L’albero inquilino e la critica al razionalismo // The tenant tree and the critique to Rationalism

This paper aims to reflect on the contradictions inherent in Rationalist poetics and to highlight an emblematic figure, unique as are enlightened minds, in an unraveling intended to highlight coherences and inconsistencies in his work. This is the Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who, during the twentieth century, rejected the doctrines imposed by Rationalism to cure buildings of the sterility that had sickened them. Thus, through colors, sinuous forms and curved surfaces, he created striking architecture in which nature returns as a fundamental element for man. The fight against overbuilding, the right to beauty and the personalization of architecture by end users, and, in particular, the link with the earth and the return to nature are pursued with sincere conviction, flowing into that environmentalist vision that earned him the attribution of a pioneer of green building. Firmly dated and necessarily a child of his era, Hundertwasser’s poetics still retains its harbinger of disruptive social denunciation; on the other hand, these theories reveal certain contradictions implicit in their architectural application. Through the description of the artist’s training, the for- mulation of his main theories, and some of his realized architectural examples, it is aimed to pro- mote a reflection concerning the theoretical and practical legacies of the Doctor of Architecture.