Roland Rainer

Roland Rainer was an Austrian architect, urban planner, writer, and educator. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna (1928-33). After traveling in the Netherlands, he worked at the German Academy for Urban Planning in Berlin (1937). After World War II, he began writing books on urban planning that translated solutions to housing problems. In Vienna, he established his own architectural practice, which primarily worked in the spirit of functionalism. Throughout his career, he completed more than 50 buildings of various typologies and scales: office buildings, schools, kindergartens, swimming pools, churches, multi-purpose halls, factories, radio and television stations, and a number of residential buildings, including a complex of prefabricated houses (1954 in collaboration with Carl Auböck) in Vienna, which served as a model for various other buildings during the post-war reconstruction of Austria. Other well-known projects include his multi-purpose halls: Vienna (1952-58), Ludwigshafen (1962-65), and Bremen (1963-64). These projects incorporate new construction processes such as suspended cable roofs or concrete shells. The villa district of Puchenau near Linz (1964-67) also garnered international attention. His houses, designed around a central courtyard or terraces, draw from the tradition of Vienna's garden cities, a movement that emerged after World War I and continues to meet the living needs of many residents today. From 1958 to 1961, when Rainer served as the chief architect of the city of Vienna, the first comprehensive plan for Vienna for the 20th century was created. Rainer was also a prominent educator at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (1956-80), where he trained an entire generation of young architects. His interest in folk architecture across all countries and time periods significantly influenced his teaching method; he analyzed similar types, studied functional arrangements, and other elements that were exemplary instances of humane architecture. Rainer made significant contributions to the development of Austrian architecture after 1945. In 1980, he became the president of the advisory council of the Austrian Art Senate.