Alexander Brodsky - It still amazes me that I became an architect Until October 2011, in its ongoing exhibition, the Architekturzentrum Wien displays works and a room-sized installation of the Russian artist and architect Alexander Brodsky.  At the beginning of his career, Alexander Brodsky is part of the “paper-architecture“ movement even though at that point, at the beginning of the eighties, there is no movement in the true sense yet. The notion “paper-architecture” rather expresses a typical limitation to architectural creativity in the Soviet Union of the time: Young architects who would refuse to fit in with the established architecture system would have no means to carry out their projects, and therefore design only for presentation or indeed just for the paper. This kind of architectural existence only begins to form a movement when first signs of openness become perceptible in the Soviet Union. Suddenly young architects receive permission to participate in architecture competitions abroad, primarily in Japan. As the architect tells, the competitions were of a conceptual nature as well, the contributions however received more public attention and awards. This paved the way for “paper-architecture” as a movement. For the architect, the dissolution of the Soviet Union marks the beginning of an era of travelling abroad. He exhibits in the Netherlands, Germany and other European countries. He lives in New York for four years. On his return in 1994, he finds that his home country, to which he still feels strongly connected, has changed. It is the moment when Alexander Brodsky begins to design architecture to be actually constructed. As a constructing architect, Brodsky also refuses to conform to the Russian architectural mainstream of the new era - architecture as accomplice of a housing boom, completely changing cities, -architecture as expression of economical megalomania. These approaches are alien to him. In fact, on his quest for a different...