Alban Berg sculpture in Vienna

摘要

The simultaneity of systems is the next step in architecture, explains architect Wolf D. Prix. By this he means the syner-getic coupling of work processes from the most advanced technology with innovative standard processes. In their own practice Coop Himmelb(l)au have repeatedly made use of very different technologies (for instance from the field of ship building) to implement their highly complex, digital designs. In creating the new Alban Berg sculpture they went a step further in the pioneering direction referred to by Prix: "The piece was cast in the same way as a medieval bell", explains the architect, who was fascinated by the traditional production process in the foundry in which liquid aluminium at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius was poured into a prepared sand bed. Like in the scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev, in which the young bell founder, Borishka, produces an unusually large bell with a perfect sound (without, as he later admits, actually understanding the process of bell casting). Wolf D. Prix has repeatedly quoted this chapter as a metaphor for visionary creative strength in architecture - in this project it provided him with the concrete inspiration.