Page - 156 - in Demolished Modified Endangered - Modelling Austrian Architecture Of The 20th Century

156 LINEAR CITIES BY RAIMUND ABRAHAM Year 1966 Status Project Material Acrylic Glass Concrete Tubes Aluminium Profiles Scale 1:2000 Model maker Iris Athenstaedt Amanda Soldo Raimund Abraham was born 1933 in Lienz, Tyrol. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Graz. Abraham founded his own architecture and design office in Vienna in 1959. He moved to the US in 1964, where he started to work as an assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1971 Raimund Abraham was appointed professor of architecture at the Irwin S. Chanin School of the Cooper Union in New York.1 From 1963 to 1966, Raimund Abraham worked on the Linear Cities, a vision of the future metropolis that directly opposed the historical European city structure. Using drawings and collages, Abraham developed the Mega Bridges, which were a series of linear constructions that could extend infinitely linearly, while their lateral extension was limited.2 Primarily constituted of cylindrical, spherical and tubular elements, the compact structure of the Mega Bridges could house an entire city. The central tube, which operated the traffic and infrastructure of the city, was encased by three larger tubes. These larger tubes held the city’s living, working and community facilities.3 The scale model was designed based on the collage Mega Bridge IV from 1965. 1 Groihofer, Brigitte (Ed.) (1996): Raimund Abraham: (Un)built. Wien: Springer-Verlag. 309. 2 Architekturzentrum Wien (Ed.) (2016): Architektur in Österreich im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. Zürich: Park Books. 203. 3 Groihofer, Brigitte (Ed.) (1996): Raimund Abraham: (Un)built. Wien: Springer-Verlag. 10-14.