Heinz Frank

Thirty years ago, the Vienna artist and architect Heinz Frank published a book entitled Children’s Book for Architects (Architekturzentrum Wien, 1993), a selection of his drawings from the 1970s, in which animals and ghostly creatures “haunt” buildings of various kinds. Now mumok, together with Büro Heinz Frank, is publishing Children’s Book for Architects II, thus realizing the artist’s idea for a follow-up volume born shortly before his death in 2020. Frank’s works on paper collected here once again shake at the rational foundations of architecture. With humor and imagination, the artist draws on the anarchic potential of animals and of children’s drawings. “Children’s books like this one,” writes US-American architecture critic Felicity D. Scott in her contribution to this book, “prompt us to rethink the world, even to see it differently.” Eight color-in sheets, included with the book, invite us to “enter into Frank’s animal form of refusing architecture.”

The film gewesen sein wird (will have been) by the artist and filmmaker Sasha Pirker, first shown at Viennale 2022, explores the idea of a “soulful” architecture using the example of Heinz Frank’s apartment, which Frank had tailored to his needs like a well-fitting suit. The camera accompanies Frank’s daughter, Lilli Breuer-Guttmann, on a tour of the interior and shows her bringing her father back to life in the way she handles furniture, clothes, and other objects.

Program

Launch of Heinz Frank – Children’s Book for Architects II (mumok, 2023)
As part of the event Sasha Pirker will show her film gewesen sein wird – Die Wohnung von Heinz Frank (will have been – The Apartment of Heinz Frank, 2022).
This will be followed by a conversation between filmmaker Sasha Pirker, the architect Claudia Cavallar, and MAK curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, moderated by mumok curator Manuela Ammer.

Change of program: Architect Claudia Cavallar, a member of the board of ÖGFA (the Austrian Society for Architecture), will be taking part in the discussion instead of Hermann Czech who is unable to attend due to an extended stay in hospital.

At the event, Children’s Book for Architects II can be purchased at a special price of 18 Euro.

Participation free of charge. We kindly ask you to register in advance.
 

Heinz Frank. Kinderbuch für Architekt*innen II / Childrenʼs Book for Architects II

Edited by Manuela Ammer, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Foreword by Manuela Ammer and Karola Kraus
Text by Felicity D. Scott