A long list of big-name architects have launched a campaign to fight proposed alterations to Vienna's Science Secondary School, a 1994 work by late modernist Helmut Richter. Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi, Steven Holl, Ma Yansong, and 18 other architects making up the Helmut Richter Committee have banded together in "opposition to the legacy of Helmut Richter being in any way impaired or disfigured, or even demolished and replaced by new buildings."
The school is characterized by two large steel-framed "wings" and a large central gymnasium, both with walls and ceilings of blue-tinted glass. According to Arch Daily, a proposed conversion would see part of the school demolished. Given Richter's "major influence" on the current crop of Austrian architects, the outcry over the changes being considered has been "correspondingly severe."
The architects' statement was closely followed by a public petition to preserve the building in its current state. So far it's received nearly 700 signatures.
· Hadid, Gehry, and Others Fight to Save Helmut Richter's Modernist Masterpiece [Arch Daily]