Hot Questions Cold Storage

The book accompanying the new permanent display of Architekturzentrum Wien's own collection.

With this exhibition, Vienna is enriched by a top attraction. Christian Kühn, Die Presse

The new permanent display of Architekturzentrum Wien's (Az W) collection, opened in February 2022, is a milestone in the presentation of architecture and its social dimensions. Now this most comprehensive collection on Austrian architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries, featuring color images of all exhibits, concise texts, and thematic essays, also becomes available in book format.

Hot QuestionsCold Storage takes a fresh look at the country's architectural culture of the last 150 years, situating it in its cultural, social, political, economic, and technical contexts. Each of the seven chapters is prefaced by one of seven questions of our present, asking, for example, about the impact of financial capitalism on our cities and villages, about how we want to live, or about the contribution architecture can make to our survival on planet earth. These Hot Questions bring to life the Cold Storage, the silent repository of the collection's holdings. The book offers a multi-perspective narrative that makes visible Austria's building history with all the developments, ideologies, institutions, objects, places, personalities it comprises. The book also illustrates what the collection of a museum of architecture can achieve. It is far more than mere flotsam and jetsam of history. The social relevance of objects and documents is revealed through questioning and visualization, in connecting research and the museum's mission to collect.

Englische Ausgabe von Hot Questions Cold Storage (ISBN 978-3-03860-317-7)

Autorentext

Angelika Fitz ist Kulturtheoretikerin und Kuratorin und seit 2017 Direktorin des Architekturzentrum Wien.

Monika Platzer ist Kunsthistorikerin und seit 1998 als Kuratorin und Sammlungsleiterin des Architekturzentrum Wien tätig.

Das Architekturzentrum Wien ist das österreichische Architekturmuseum und hat sich international als herausragender Ort der Architekturvermittlung etabliert. Das Az W zeigt, diskutiert, sammelt und erforscht, wie Architektur und Stadtentwicklung das tägliche Leben aller Menschen prägen.