AllesWirdGut

Vienna boasts a relatively high density of young architecture offices. In twos, threes and fours, freshly minted architects are busy trying to do their own thing. Ideally, they would like to go independent straight after graduation and resent the Austrian requirement for new architects to be employed in an architectural firm for two years before setting up on their own. But eventually they all get to find out how hard it is to survive as self-employed architects and to stand out from the crowd.

Andreas Marth, Friedrich Passler, Herwig Spiegl and Christian Waldner have styled themselves AllesWirdGut ('All will be well') since 1999. They, too, are based in Vienna. 'We are all from the country, from South and North Tyrol. We would have had an easier time of it there as beginners in our profession,' says Friedrich Passler. 'By staying here in Vienna we made the start harder for ourselves. But we live off the city.' They appreciate not only the urban influences and anonymity but also the solidarity among architecture firms. This helped enormously, especially in the initial phase.

They attracted attention with their very first completed structure, the village community centre in Fliess, Tyrol. Subsequent projects, such as the new pedestrian zone in Innichen, the kindergarten in St. Anton am Arlberg and their most recent realizations, are no less worthy of notice. This surely makes AllesWirdGut one of the most promising practices in the Viennese architectural landscape. Their architecture is always an extension of the existing environment, with a clear formal idiom and a sensitively chosen materiality. Whatever promises the building makes on the outside, it also keeps on the inside.