Holzhaus (1997) in St. Andrä-Wördern, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer. Photo by Margherita Spiluttini.

SOS Children‘s Village Greenfields Colony (1969) in New Delhi, India, by Anton Schweighofer

Architekt Anton Schweighofer - one of the very best!. Thanks and RIP

Institute Building (1974) of Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer. Photo by Margherita Spiluttini.

Anton Schweighofer’s (1930-2019) work was deeply devoted to the human being and its needs. His housing estates, schools, kindergartens and SOS children’s villages all revolve around the community and how it is made up of individuals that need both the collective and the possibility to retreat. That Schweighofer gave extensive thought to the requirements of the inhabitants also becomes clear in the present monograph: „Anton Schweighofer - der stille Radikale“, edited by Christian Kühn and published by Springer Verlag in 2000. It contains some 40 pages of interviews with Schweighofer in which he reflects on his design ethos, freedom in architecture or his decade long teaching at the Technical University in Vienna. But the major part of the book is of course devoted to his built work: it features some 20 projects from the 1960s to the late 1990s and therefore provides a thorough cross section of Schweighofer’s complex work, especially because each project is presented in photographs, plans and additional texts that carry the reader through the genesis of each project. I have always been fascinated with Schweighofer and his approach to architecture but until this book really hadn’t been able to dig deeper into his architectural cosmos. Luckily „Der stille Radikale“ indeed allows for comprehensive insights into his built work as well as his theoretical considerations and consequently is the go-to reference work on this sometimes undervalued (just look what happened to his „Stadt des Kindes“) architect!

Hexagonal Chapel (1967) at the SOS Children’s Village in Hinterbrühl, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer

SOS Children‘s Village Greenfields Colony (1969) in New Delhi, India, by Anton Schweighofer

Municipal Kindergarten (1968) in St. Andrä-Wörden, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer

Institute Building (1974) of Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer

Stadt des Kindes (1969-74) in Vienna, Austria, by Anton Schweighofer