Brigitte Muthwill-Kundl

The reason for the secondary placement was that the reliefs could no longer be seen from a short distance and the cuboid alone was not enough for a monument. In the same year, the architectural firm Theiss & Jaksch submitted two designs for an Austrian Heroes’ Monument to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the First World War. The team working on the two designs consisted of Siegfried Theiss, Hans Jaksch, Werner Theiss, Brigitte Kundl, the painter Vinzenz Gorgon and the sculptor Ferdinand Opitz.

Alongside taking part in competitions, Brigitte Kundl worked on her final masterclass project. In this thesis, the architect worked on a new airport complex in the city of Vienna, which was graded ‘excellent’ on 11 March 1934. This work formed the basis for her dissertation, which she submitted in June 1935 under the title ‘Ein Stadtflughafen für Wien’ (‘A city airport for Vienna’). In July of the same year, she passed the examination with honours, becoming the first female doctor of architecture at the Technische Hochschule Wien.

The talented architect dedicated herself to the topical subject of an airport in Vienna. The Vienna Aspern airfield, which opened in 1912 and was expanded for international air traffic in 1930, was very inconveniently located due to the considerable distance of 14 km to Vienna’s city centre. For this reason, Kundl developed a design for an airport that was to be built near the city centre on Vienna’s Arsenal grounds and linked to a future central railway station. In collaboration with experts and under the direction of her professor, she developed a concept that combined an airport and an exhibition centre. The complex consists of a circular building that forms the centre of two ring-shaped exhibition buildings.  The roofs of the buildings were connected by a swivelling bridge, creating a 500-metre-long runway for take-offs and landings.  The airport had a capacity of 20 departures and 20 landings per hour.

Her innovative design attracted the attention of the ministries responsible for aviation and was also recognised by experts, especially after she presented the model to the Technical Museum in 1936, before being called to work abroad.“How long will the Viennese have to wait for the talented architect, who had to be sent abroad, to be called back to take over the construction management of the project she designed?“ – This was the question in the text accompanying the project description, to which the answer was “never“, because due to the Second World War and the rapid growth of the cities, the architect could not fulfil her wish to realise the project.

The turmoil of the war and the death of her good friend Werner Theiss, who was killed in the war in 1945, probably prompted Brigitte Kundl to continue her work as an architect without the attention of the industry. After the end of the war, Brigitte Kundl worked again in the studio of architect Siegfried Theiss from 1945 to 1952. After her marriage, she moved to Salzburg and found employment with her architect colleague Hans Hofmann, where she worked for around 20 years. It has not yet been possible to find out anything about the architect’s further life or about her independently realised projects and buildings in Salzburg. Brigitte Muthwill-Kundl died in Salzburg on 8 October 1992 at the age of 86.