The Kunsthaus and the Murinsel

Both arrived in 2003, the year Graz was European Capital of Culture, and together they make the city's second face. The Kunsthaus — the "Friendly Alien" of Peter Cook and Colin Fournier — is a blue acrylic bubble grafted onto a cast-iron hall of 1847, with nozzle-like skylights on its back and a glazed arm, the Needle, jutting over the Lendkai. After dark its skin becomes a low-resolution screen of nearly a thousand fluorescent rings.

The Murinsel is Vito Acconci's steel shell moored mid-river, half open amphitheatre and half café, linked to both banks by footbridges. From inside it you shoot back at the old town; from the Erzherzog-Johann bridge or the Mariahilferplatz bank you get the island, the water and the Schlossberg in one frame.

The best light is a bright overcast or the last hour of the day, when the Kunsthaus reads blue rather than grey and the river carries some colour. The building's own frontage faces east, so it takes morning sun; the island works whenever the light is soft, and the flat white interior of the shell is usable in rain.

Both are open to the public and free to walk around outside; the museum's galleries are ticketed, and the Murinsel closes at times for maintenance or high water on the Mur, so check before building a session around it. In winter the bare trees on the far bank open the view and the island's lighting turns on early.