Both buildings were designed by the noted Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Born Friedrich Stowasser in 1928, Hundertwasser changed his name as a young man to reflect his rapidly evolving world-view as a revolutionary environmentalist who championed the wilder aspects of nature. (His adopted moniker translates roughly to "peace-kingdom hundred-wasser.") Influenced stylistically by the brilliant colors and shapes of earlier Viennese artists like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, and structurally by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, Hundertwasser's paintings and countless buildings are immediately recognizable and wholly original.