Incorporating tradition doesn’t mean turning back the clock, but infusing a common identity with new dynamism. This is the message the Austrian architectural firm Ortner & Ortner seeks to convey with its buildings. They see European culture as an exemplary situation, in which old and new combine to create a particularly rich and multifaceted mix.

With Vienna’s museum district, Zurich’s Schiffbau arts complex, and the Dresden Public Library, this book focuses on three internationally significant contemporary cultural buildings. These are supplemented by some twenty additional building projects from the categories of theater, museum, and library, all of which – beginning with the early pavilion buildings from the Haus-Rucker-Co era (1967–1992) – take up the subject of "architecture for European culture." A large text section with essays by Bart Lootsma, Ernst Hubeli, and Sophie Lovell attempts to get to the bottom of this special mix of European architectures and rounds off the book as a whole.