Spittelau

In 1994, Brian Clarke conceived a multi-panel artwork in mouth-blown glass, lead and steel, fabricated for the Spittelau Viaducts Housing Project, in collaboration with the architect Zaha Hadid. This unrealised project was intended as an integral part of the complex of canal-side buildings that Hadid designed as part of a regeneration project in Vienna.

The majority of the proposal involved mouth-blown stained glass, traditionally leaded, which would have cladded the elevations along one axis of the building. A mosaic element of the work, made in Venetian glass, was designed to form four orange slashes on the roof which fold down the face of one side of the building.

Clarke developed a new type of glass, without historical precedent, for the project, devised to accommodate the needs of the site, christened 'Zaha-Glas'. A sample for the project was blown and then first exhibited at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1995 alongside Hadid's architectural model, which Clarke had painted by hand. It is currently installed at one of the world's leading historic workshops for glass design and mosaics, Franz Mayer of Munich in Germany.