Vienna, Austria
The Hundertwasserhaus, and why you can only see it from the street
It's a real apartment building, not a museum, and that's exactly the point its architect was trying to make.
A council housing block with no straight lines, trees growing out of its windows, and an artist's flat rejection of the grid
Buy tickets ↗Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an Austrian artist and self-taught architect who spent much of his career arguing, loudly and often eccentrically, against the straight line — which he considered a moral failure of modern architecture, a symbol of alienation and, in his own words, 'the devil's tool.' In the mid-1980s, the City of Vienna gave him the chance to build his convictions into an actual, functioning public housing block, and the result is the Hundertwasserhaus: an apartment building of uneven floors, irregular windows each individually shaped and coloured, a roof and terraces planted with grass and full-grown trees, and a facade so deliberately chaotic that from a distance it can look almost like a collage rather than a single coherent structure.
It remains, more than three decades later, a genuinely occupied residential building with real tenants living ordinary lives inside it — which is precisely why there's no public entry to the apartments themselves, no matter how many visitors arrive expecting a museum experience. The building's entire ground-floor arcade and small courtyard are open to wander, and that's a legitimate, worthwhile stop, but the actual living quarters are private homes, and treating them as anything else disrespects the people who live there.
The building's real museum counterpart sits a short walk away: KunstHausWien, a former factory that Hundertwasser converted using the same architectural principles — undulating floors, irregular windows, rooftop greenery — but built specifically to be a public exhibition space rather than housing. Visiting the Hundertwasserhaus from the street and then walking to KunstHausWien for the indoor experience is the complete version of this stop, and most visitors who only do the first half leave with an incomplete picture of what Hundertwasser was actually trying to do.
Setting expectationsWhat's actually open to visitors
The Hundertwasserhaus is best understood, and best enjoyed, as a piece of street architecture rather than an attraction with an entrance fee and opening hours. The exterior — the undulating façade in patchwork colours, the irregular window shapes each supposedly designed so no tenant would have exactly the same view as their neighbour, the rooftop trees and grassy terraces visible from the street below — is entirely visible and photographable from public pavements surrounding the block, at no cost and with no restrictions.
Directly across the street, a small commercial complex called the Hundertwasser Village, built in a similar irregular, colourful style specifically as a tourist-facing companion piece, contains gift shops, a café and small exhibits related to the artist. It's a reasonable, low-effort stop if you want to sit down or buy a souvenir, though it's worth recognising it for what it is — a commercial appendage rather than part of the original architectural statement next door.
The ground-floor arcade of the Hundertwasserhaus itself, with irregular tiled columns and uneven flooring characteristic of the building's whole design language, is open to walk through, and gives a closer, tactile sense of the materials and craftsmanship than the street view alone provides — worth the extra few minutes even though it's a small space.
The real visitWhy KunstHausWien is worth the walk
KunstHausWien, a few blocks from the Hundertwasserhaus, is a former Thonet furniture factory that Hundertwasser converted into a museum using the same architectural vocabulary as his housing block — no straight lines where he could avoid them, uneven and gently sloping floors that he believed reconnected occupants with the natural unevenness of the ground, irregular checkerboard window frames, and greenery worked into terraces and interior spaces throughout the building.
Unlike the apartment block, this building is fully open to the public, and it houses a substantial permanent collection of Hundertwasser's own paintings, architectural models and design work, giving genuine context for the ideas embodied in the housing block a few streets away — his opposition to the straight line, his belief that tenants should be able to alter their own window surroundings, his broader philosophy connecting architecture to ecology decades before that became a mainstream design concern.
The museum also runs rotating temporary exhibitions of other artists in a separate wing, so what else is showing varies visit to visit, but the permanent Hundertwasser collection is the core reason to come and is unaffected by whatever else is currently installed.
Understanding the buildingHundertwasser's actual argument
It's easy to see the Hundertwasserhaus purely as a quirky photo opportunity — the trees growing out of windows, the wildly mismatched paint colours — without registering that it was built on a specific, articulated architectural philosophy Hundertwasser had been publishing manifestos about for decades before he got the chance to build it. His central argument was that the straight line and the rigid grid of modernist housing alienated people from both nature and from any sense of individual identity in their own homes, and that uneven floors, irregular windows and integrated plant life were not decoration but a corrective.
He also insisted, as part of the original agreement with the city, that any tenant should be free to alter the wall surface immediately around their own window as far as they could reach from inside — a small, almost symbolic gesture of individual agency within an otherwise uniform public housing block, and one of the more genuinely radical ideas embedded in the building's design even though it's invisible from the street.
Whatever one makes of the philosophy, and Hundertwasser's flamboyant public persona made him as many critics as admirers during his lifetime, the building has aged into a genuinely beloved piece of Vienna's identity, regularly cited by residents as a point of civic pride rather than an eccentric folly — a rare case of an architect's polemic actually working as long-term, functioning public housing.
Planning the visitHow to combine both stops sensibly
Treat this as a two-part outing: fifteen to twenty minutes at the Hundertwasserhaus itself, walking the exterior and the ground-floor arcade, followed by an hour or more at KunstHausWien a short walk away for the indoor exhibition experience. Doing only the first half is common but leaves out the part of the visit that actually explains what you just looked at.
Both sites sit in Landstraße, on the quieter eastern side of the city centre, and are easy to combine with a visit to the nearby Danube Canal or as a lower-key addition to a day that also includes the Belvedere Palace, roughly a twenty-minute walk or short tram ride away.
Go at a normal daytime hour rather than early morning or evening — this is a residential street, and the building's exterior is equally visible at any time, but the surrounding cafés and the Hundertwasser Village shops keep standard daytime hours, and KunstHausWien obviously requires being open to visit at all.
Practical info
- Hours
- The Hundertwasserhaus exterior and ground-floor arcade are viewable at any time as public street-level space, with no opening hours to observe. KunstHausWien is generally open daily from 10am to 6pm. The Hundertwasser Village shops and café keep standard retail hours, roughly 9am to 6pm.
- Tickets
- Free to view the Hundertwasserhaus exterior and arcade. KunstHausWien charges standard museum admission, with reduced rates for students and seniors. There is no ticket or entry required for the residential building itself, since it is not open to visitors.
- Getting there
- Tram 1 stops close to both the Hundertwasserhaus and KunstHausWien in the Landstraße district. It's roughly a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk from the Innere Stadt, or a short tram ride from Schwedenplatz.
- Good to know
- The Hundertwasserhaus is a real, occupied residential building — there is no public access to the apartments, and visitors should be respectful of residents' privacy rather than treating the exterior courtyard as a photo set. The ground-floor arcade has uneven flooring by design, worth noting for anyone with mobility concerns.
Before you goCommon questions
- Can you go inside the Hundertwasserhaus?
- No, not the apartments themselves — it's a real, occupied residential building with private tenants. You can walk through the ground-floor arcade and view the exterior from the street, both of which are free and open at any time.
- What's the difference between the Hundertwasserhaus and KunstHausWien?
- The Hundertwasserhaus is a residential apartment block designed by Hundertwasser, viewable only from outside. KunstHausWien, a short walk away, is a former factory he converted into a public museum using the same design principles, and it's fully open to visitors with a permanent collection of his work.
- Is it worth visiting just the Hundertwasserhaus without KunstHausWien?
- It's worth a quick fifteen-to-twenty-minute stop on its own, but pairing it with KunstHausWien gives the fuller picture — the museum explains the philosophy and history behind the housing block's unusual design in a way the street view alone doesn't.
- How do I get to the Hundertwasserhaus?
- Take tram 1 to a stop in the Landstraße district close to both the Hundertwasserhaus and KunstHausWien. It's about a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk from the Innere Stadt if you'd rather walk.
- Why does the Hundertwasserhaus have trees growing out of its windows?
- It reflects architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser's philosophy that buildings should integrate nature and reject the rigid straight lines of conventional modernist housing. Trees and greenery were built into terraces, rooflines and window openings as a deliberate architectural statement, not an afterthought.