© Franz Hubmann

For the celebration of its tenth anniversary, in 1987 the Centre Pompidou invited Hans Hollein to show his work in the foyer, with a montage designed by himself. Now, with the idea of marking the museum’s closure for an exhaustive revamp set to last until 2030, the legacy of the Austrian master is the theme of a final architecture exhibition: a gathering of more than half a century of work that will give visitors a close look at his all-embracing creative output – “Alles ist Architektur” was his maxim. It will also enable them to situate his production more accurately in a time period that tends to be simplified under the tag of postmodernism. At once a conceptual artist, a theorist of architecture, a designer of exquisite objects, and a builder of subversive buildings like the Haas-Haus in Vienna or the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, Hollein was an enfant terrible who scandalously rebelled against modern postulates and connected with Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann in defending a very Viennese approach to the discipline, one in which forms, materials, and atmospheres are interwoven with the impeccable manners of the world of yesterday.