Coop Himmelb(l)au’s UFA-Cinema Center, Dresden, Germany

The Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, which now has offices in Los Angeles and Guadalajara as well as Vienna, is often credited with producing the first realizations of Deconstructivist architecture in Europe. The cooperative’s rooftop law office extension in their home city raised eyebrows when it was erected in 1988 with its parasitic appearance, and its Funder factory building in St. Veit Glan, Austria was certainly eye-catching. In 1998, Coop Himmelb(l)au completed the UFA-Cinema Center in Dresden, Germany, which consists of two volumes: the ‘Crystal’, a massive glass lobby and public square that seems to lean precariously to one side, and the ‘Cinema Block’, which holds eight cinemas with seating for 2600. The firm says that with the UFA-Cinema Center, it aimed to “confront the issue of public space”, saying “By disintegrating the monofunctionality of these structures and adding urban functions to them, a new urbanity can arise in the city.”

Independent of Gehry’s influence, Coop Himmelb(l)au and other international architects who produced important Deconstructivist works were inspired by movements in modern art such as Cubism and Dada, and Russian avant garde architecture of the 1920s.