Page - 80 - in Demolished Modified Endangered - Modelling Austrian Architecture Of The 20th Century

80 SPACE HOUSE BY FRIEDRICH KIESLER Year 1933 Status Demolished Material Waste Foamboard Glue Scale 1:100 Model maker Johannes Fritzenwallner In 1933 Friedrich Kiesler was commissioned by the Modern Furniture Company to design the exterior and interior of their shop in New York City. For the main hall of the shop, Kiesler developed the Space House, a full-scale model of a single family house fully equipped with furniture, fabrics and lights designed by the Modern Furniture Company. The facade was made of metal while the interior was of mixed materials in various colours.1 Since the development of the Nuclear House in 1931, Friedrich Kiesler became interested in the concept of single family houses as representations of the concept of the family being the smallest possible unit of humankind living together. The Space House can also be seen as a shift in Kiesler’s architectural work, moving from a more rectangular design to using the increasingly rounded shapes common in his later works.2 The floor plan of the Space House also shows the concept of rooms flowing freely into each other with interchanging, varying room heights; these concepts were then finalised in the design of the Endless House.3 1 Bogner, Dieter (Ed.) (1988): Friedrich Kiesler. Architekt Maler Bildhauer. 1890-1965. Wien: Löcker Verlag. 67. 2 Bogner, Dieter (1997): Friedrich Kiesler 1890 – 1965: inside the endless house. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. 10. 3 Bogner, Dieter (1997): Friedrich Kiesler 1890 – 1965: inside the endless house. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. 52.