Colors of Hundertwasser

The Hundertwasserhaus in Landstraße, Vienna, is shown here on an overcast day during my visit to the city. I photographed it from the street in front of the building, looking up to take in the full patchwork of color, uneven lines, and planted roof.

I liked how the facade feels playful without trying too hard. The walls don’t sit in straight lines, the windows all seem to have their own personality, and the blocks of blue, yellow, red, white, and gray make the whole building feel more like a painted surface than a normal apartment house. From this angle, the trees on the roof and the irregular balconies stand out even more, and that was a big part of why I wanted to shoot it from low down rather than straight on.

There was a steady crowd outside, which is pretty normal at this spot, so I kept them in the frame instead of waiting for an empty moment. Their movement adds a bit of life at the bottom of the photo and helps show what it feels like to stand there and look up with everyone else. I also left the museum column and the street lamp in the composition because they place the building in its everyday setting instead of turning it into a clean architectural study.

I used a wide lens for this, which let me keep the whole facade in view from close range. The slight stretch from the low viewpoint suits the building well, since nothing about Hundertwasserhaus is meant to feel rigid or perfectly ordered anyway. What I wanted most was a simple record of that first impression: a building in Vienna that still looks unusual, cheerful, and slightly strange no matter how many times it has been photographed.