded me for throwing a cigarette butt on the ground, which confirmed to me that we had finally entered the Brave New World...
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Exhibition: Mammoths
We visited the Viennese Naturhistorische Museum (Natural History Museum) to see their current Mammoths exhibition. It was rather limited in scope, but as attraction they had a frozen mammoth baby, amazingly fully preserved with all its skin and even some of its fur.
The whole museum itself was worth the time, though, as I love Natural History museums in general, and Vienna has extensive collections in old display cabinets and situated in a 19th-century castle-like building. A special attraction, of course, is the Venus von Willendorf. The whole atmosphere of the museum is like a time travel back into the 19th century.
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