On August 20, 2014 Both Tom Cruise and I Arrived in... (Vienna - 5211 km)

(Vienna, 20.08.2014 - 22.08.2014) Tom Cruise and I came in town on the same day of Wednesday, August 20, 2014. Tom Cruise was spotted shooting scenes for Mission Impossible 5 in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Thursday, and he appeared to be in full action man mode when he hit the Opera House. 

My mission was by far easier to accomplish and that's perhaps the reason, why my visit wasn't mediatized in an equal measure, not to say not at all. While Tom Cruise drew huge crowds of fans as he scaled the roof of the Vienna opera house in Austria on Thursday to practise stunts for Mission Impossible 5, I just climbed to the first floor of the Generali Building on Mariahilfer Street 1b in order to "meet" Frederick John Kiesler, born as Friedrich Kiesler on September 22, 1890 in Czernowitz. Between 1908-1909 Kiesler studies in Vienna at the Technical University and at the Academy of Fine Arts.

The exhibition "Unknown & Unbuilt? - Kiesler's Architectural Projects from the 1950s" organized by the Austrian Frederick and Lilian Kiesler Private Foundation "focusses on so far nearly unknown architectural projects by Frederick Kiesler from the 1950s and presents an unexpected struggle of the artist-architect for a fusion of utopia and pragmatism."

Wikipedia: "Kiesler was often shunned by his peers, although he was chosen in 1952 as one of 'the 15 leading artists at mid-century' by The Museum of Modern Art and in 1957 became a fellow of the Graham Foundation in Chicago. Israeli architects disapproved of his and Bartos's serving as the architects for the Shrine of the Book (1957–65) because they were not Israelis, even though they were Jews. Further objections to Kiesler were that he had not completed his architecture studies and had built no structures, despite having been a licensed architect in New York State since 1930. One of his colleagues at Columbia University joked: 'If Kiesler wants to hold two pieces of wood together, he pretends he's never heard of nails or screws. He tests the tensile strengths of various metal alloys, experiments with different methods and shapes, and after six months comes up with a very expensive device that holds two pieces of wood together almost as well as a screw' (Architectural Forum, vol. 86, no. 2, 1947, p. 140). The Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation was established in 1997 in Vienna and biennially grants the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts."