Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner
b. Penzing, near Vienna, 1841;
d. Vienna, 1918.

Otto Wagner - Highly influential figure, through teaching, writing and projects, in the development of modern architecture and planning; founder of the so-called Wagner School. He began his architectural training at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in 1857, attended the Berlin Bauakademie 1860-61 and returned to Vienna to study under Siccardsburg and van der Null at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1894 he was appointed professor and head of a special school of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, and his inaugural lecture, published under the title Moderne Architektur, was one of the earliest manifestos to call for an architecture based on purpose and employing modern materials and construction methods. Wagner’s earliest projects, primarily urban apartment blocks, were highly accomplished exercises in the classical styles favoured at the time: the High Renaissance of Florence and Tuscany. His reputation was such that in 1890 he was asked to prepare a new city plan for Vienna, but the only part of the grandiose project to be built was the Stadtbahn, the urban rail network, for which he designed most of the stations. These buildings, notably the twin pavilions on the Karlsplatz, are clear exercises in modern construction and functional planning, but they also carry the decorative motifs of the Secession style and retain the urban monumentality of Wagner’s classical training, an aspect that was to remain throughout his late career. Encouraged by the radical work of his students ? the most talented of whom, such as Joseph Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann joined his atelier ? Wagner moved further towards the design of buildings which embodied the very principles he taught. The adjacent apartment buildings on the Linke Wienzeile are far removed in their inventiveness and plastic qualities from his early apartments restrained by classical rules. The Steinhof Church, with its Secession-style embellishments, develops a more integrated approach to built form and constructional detail. But the Post Office Savings Bank, which occupies a triangular city block, is the major testament to Wagner’s eminence among early 20-century famous architects. This remarkable synthesis of plan, space and materials is centred on a main hall, brightly lit by a steel-framed glazed vault above, and partly floored in glass blocks to light rooms below. Ornamentation deemed unnecessary is dispensed with altogether, and materials are employed to great effect in their natural state and simplest forms.

Major buildings / works:
Landerbank, Vienna, 1882-4.
Villa Wagner I, Vienna, 1886.
Stadtbahn stations, Vienna, 1894-9.
Ankerhaus store, Vienna, 1895: apartment houses on the Linke Wienzeile, 1898-9. Steinhof Church, Vienna, 1902-7.
Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna, 1903-6.
Lupus Sanatorium, Vienna, 1908-13.
Villa Wagner II, Vienna, 1912-13.

Bibliography:
Otto Wagner, Lunge Skizze, Protekte and ausgefuhrte Bauwerke (4 vols.), Vienna, 1890-1922; Moderne Architektur, Vienna, 1896. J. A. Lux, Otto Wagner, Munich, 1914; H. Geretsegger and M. Peintner, Otto Wagner 1841-1918, Salzburg, 1964.

Filed Under W on April 17, 2008

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