After his abitur in 1965, he studied architecture at the Technical University in Vienna, where his teachers included Karl Schwanzer and Günther Feuerstein - it was a place where various experimental tendencies had developed in the wake of the events of 1968.
One of the groups that was to become legendary was the Missing Link cooperation, founded by Krischanitz together with Otto Kapfinger and Angela Hareiter in 1970. The group has had lasting significance for the Austrian architectural scene.
Since 1979 Krischanitz has worked as a self-employed architect in Vienna, and moves between Vienna, Berlin and Steinaweg. He is married to the journalist Elisabeth Schnürer. He has a brother, Helmut, a teacher who has also inherited his father's technical skills.
Krischanitz is closely related to art and artists. His interest in the works of contemporary artists was initiated by Edelbert Köb, an assistant at the Technical University in Vienna who introduced Krischanitz to contemporary art. Apart from theoretical works in the magazine UM BAU, he has realised projects together with Oskar Putz, whose Neo-Geo colour has given his buildings a specific tension. In the early 1980s Krischanitz spent time in the USA organising the important exhibition "Austrian New Wave".
To his key work the Pilotengasse in Vienna (1987-1992), Krischanitz had invited Otto Steidle from Munich and Herzog & de Meuron from Basle. On this occasion he came into contact with Helmut Federle, with whom he formed a successful partnership.
Krischanitz has been the president of the Vienna Secession twice in a row, he has been guest professor at various European summer academies, and an international juror on many occasions.
His works have been exhibited three times in a row in the Austrian pavilion at the Architectural Biennale in Venice. In the meantime the name Krischanitz has become a European trademark at the interface of contemporary art and avant-garde architecture.
He has also established many personal contacts abroad - probably more than any Austrian architect apart from Hans Hollein - especially with Germany and Switzerland; he has common projects and contacts with Hans Kollhoff, Herzog & Meuron, Diener & Diener, Snozzi, and Peter Meili.
Krischanitz lives in three different places: Vienna, Berlin, and Steinaweg. While his apartment in the centre of Vienna is no more than a pied-à-terre, a necessary place where he stays overnight between two working days, Berlin, where he teaches Design at the Hochschule der Künste, is a place for living. After his experience with the exhibition in America and the cooperation with the Basle-based colleagues Herzog and de Meuron for the Pilotengasse in Vienna, the professorship in Berlin represents the third significant turning point in his career. Due to the extremely busy office in Vienna, his stays in Berlin have to be limited. His time in Berlin is inevitably taken up with lectures, correction, teaching and research. But for Krischanitz Berlin has important regulating effect on Vienna; it is a place where he has a social life with colleagues, other architects, contemporary artists, students and politicians. Since Krischanitz has not built anything in Berlin yet, it is obviously much easier for him to get to know other professors and architects without being considered as a competitor. Berlin is very different from Vienna, and his private house and studio in Steinaweg are in complete contrast to both.
Krischanitz built the house for himself and his wife in the tiny municipality of Steinaweg in the middle of Lower Austria - well over an hour by car from Vienna - with a view of the massive Baroque cathedral chapter of Göttweig. From the outside it is already clear that it is not meant to be just a residential building. The lower building has been conceived as a place to receive guests, but above all it is a studio for the architect and the journalist. Krischanitz's wife, the journalist Elisabeth Schnürer, lives and works in the house almost all year round. The upper building includes the couple's two apartments. This sequence of rooms, organised like hotel suites and interacting with the garden, forms the real living space. The connection between the two parts of the house is ambivalent, as is the architect's relation with his house in general, as he can only be there at the weekend. His stays are thus more like guest visits, while Elisabeth Schnürer uses the house as a permanent base. She is very attached to nature, and the house represents a lifestyle choice, whereas Krischanitz enjoys the benefits of this lifestyle at least at the weekends. In order to compensate for life in cities such as Berlin and Vienna he is also able to spend time in the country, something that would be impossible without these special family conditions.
The house nestles against a steep 38 degree slope of prehistoric rock in one of the valleys of the Danube. In response to the slope the building is articulated into two identical elements, 19 meters long and 3.70 meters wide, which are placed directly one behind the other. By staggering the heights of the two elements, it was possible to avoid excavating a large volume of rock. The pitched roof and the main access via a steel staircase connecting the blocks have the same slope as the terrain. Standing in front of the building, the dramatic under-face of the lower unit becomes visible. A reinforced concrete foundation slab with no downbeams rests on four high, slender reinforced concrete columns. The accesses and adjoining rooms are part of a stratification of massive walls linking the two blocks. The rest of the house has been erected as a timber frame construction. The exterior surfacing of the house is also made of wood. With an architect like Krischanitz, even such a simple statement leads to radical realisation: in fact everything about this house is made of wood, even the roof has been covered with the same homogeneous material as the walls. These circumstances led to long discussions with the construction supervision authority and the neighbourhood. Today residents may be bothered by the occasional architectural tourist and by the still unusual sight of the famous architect roping himself up in his steep garden. Krischanitz puts his house to the test. An architect's professional work consists among other things in "prescribing" stages of life to unknown human beings, a three dimensional set usually considered as architecture. But the architect rarely experiences everyday life himself via his architecture, particularly as many architects, taking their work more seriously than themselves, have never really lived in their own houses. The architect only realises with his own house that construction sites are not completed after they have been handed over. Thousands of details have to be taken into account, and the architect no longer plays the main role. The resident lives in his house and observes it. Krischanitz has been influenced by Viennese architecture. This is where his main roots as an architect lie. The language of his architecture has developed from the knowledge of this tradition - Loos, Frank, Wittgenstein - and must therefore be considered as Viennese. A culture of furniture, music, and art theory, and not a culture of architectural theory. Thus even Krischanitz's creations can be found in small forms: in furniture, in pavilions, in private houses. The house in Steinaweg is the country house of an architect, but also a jewel of the finest Viennese building culture with a place in the history of Viennese architecture. It is the house of an architect, yet it is still architecture - something that is by no means always true. < BACK
Klaus-Jürgen Bauer