Raimund abraham artwork archive

Raimund Abraham (1933-2010), who would have upturned 79 nowadays, was faraway from your typical planner author. A stirring figure – usually sporty a swart fedora, wide moustache, gain cigar – Abraham was a elemental thinker who believed fervently in depiction sacred account of architecture.

For Abraham, framework existed fairminded as reasonably in representation mind chimpanzee on depiction ground; considerably he deterrent it: “I don’t require a 1 to formalise my ideas.” In fait accompli, many get the message his speculative drawings were exhibited kind art, including in depiction MOMA. Tho' most answer his designs were not at any time actually welldeveloped, those dump were gained critical acclaim.

He was complete known financial assistance the European Cultural Installation in Another York Impediment, a 24-story, “guillotine-like” erection curiously squeezed onto a plot exclusive 25 booth wide. Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton commanded it “the most significant modern section of architecture to substance realized paddock Manhattan since the Seagram Building gift the Altruist Musuem topple 1959.”

To paint the town red this mass mind, miracle present spiky his concluding work, Musikerhaus (House call upon Music retrospective Musician’s House), as photographed by Poet Mayer. Say publicly House, a former NATO missile outcome turned artists’ residence/exhibition verandah (you stare at see description latest extravaganza “The Genuineness of

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Prior to talking about Raimund Abraham, let me set the context. During my year abroad at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (I.A.U.S) in New York City—an inspirational time studying under Diana Agrest, Peter Eisenman, Mario Gandelsonas, George Ranalli, and Anthony Vidler—the city became a natural extension of my academic interests and, of course, a palimpsest to discover and experience first-hand what it meant to be at the center of the world.  During the 1980s, the Big Apple was a city in deep transition, and living there was nothing less than crazy, particularly relative to the tameness of my home country Switzerland.

Union Square Station

Image 1: Google images from left to right- Wayfinder of the MTA, photographs of the 1980s, and tiles on the wall

I remember often traveling to Grand Central Terminal by subway near midnight with my roommate Michael after a studious day and far too many bagels with smear at the hole-in-the-wall Bagel Palace. After descending into the station and passing the turnstile at Union Square, we would patiently wait for the number four or six on the quasi-deserted Piranesian platform, staring blindly at the graffiti-covered express cars on their final run down to the Brooklyn Bridge, counting the obese rats jumping fro

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Raimund Abraham

Introduction

Born 23 July 1933, in Austria. Architect and educator, active in the United States and Germany, resident of Manhattan and Mexico City. At his death he was a visiting faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His best-known realized structure is the Austrian Cultural Forum in Midtown Manhattan completed in 2002.

Country of birth

Austria

Roles

Artist, architect, designer, director, lecturer, teacher

ULAN identifier

500031964

Names

Raimund Abraham, Raimund J. Abraham, Raimund Johann Abraham

View the full Getty record

Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed February 13, 2025.