Building and (Non)-Culture

BAUKULTUR

(or building culture) appears to be one of the most misunderstood concepts of recent decades. The buildings of non-culture are found throughout the nation: Instead of sustainable residential developments, one finds rampantly vacant city centers and downtown areas, with space-consuming single-family homes seeming to grow with no end in sight. Sustainable transportation is apparently a foreign word, because instead of the well-established routes bus and rail lines, a growing number of roads and highways traverse the countryside, and parking lots dominate our cities and landscapes, sealing the soil with dire consequences. Talk of climate protection and nature conservation is everywhere, but our landscapes most often show that words are only rarely followed by action.

Yes, of course we still visit certain beautiful places to bask in their historical buildings and charming squares, lulled by the magic of the picturesque. Yet it is striking how quickly these old things disappear once the historic preservation authorities fail to monitor, come too late, or apply toothless policies. Apparently, it is easy to do without the identity created over the course of many building eras. Because once an investment group arrives, other factors are more important, above all: profits.
Do “star architectures” provide usable solutions? Are the extremes of museumization or selling out really our only choices? If “getting old” means “it has to go”, then what will we tell future generations about our history and what sort of resources will we leave for them?
As we well know, hope springs eternal. However, when politicians have false priorities and speculative powers move to take over the field of Baukultur, the cultural sky over our nation goes dark.

ORTE will celebrate its 30th birthday in 2024! We want to take a look at the current state of building culture through the eyes of caricaturists, graphic artists, and illustrators, highlighting the damaging excesses and absurdities of building processes with a twinkle in our eye. We are looking for satirical depictions that expose “poisonous mushrooms” in our built environment. We want to make people laugh and think about the issues, and above all illustrate what happens when greed for profit and lack of planning take over.

The most pointed images will be chosen by building culture experts and presented in the ORTE space on the Krems Art Mile—with our good neighbors at the Caricature Museum Krems supporting the project in an advisory capacity. German.

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Send your caricatures, comics, illustrations, or drawings as a PDF by 1 September 2023 to office@orte-noe.at.
We welcome contributions from Austria and beyond!

The jury*) will review submissions during the month of September, select pieces for the exhibition, and announce participation information for the “Building and (Non)-Culture” (working title) in early October. ORTE will offer participants renumeration for using their work and put together a traveling exhibition that will be shown throughout Austria. A small publication is also planned. The opening is targeted for March 2024.

To help you to choose a contribution topic, we have put together an ABC of Baukultur containing several terms and concepts that tie into the exhibition theme (see attachment).

Jury members:
Gottfried Gusenbauer, artistic director of the Caricature Museum Krems | Franziska Leeb, architecture journalist and critic | Heidrun Schlögl, ORTE director | Anna Soucek, radio journalist