Hundertwasser

manifesto

your window right, your tree duty

the window right
a resident must have the right to lean out of his window and design everything his arm can reach on the wall outside just as it suits him. it will thus be visible to everyone in the street that someone lives there

seckau 1958

window dictates and window rights

some people say houses consist of walls
i say houses consist of windows
when different houses stand next to each other in a street, all having different window types, or window races, nobody minds. thus an art nouveau house with art nouveau windows may appear beside a modern house with unadorned square windows, followed in turn by a baroque house with baroque windows. but should the three window types of the three houses belong to one house, it is seen as a violation of the racial segregation of windows.
why? each individual has its own right to life.
according to the prevailing code, however, if the window races are mixed, window apartheid is infringed.
the apartheid of window races must cease.
for the repetition of identical windows next to each other and above each other as in a grid system is a characteristic of concentration camps.
in the new architecture of satellite towns and in new administration buildings, banks, hospitals and schools, the levelling of windows is unbearable.
individuals, never identical, defend themselves against these standardized dictates either passively or actively, depending on their constitution. thus either with alcohol or drug addiction, exodus from the city, cleaning mania, television dependency, inexplicable physical complaints, allergies, depressions and even suicide, or alternatively with aggression, vandalism and crime.
a person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. and he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. so that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardized man who lives next door

hundertwasser 1990