Coop Himmelb(l)au was established in 1968 by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky, and Michael Holzer in Vienna and has been active in the fields of architecture, urban planning, design and art ever since. In 1988 a second studio was opened in
Los Angeles. Further project offices are located in
Frankfurt, Germany, and
Paris, France. The architecture studio Coop Himmelb(l)au is now run by Wolf D. Prix, Harald Krieger, Karolin Schmidbaur and project partners. The project partners include Michael Beckert, Luzie Giencke, Andrea Graser, Helmut Holleis, Markus Pillhofer, Markus Prossnigg, Wolfgang Reicht, Frank Stepper and Michael Volk. Michael Holzer early left the office in 1971. Helmut Swiczinsky retired from operational business in 2001, and his final retirement was in 2006. Wolf D. Prix heads the studio as Design Principal / CEO. of the MAK in Vienna. At the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Coop Himmelb(l)au was represented with two contributions:
Astroballon 1969 Revisited – Feedback Space in the Arsenale and Brain City Lab in the Italian Pavilion. In 2009 the exhibition COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. Beyond the Blue could be seen at the
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (Ohio). Coop Himmelb(l)au was responsible for the design of several exhibitions, for example
Paradise Cage: Kiki Smith and Coop Himmelb(l)au, which was shown in 1996 at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. One of the best-known is the exhibition Rudi Gernreich:
Fashion will go out of Fashion from 2000 for the Styrian Autumn in Graz, which was later shown in Philadelphia. Since 2018, the firm was designing three projects in Russia funded by the Russian government — a museum and a theater in
Kemerovo, the
SKA Arena in Saint Petersburg, and a cultural cluster including an opera house in
occupied Crimea. In January 2022, the firm's partners were sanctioned by the president of Ukraine for doing business in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine considers illegal. After the beginning of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Coop Himmelb(l)au continued working on the projects and stopped only in October 2022, when architects from the EU countries were prohibited to collaborate with Russian officials. By that time, the SKA Arena was completed, and the other two projects were taken over by Russian construction companies and were on the way to be completed as of 2025. ==Selected projects==