Friedensreich Hundertwasser: The Latest Architecture and News

"The flat floor is an invention of architects. It suits machines, not humans." Inspired by the Viennese Secessionists and Austrian artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, as well as bold Gaudinian forms, the author of this phrase, Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), was a prolific painter, sculptor and architect. His works are marked by the dualities between discipline and indiscipline, the predictable and the unexpected, rational and irrational. In his creative adventure, Hundertwasser was not just an enemy of the straight line. He despised architectural rationalism, claiming fluid forms and striking colors.

+ 16

While there are many ways to stand out from the crowd in the field of architecture, some buildings challenge your expectations so greatly that they can only be described as "bizarre." This list of 18 buildings, compiled by Fly Abu Dhabi, takes a look at some of those exceptionally strange buildings. While several of these examples appear to be "ducks" lifted straight from the pages of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's seminal Learning from Las Vegas, others find their originality in unorthodox curves, flipped orientations and sharp geometries. But all share one thing in common – they're nothing like your everyday buildings.

Continue reading for the full graphic list. 

The future of Friedensreich Hundertwasser's last unbuilt work -- a proposed Art Center for Whangarei, New Zealand -- hangs in the balance and will be decided next week by a referendum. The center, backed by the Proper Northland Trust (PNT), was originally designed in 1993 by Hundertwasser to repurpose a waterfront government building, but was never completed.

Hundertwasser, an Austrian artist and architect who lived on and off in New Zealand from the 1970s until his death in 2000, centered his designs on colorful, organic forms, and the relationship between art and nature, as well as the practice of sustainable building.