Hollein came from a family of mining engineers. In his childhood he attended Franz Cizek’s Youth Art Classes in Vienna. After his graduation in 1953 at the Federal Crafts and Industry School in Vienna, he studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Clemens Holzmeister’s master class. During this time he also lived and worked in Stockholm/Sweden. After his diploma in 1956 he was granted a Commonwealth Fund Scholarship and he continued his studies in the USA in 1958. He studied architecture and urban planning at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago until 1959. In 1960 he finished his studies at the University of California in Berkeley as Master of Architecture.
In his extensive travels by car through the USA and Mexico he was, among others, very interested in the buildings of Rudolf M. Schindler and the pueblos of the American Indians. After his return to Vienna he worked in several architecture offices, until he started his own business as certified civil engineer in 1964. From 1964 until 1970 he was editor of the magazine Bau in Vienna and worked also for several national and international architectural journals as a correspondent. In 2010 he founded together with Ulf Kotz and Christoph Monschein the Hans Hollein & Partner ZT-GmbH.
An essential part of Hollein’s life was formed by his teaching activities in Austria and abroad: In the USA he was guest professor at the Washington University in 1963/64 and in 1966 at the School of Architecture, St. Louis/Missouri, the Yale University, New Haven/Connecticut, the University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles and at the Ohio State University, Columbus. From 1967 until 1976 he was professor at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. At the University of Applied Arts in Vienna he was head of the master class for Industrial Design and of the Institute for Design, from 1976 until 1979, as well as head of a master class for architecture from 1979 until 2002 and head of the Department I Architecture from 1995 until 1999.
Hans Hollein died on April 24, 2014, as a father of two children, Max (born in 1969) and Lilli (born in 1972).