Haus-Rucker Co

A playful guide to the spatial experiments of Viennese architecture collective Haus-Rucker-Co

An integral part of the Austrian postwar avant-garde, Haus-Rucker-Co was a Viennese art group founded in 1967 by Laurids Ortner, Guenther Zamp Kelp and Klaus Pinter. Many of their works were at the intersection of art and architecture, with their installations involving pneumatic devices, often controlled by the participants, to explore perceptions of space. Their exploration of utopian architecture put them in a similar realm with other 1960s artist groups including Ant Farm, Archizoom, Superstudio and Coop Himmelblau. Atemzonen is the first compilation of the major parts of Haus-Rucker-Co's work, providing an overview of the group's diverse oeuvre. While sharing the same binding, one part of the book opens horizontally while the other opens vertically. These two different orientations provide the most ideal representation of the group's projects, while simultaneously creating a spatial experience for the viewer.