Kunst Haus Wien. Museum Hundertwasser

In February 2024, Kunst Haus Wien celebrated its reopening after six months of planned refurbishment to improve its own carbon footprint. We were responsible for the comprehensive brand identity for the reopening of the Viennese museum.

Although the museum’s new external appearance uses the traditional logo drawn by Hundertwasser himself, we have given it a contemporary identity with a new typeface and the use of expressive typography and colors. We did not want to fall into the trap of imitating Hundertwasser’s style in our design. Our aim was to create a visual dialogue between the old and the new with a forward-looking strategy. This creates an exciting bridge between the historical collection and every future exhibition and activity at Kunst Haus Wien.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who also created the architectural style of the museum, was a lover of free form and proclaimed “the straight line leads to the downfall of mankind”. We realised that this brand relaunch could only succeed if we used Hundertwasser’s principles and integrated the original Hundertwasser logo into the new look, but found a completely new design language in all applications. This was the only way to meet the various requirements of the new brand.

From the office equipment and uniforms to the signage system, great importance was attached to sustainable materials and production methods. We have also consistently expressed the ecological aspirations of Kunst Haus Wien, which was named Austria’s first green museum in 2018, with a wide-ranging color scheme: countless shades of green are used in the design, resulting in “50 Shades of Green,” as we humorously call it. Defining a single corporate color would have been too one-dimensional and would not have been in keeping with Hundertwasser’s principles. Strong color combinations and the use of neon green clearly position the institution outside of eco-clichés.

The current image campaign for the reopening can currently be seen throughout Vienna. We have dressed Hundertwasser’s pithy quotes in the new look. The information on the posters and the illustrated logo move freely, only the museum’s logo lettering is always in the same place as a brand anchor.