Page - 118 - in Demolished Modified Endangered - Modelling Austrian Architecture Of The 20th Century

118 ENDLESS HOUSE BY FRIEDRICH KIESLER Year 1949 Status Project Material Plaster Wire Wood Scale 1:25 Model maker Judith Weiß Jakob Berg In 1949 Kiesler published The Manifesto of Correalism, which can be seen to be the basis for the concept of the Endless House. Kiesler described Correalism as a science that combines all forms of art, the natural sciences as well as non-scientific topics such as myths and magic. While not meant to be a precisely planned building, Friedrich Kiesler followed his vision of a dwelling for multiple generations until his death in 1965. In 1950, the first model of the Endless House was shown at The Muralist and the Modern Architect exhibition at the Kootz Gallery in New York. Over decades, Kiesler created numerous architectural models, sketches, paintings, plans, poetic and theoretical texts which all related to or were of the Endless House. The most famous representation of the Endless House was shown at the exhibition Visionary Architecture at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1960. The initial idea to show the prototype of the Endless House in the garden of the museum one year earlier was never realised.1 The main concept of the house was the continuous room plan and an effective use of natural and artificial light. In Kiesler’s vision, the spheroid form was the shape most suitable for his ideas. The light was multiplied and reflected due to the curved walls. Additionally, his vision of a fluid and continuous room plan, featuring rooms of different heights, was more easily realised within a spheroid volume. All living areas could be unified into a single continuum, or separated into private rooms. The shared rooms were designed with a higher ceiling height than that of the private rooms. A family of up to three generations could live together under one roof. The Endless House was a means to critique the standardisation and the commercialisation of living.2 1 Bogner, Dieter (Ed.) (1988): Friedrich Kiesler: Architekt Maler Bildhauer. 1890-1965. Wien: Löcker Verlag. 240-242. 2 Bogner, Dieter (1997): Friedrich Kiesler 1890–1965: inside the endless house. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. 9-12.