Raimund Johann Abraham,
he the fantastic iconoclastic architect from Austria, who had been teaching at the Southern California Institute of Architecture since 2003, died in a car accident in downtown Los Angeles. (March 4, 2010)
Are the architectural drawings by Mr. Abraham art or architecture or a hybrid of the two?
This is a misleading question. It takes us into either-or debates which really have nothing to do with his work, drawn or otherwise. In my view his drawings are essentially philosophical, in that they struggle with questions of existence and its meaning. What makes them architecture—or, I should say, Abraham’s architecture–is that they create clear relationships between abstract, tectonic space and form and human experiences and conditions that comprise our existence. As he has said on many occasions, “architecture must confront a program,” which I take to mean a program for inhabiting particular spaces and their contexts.
(Answer by Lebbeus Woods to a question asked by a journalist about the work of Raimund Abraham)
Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Design competition won, 1992; building completed 2002:
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