Raimund Abraham
| Raimund Johann Abraham | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 23, 1933 Lienz, Tyrol, Austria |
| Died | March 4, 2010 |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Alma mater | Technical University, Graz |
| Occupation | architect |
Raimund Johann Abraham (July 23, 1933 – March 4, 2010) was an Austrian architect.
Raimund Johann Abraham was born in 1933, in the town of Lienz, Tyrol in Austria, and he died on March 4, 2010, in Los Angeles, California. Throughout a 40-year career, Abraham created visionary projects and built works of architecture, in Europe and the United States. From 1952-1958, Abraham studied at the Technical University of Graz, and in 1959, he established a studio in Vienna, where he explored the depths and boundaries of architecture through building, drawing, and montage. Abraham's first book, the 1965 publication “Elementare Architektur” was made at a time of transition between architecture studies and practice. In this early volume on elemental structures, Abraham explores the built environment, absent aesthetic speculation, and determinations about design instead coming from the relative level of knowledge and also the desires of the builder. In 1964, Abraham emigrated to the United States.
Abraham was an influential architect in his native Austria and the New York avant-garde. Abraham's poetic architectural vision was influenced by the Viennese tradition to align architecture with sculpture, and also by the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. Abraham theorized architecture on a collision course with the needs of humans, yet striving for coexistence, in a constant state of creative tension. Beginning in the late 1950s, his enigmatic architecture placed Abraham among the avant-garde, such as Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler and Günther Domenig. In 1958, Abraham collaborated with Friedrich St. Florian, placing 3rd in an international competition to design the Pan Arabian University of Saudi Arabia, and in 1959, placing 2nd, for the design of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Cultural Center in Léopoldville. Abraham criticized mainstream architecture's preoccupation with style, it's indifference to history, and the rigid definition of Modernism at that time. Abraham went on to influence generations of professional architects through architectural drawings, projects, and teaching.
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