As after the First World War, the housing shortage was one of the most pressing problems after 1945. Innsbruck had been badly affected by the air raids and money for new buildings was scarce. When the first housing estates were built in the 1950s, thrift was the order of the day. Although many of the buildings erected from the 1950s onwards are not very attractive architecturally, they do house interesting works of art. From 1949 there was a project in Austria Art on the building. In the case of buildings realised by the state, 2% of the total expenditure was to flow into artistic design. The implementation of the building law and thus also the administration of the budgets was then, as now, the responsibility of the federal states. Artists were to be financially supported through these public commissions. The idea first emerged in 1919 during the Weimar Republic and was continued by the National Socialists from 1934.

Austria took up art in architecture after the war to design public spaces as part of the reconstruction programme. The public sector, which replaced the aristocracy and bourgeoisie as the property developers of past centuries, was under massive financial pressure. Despite this, the housing projects, which were primarily focussed on function, were not intended to be completely unadorned.

The Tyrolean artists entrusted with the design of the artworks were selected in competitions. The best known of these was Max Weiler, perhaps the most prominent artist in Tyrol in the post-war period, who was responsible for the frescoes in the Theresienkirche on the Hungerburg in Innsbruck, among other things. Other prominent names include Helmut Rehm (1911 - 1991), Walter Honeder (1906 - 2006), Fritz Berger (1916 - 2002) and Emmerich Kerle (1916 - 2010).

Many of these artists were not only recognised by the Federal Trade School InnsbruckThe school, which is now the HTL and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, was also characterised by the collective experience during the National Socialist era and the war. Fritz Berger had lost his right arm and one eye and had to learn to work with his left hand. Kerle served in Finland as a war painter. He was taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna by Josef Müllner, among others, an artist who had made his mark on art history with busts of Adolf Hitler, Siegfried from the Nibelungen saga and the Karl Lueger monument in Vienna, which remains controversial to this day. Like a large part of the Tyrolean population, these artists as well as politicians and civil servants wanted peace and quiet after the hard and painful years of war in order to let the events of the past decades grow over. The works created as part of Kunst am Bau reflect this attitude towards a new moral image. It was the first time that abstract, formless art found its way into Innsbruck's public space, even if only in an uncritical context. Fairy tales, legends and religious symbols were popular motifs that were immortalised on sgraffiti, mosaics, murals and statues. One could speak of a kind of second wave of Biedermaier art, which symbolised the petty bourgeois lifestyle of people after the war.

Art was also intended to create a new awareness and image of what was considered typically Austrian. In 1955, one in two Austrians still considered themselves to be German. The various motifs depict leisure activities, clothing styles and ideas of the social order and social norms of the post-war period. Women were often depicted in traditional costumes and dirndls, men in lederhosen. The conservative ideal of gender roles was incorporated into the art. Hard-working fathers, well-behaved wives who looked after the home and hearth and children who were eager to learn at school were the ideal image until well into the 1970s. A life straight out of a Peter Alexander film. If you walk through the city carefully, you will find many of the works of art on houses in Pradl and Wilten that are still visible today. The mixture of unattractive architecture and contemporary works of art from the often suppressed post-war period, long idealised and glorified in films and stories, is well worth seeing. Particularly beautiful examples can be found on the façades in Pacherstraße, Hunoldstraße, Ing.-Thommenstraße, Innrain, the Mandelsbergerstraße vocational school or in the inner courtyard between Landhausplatz and Maria-Theresienstraße.