The Linz Café and the concept of "wholeness": Reclaiming the historical feeling of a long-gone building

The purpose of the paper is to discuss "The Linz Café," a building that ceased to exist in 1980. This project was conceived and constructed by Christopher Alexander for the summer exposition "Forum Design" in Linz, Austria. Despite its short-lived existence (only during the summer of 1980) and its rapid conception and implementation (completed in just three months), the building was deemed "a complete working alternative to our present ideas about architecture," in the words of its architect, Christopher Alexander himself. Alexander expounded on the ambitious intentions of the project in a book bearing the same title, published after the exposition. In this book, he meticulously documented the entire conceptualization process and the final result. From an architectural historical perspective, "The Linz Café" stands as a unique entity. It marked Alexander's maiden-built project in Europe and was celebrated as the first tangible application of the theory he and his collaborators elaborated in their seminal works, "The Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Building." In its time, "The Linz Café" epitomized the concept of "wholeness," a central element in Alexander's impassioned call for a paradigm shift in architecture. The vanished building and the printed book raise a fundamental question: Can a detailed publication effectively convey the essence of a project that asserts its fundamental quality is rooted entirely in the lived experience? To address this question, this contribution adopts a twofold method. Firstly, it examines Alexander's own account of the process and the project to shed light on his awareness of this inherent contradiction. Secondly, the paper refrains from a monographic analysis of "The Linz Café" by situating it within the context of Alexander's other built works. Instead, it aspires to pursue a phenomenological interpretation of the built process and to delve into its connection with references from traditional architecture.