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Wolf Prix

and Helmut Swiczinsky founded COOP Himmel(b)lau in 1968 (the architecture firm's name is a double entendre in German meaning "blue sky collaborative" and "to build the sky"). After an early period encompassing performance and theoretical research, COOP Himmel(b)lau achieved mainstream visibility when its work was included in Phillip Johnson's influential exhibition "Deconstructivist Architecture" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1988). Known for visually striking design in which formal fragmentation, volume distortion, chance, disruption and dislocation play major roles, the group's practice has included urban planning, institutional buildings, residential interventions and set design. In 1996 COOP Himmel(b)lau represented Austria at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and, in 1992, was the subject of a major retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1992.