NEW YORK.- The Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Austria has announced that the much-heralded Austrian Cultural Forum tower will open to the public in April 2002. Hailed by critics as the most rigorous work of contemporary architecture constructed in Manhattan in decades, the narrow 24-story glass and concrete skyscraper will be a new venue for presentation of and research in contemporary Austrian arts and Austrian-American collaboration in many disciplines: music, visual arts, architecture and design, digital and Web projects, literature, film and video. It is the first major public building in the United States by noted Austrian-born New York architect Raimund Abraham.



Commissioned and owned by the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Forum tower is located at 11 East 52nd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. It was developed by the Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft (BIG) of Vienna, Austria. A dedication ceremony, to be attended by leading personalities in politics and the arts, will inaugurate the building on April 18th.



Austrian Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Benita Ferrero-Waldner said, ’It is with satisfaction and a great sense of optimism that we open the doors of the Austrian Cultural Forum tower and anticipate its future as a center for the ongoing exchange of ideas between Austria, the United States, and other cultures. As a significant public building that Austria has commissioned abroad, the Forum tower is a particularly potent gesture. It is fitting that it stands in the heart of New York City, a true global capital and home for all people, where our belief in the transformative power of culture is passionately shared.’



In the words of Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, the mission of the institution is to ’reveal, through dialogue and experimentation in the arts, parallels between contemporary Austrian and American creativity that suggest possibilities for new cultural patterns for the 21st century. In its design, the new building challenges conventional thinking. Similarly, our programs imply a working through of tradition to arrive at new expressions and to provide orientation for the future.’



Raimund Abraham’s building achieves the authority of a landmark through its distinctive totemic appearance, precise geometry, and an ingenious approach to the demands of an extraordinarily compressed site. Twenty-five feet wide and less than 100 feet deep, the tower soars upward 280 feet, occupying the full width of its footprint from street level to pinnacle. Facilities total about 30,000 square feet and include exhibition galleries; a flexible theater for recitals, screenings, and lectures; a library; loft-inspired presentation areas and classrooms; reception and meeting spaces; staff offices; a multi-level residence for the Forum’s director; and an open-air loggia at the tower’s top.



’Our building is narrow, ’ commented Thun-Hohenstein. ’But the fluidity and grace of its spaces will allow us to offer parallel programs that challenge some accepted definitions of discipline and modes of presentation. We will host events that are small enough in scale to allow for courage, experimentation, immediacy, and levels of intimacy you might not find elsewhere.’



New World, Old Site



Formerly known as the Austrian Cultural Institute, the Forum was founded in 1956 to deepen cultural relations between Austria and the United States. In 1958, the institution purchased a 1905 townhouse, once the home of storied industrialist Harley T. Proctor, on the site now occupied by the Abraham building. Over the following decades, the Institute grew significantly in terms of its activities, audience, and ambitions, organizing increasingly sophisticated events in the arts and sciences and sponsoring hundreds of programs presented by cultural institutions and universities across the United States.



In the late 1980s, Peter Marboe, then Director of the institution, and his successor Wolfgang Waldner, together with Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock, initiated the assessment that would ultimately lead to the creation of an entirely new building at 11 East 52nd Street -- one that would both satisfy Austria’s desire to update its identity as an intermediary in the continuous international dialogue between artists and accommodate the rapidly evolving landscape of global, borderless communications shaping that dialogue. ’The new building will afford us the chance to create a modern image for Austria, free of old cliches and prejudices,’ Waldner wrote. ’Even though Austria’s classical and traditional achievements have successfully defined its image worldwide, contemporary culture, as manifested in the design of the building, must be highlighted at the turn of the new century.’



The future envisioned for the Austrian Cultural Forum moved closer to reality in 1992 when the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs invited all Austrian-born architects internationally to participate in an open competition to design the new building. An Austrian-American jury included such admired architectural figures as noted critic Kenneth Frampton, Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, and celebrated architects Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier. In December 1992, Raimund Abraham’s bold scheme was selected from among 226 submitted. Following several subsequent years of extensive analysis and negotiations, construction of Abraham’s scheme began in September 1998.



Architecture



Raimund Abraham has described the Austrian Cultural Forum building as ’a deliberate manifestation of the utmost formal reduction, challenging the indigenous variations of the surrounding buildings.’ Confronting the tiny footprint of the tower’s midblock site and the lateral compression of a forest of surrounding tall buildings, Abraham’s crucial design decision was the placement of the pre-requisite emergency fire stair at the rear of the building. With this move the architect liberated the width of the site to be fully occupied by the most accommodating spaces possible from street level to pinnacle; he was thus able to resolve the density of the architectural program with an outstanding level of clarity. Significantly, Abraham was the only architect among all entrants to the international competition to make this deceptively simple and essential choice.



In describing his building, Abraham divides the structure into three ’elementary towers’ defined by the conditions of the site: the Vertebra (the stair tower at the back of the site), the Core (the central structural tower), and the Mask (the glass tower of the street facade). The body of the tower tapers as it rises, complying with zoning laws in levels that appear to alternately step and slope in a challenge to gravity. Glazed with dramatic glass panels that seem to be in a state of suspension, the forceful image of the building has elicited comparisons to dagger blades and guillotines, thermometers and metronomes, and pyramids of a future not yet imagined. The architect’s response has been characteristically precise: ’The inspiration for the design came completely out of seemingly trivial circumstances of the site, zoning articles, scissor stair. Everything else derives from the unconscious...My building is intended to accommodate the Austrian Cultural Forum’s desire to be a place for collaboration, new ideas, new forms. If the Forum succeeds in its pursuit of this mission, I will be extremely satisfied because the architecture will be serving an exceedingly valuable purpose.’