Hundertwasser quick facts
- He was born Friedrich Stowasser and renamed himself Hundertwasser, meaning “hundred water”.
- He believed straight lines were unnatural, and designed floors that gently rise and dip.
- He planted real trees inside his buildings and called them tree tenants.
- He was never trained as an architect. He was a painter first.
- He moved to New Zealand in the 1970s and is buried there under a tulip tree.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser thought straight lines were the problem with the modern world.
So he designed buildings with wavy floors, windows that all look different, and trees growing out of the walls.
Who was Hundertwasser?
| Born | 15 December 1928, Vienna, Austria |
| Died | 19 February 2000, at sea, aged 71 |
| Was | painter, architect, environmental campaigner |
| Famous for | colourful buildings with no straight lines |
| Best-known building | Hundertwasserhaus, Vienna |
He started as a painter and only turned to buildings later. He never trained as an architect, which is part of why his buildings look like nobody else’s.
He renamed himself
He was born Friedrich Stowasser. Neither half of that name survived.
He noticed that “sto” means hundred in several Slavic languages. So Stowasser became Hundertwasser: hundred water.
Then he swapped Friedrich for Friedensreich, which means something close to “realm of peace”. He chose a name that said what he wanted the world to be.
A childhood in wartime Vienna
Hundertwasser was a boy in Vienna when the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, the year before the Second World War began in Europe. His mother was Jewish.
He and his mother survived the war in the city. Many of their relatives did not: dozens of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.
He rarely spoke about it directly. But people who study his work often connect it to the name he gave himself, and to a lifetime spent arguing for peace and for nature.
School and art lessons
In 1936, as a small boy, he spent a year at a Montessori school in Vienna. His school report praised his “unusual sense of colour and form”.
In 1948 he joined Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, but he stayed for only three months before setting off on his own.
Why he hated straight lines
Look out of a window at most modern buildings. Straight walls, square windows, flat floors, right angles everywhere.
Hundertwasser thought this was unnatural and made people unhappy. Nothing in nature, he pointed out, is perfectly straight.
In 1958 he read out his Mould Manifesto at a meeting in Seckau, Austria. It attacked the straight, plain buildings that modern architects loved, and it made him famous as a rebel.
So he built floors that gently rise and dip. He said an uneven floor was “a melody to the feet”, and that walking on one wakes you up.
In his buildings, no two windows have to match. He called it the window right: anyone should be able to lean out and decorate the wall around their own window however they like.
Hundertwasser’s Words
- Sto — Means hundred in several Slavic languages
- Friedensreich — A first name close to 'realm of peace'
- The Mould Manifesto — A speech attacking straight, plain modern buildings
- The window right — Anyone may decorate the wall around their own window
- A melody to the feet — What he called an uneven floor
The five skins
Hundertwasser said every person has five skins, one inside the other.
The first skin is your own skin. The second is your clothes. The third is your home. The fourth is the people around you: your family, your friends and your country. The fifth is the whole planet, with its air, water and soil.
He believed people should be free to shape all five. That is why he designed clothes, houses, flags and stamps as well as paintings, and why he spent so much of his life speaking up for nature. “We must make a peace treaty with nature,” he said.
The Five Skins, Inside Out
- Your skin The skin you were born in.
- Your clothes What you choose to wear.
- Your home The house or flat you live in.
- Your people Your family, your friends and your country.
- The planet The air, water and soil of the whole Earth.
Tenants that are trees
His strangest idea was also his most serious. He believed that when you build on ground, you owe that ground its plants back.
His buildings have real trees planted inside them, with branches leaning out of the windows. He called them tree tenants.
He first showed the idea in 1973, at an art exhibition in Milan, Italy, by planting 15 trees in windows.
A tree tenant pays rent, he said, in oxygen, shade and beauty. He wanted roofs covered in grass and meadows, so that from above a city would look green.
Buildings you can visit
- Hundertwasserhaus, Vienna. The foundation stone was laid in 1983, and the first tenants moved in in February 1986. A block of flats with uneven floors, 250 trees and shrubs, and a wildly patterned front. People live there, so you can only look from outside.
- KunstHausWien, Vienna. The museum of his own work, in a converted furniture factory. The floor ripples under your feet.
- Waldspirale, Darmstadt, Germany. The name means “forest spiral”. The roof climbs round the building in a slow curve, covered in trees.
- The Kawakawa toilets, New Zealand. Public toilets he designed in a small town, made of bottles, tiles and old bricks. They may be the most photographed toilets on Earth.
- Spittelau heating plant, Vienna. He redesigned the outside of this power plant between 1988 and 1992, so a building most cities would hide became something to look at.
- Bad Blumau, Austria. A spa village in the Styria region, opened in 1997.
- Hundertwasser Art Centre, Whangārei, New Zealand. It opened in February 2022, the last Hundertwasser building to be completed anywhere. It took almost 30 years to make happen, and volunteers across the country helped raise the money. It has a forest on its roof and a golden dome you can climb for views over the Hātea River.
Inside the Whangārei centre is the largest collection of his art outside Vienna. It also holds the Wairau Māori Art Gallery, the world’s first public gallery just for Māori art. More than 200,000 people visited in its first few years.
Match the Building
- Hundertwasserhaus — Flats in Vienna with about 250 trees and shrubs
- KunstHausWien — A museum of his work in an old furniture factory
- Waldspirale — A German building whose tree-covered roof winds upwards
- Kawakawa toilets — Public toilets made with bottles, tiles and old bricks
- Spittelau — A heating plant in Vienna he made worth looking at
- Hundertwasser Art Centre — A gallery with a golden dome you can climb
Why New Zealand?
In 1973 Hundertwasser visited New Zealand and decided to stay. He bought land in the Bay of Islands and spent much of the rest of his life there.
He planted thousands of native trees on it, and designed a flag for the country that was never officially adopted.
That flag, from 1983, is called the Koru flag. It shows the curl of an unfurling fern. In 1978 he had designed a peace flag for the Middle East, with a green crescent and a blue Star of David side by side on white.
He designed postage stamps too, for Austria, Senegal, Cape Verde, Luxembourg and the United Nations. And on his own land he lived by his ideas, planting trees, using solar panels and cleaning water with water plants.
He died in 2000 on board a ship, and was buried on his own land in New Zealand exactly as he had asked: no coffin, wrapped simply, with a tulip tree planted over him.
The ship was the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2, sailing in the Pacific, and he died of heart failure. He had named the burial place on his land the Garden of the Happy Dead.
Hundertwasser’s Life in Order
- Born in Vienna Friedrich Stowasser is born in Vienna, Austria.
- Art school He spends just three months at Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.
- New Zealand He visits New Zealand and decides to stay.
- A peace flag He designs a peace flag for the Middle East.
- The Koru flag He designs a flag for New Zealand.
- Hundertwasserhaus The first tenants move into his block of flats in Vienna.
- At sea He dies on board the ship Queen Elizabeth 2, in the Pacific.
His paintings
Before the buildings there were pictures, and they look like the buildings do: spirals, hot colours, faces, onion-shaped domes, gold and silver leaf.
The spiral turns up again and again in his work. He saw it as a living, growing shape, with lines that swell and thin like the rings of a tree trunk.
He often made his own paints, and painted on whatever he could find, especially used wrapping paper.
Three things people get wrong
He was not a trained architect. He designed the look of his buildings, and qualified architects and engineers worked out how to make them stand up.
The Hundertwasserhaus is not a museum. It is real housing with real residents, so visitors admire it from the street.
The wavy floors are not a mistake. They are deliberate, and he argued about them with builders who kept trying to level them out.
Did you know? Hundertwasser designed a set of public toilets in the small New Zealand town of Kawakawa, built from bottles, tiles and salvaged bricks. They are probably the most photographed public toilets anywhere in the world, and people travel a long way just to see them.
Hundertwasser: Fact or Myth?
- Hundertwasser trained as an architect and worked out how his buildings would stand up.
- Visitors can walk around inside the Hundertwasserhaus, like a museum.
- He made many of his own paints.
- The wavy floors in his buildings were a builders' mistake.
- He designed postage stamps for the United Nations.
- New Zealand made his Koru flag its national flag.
- On his land in New Zealand, he used solar panels and cleaned water with water plants.
- He was buried in a grand coffin in Vienna.
Try it
Look around the room you are in and count the straight lines: walls, window frames, table edges, floorboards. Then look out of the window at a tree and try to find one perfectly straight line in it. That difference is the whole idea behind Hundertwasser’s work.
Knowledge check
Why did Hundertwasser dislike straight lines?
Show answer
He thought they were unnatural, because nothing in nature is perfectly straight, and he believed buildings full of right angles made people unhappy. So he designed floors that rise and dip, and said an uneven floor is a melody to the feet.
What is a tree tenant?
Show answer
A real tree planted inside one of his buildings, with its branches leaning out of a window. Hundertwasser said a tree tenant pays its rent in oxygen, shade and beauty, and that building on ground means owing that ground its plants back.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Hundertwasser?
Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an Austrian painter and architect who lived from 1928 to 2000. He is best known for colourful buildings with no straight lines, uneven floors and trees growing out of the windows. He was a painter first and never trained as an architect.
Why is he called Hundertwasser?
He was born Friedrich Stowasser and changed his name himself. He knew that sto means hundred in several Slavic languages, so Stowasser became Hundertwasser, meaning hundred water. He also swapped Friedrich for Friedensreich, which means roughly realm of peace.
Where can you see Hundertwasser buildings?
The Hundertwasserhaus and the KunstHausWien museum are both in Vienna. The Waldspirale, a spiral building with a forest on its roof, is in Darmstadt in Germany. He also designed famous public toilets in Kawakawa, New Zealand.
What did Hundertwasser paint?
Bright pictures full of spirals, faces, onion-shaped domes and hot colours, often with gold and silver leaf. The spiral turns up again and again, because he saw it as a living, growing shape, like the rings of a tree trunk.
Why did Hundertwasser move to New Zealand?
He visited in 1973 and decided to stay, buying land in the Bay of Islands. He planted thousands of native trees there and designed a flag for the country, which was never officially adopted. He is buried on that land under a tulip tree.
Was Hundertwasser a real architect?
Not a trained one. He designed how his buildings should look and feel, and qualified architects and engineers worked out how to actually build them. That partnership is why his buildings look like nobody else’s and still stand up.
What are Hundertwasser’s five skins?
Hundertwasser said people have five skins: their own skin, their clothes, their home, the people around them such as family, friends and country, and the whole planet. He believed people should be free to shape all five, and that we must make a peace treaty with nature.
What was Hundertwasser’s last building?
The Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery in Whangārei, New Zealand, was the last of his designs to be built. It opened in February 2022, almost 30 years after the project began, and holds the largest collection of his art outside Vienna.
What flags did Hundertwasser design?
Hundertwasser designed a peace flag for the Middle East in 1978, with a green crescent and a blue Star of David, and the Koru flag for New Zealand in 1983, based on an unfurling fern. Neither was officially adopted.
Sources
- Hundertwasser Non-Profit Foundation — his life, name change, paintings and architectural principles.
- Hundertwasser Foundation: paintings — the paints he made himself and the used wrapping paper he painted on.
- Hundertwasser Foundation: biography — his schooling, the Mould Manifesto, tree tenants, the Hundertwasserhaus, Spittelau, Blumau, flags, stamps, New Zealand and his death
- KunstHausWien, Vienna: Hundertwasser’s paintings — the paints he prepared himself, his gold and silver foil, and his own words on the spiral.
- Hundertwasser Art Centre: the painter-king with the five skins — the five skins, his ecological ideas and his quotes
- Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery — the centre’s opening, history, features and collection
Hundertwasser Final Challenge
- What did Hundertwasser's school report praise when he was a small boy?
- What did he do at an art exhibition in Milan in 1973?
- What did Hundertwasser want city roofs covered in?
- Who did he say we must make a peace treaty with?
- Which shape appears again and again in his paintings?
- What did he often add to his pictures to make them shine?
- How long did it take to make the Hundertwasser Art Centre in Whangārei happen?
- The Art Centre also holds the world's first public gallery just for which kind of art?
