Hot Questions - Cold Storage

Hot Questions—Cold Storage takes a fresh look at the Austria’s architectural culture of the last 150 years, situating it in its cultural, social, political, economic, and technical contexts. Each of the seven chapters is prefaced by one of seven questions of our present, asking, for example, about the impact of financial capitalism on our cities and villages, about how we want to live, or about the contribution architecture can make to our survival on planet earth. These Hot Questions bring to life the Cold Storage, the silent repository of the collection’s holdings. The book offers a multi-perspective narrative that makes visible Austria’s building history with all the developments, ideologies, institutions, objects, places, personalities it comprises. The book also illustrates what the collection of a museum of architecture can achieve. It is far more than mere flotsam and jetsam of history. The social relevance of objects and documents is revealed through questioning and visualization, in connecting research and the museum’s mission to collect.