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Otto Wagner’s career spanned the transition from 19th-century historical revivalism to
the emergence of a new modern architecture. From the mid-1890s to the time of his death at the end of World War I, he occupied a place at the forefront of the modernist assault in Vienna. Yet Wagner’s works and ideas were often complex and contradictory, and his position with respect to the modernist program was not infrequently ambiguous. Although he was among the foremost early proponents of a new tectonic rationalism, Wagner never wholly shed traditional notions of style and beauty, and his lifelong ambition, to become the architect to the Habsburg imperial household, stood in glaring opposition to his desire to forge a new building art for the modern metropolis.
Wagner’s early years paralleled the development of the Vienna Ringstrasse, and many of his assumptions were shaped by the prevailing ideals and practices of the era. Born in 1841 into a family of wealthy bourgeois bureaucrats, Wagner received his early architectural training at the Vienna Technical University (1857–59) and the Royal Building Academy in Berlin (1860), where he studied with the successors of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. However, it was at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which Wagner entered in October 1861, where he encountered the two figures who would form his architectural outlook: August Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll. Sicardsburg and van der Nüll, designers of the Vienna Opera House, had long advocated the necessity of finding a “rational expression for modern architecture” (quoted in Graf, 1987). Wagner’s later appreciation of utility and his search for a new language of construction arose from their teachings, and it was to van der Nüll that he attributed his refined facility for drawing.
After completing his education at the Academy in 1863, Wagner embarked on his architectural career. Early on, however, he found few commissions for public projects, and he worked instead on a series of apartment houses, a number of which he financed himself as speculative ventures. Many of these buildings were executed in a “free Renaissance” style, and this new astringent and innovative classicism became the young Wagner’s hallmark. By the late 1880s, Wagner was considered the preeminent builder of tenement houses in Vienna, but his attempts to secure more prestigious works remained mostly fruitless. Among the notable exceptions were his Orthodox Synagogue (1871–76) in Budapest and the Österreichische Länderbank (1882–84) in Vienna. The former was executed in a neo-Moorish idiom and the latter in Wagner’s more characteristic Renaissance style, but in both buildings the outer historicist skin concealed what were— in material, constructional, and spatial terms—already remarkably modern buildings. Wagner, however, continued to experiment with more conventional ideas of monumentality and form, as his neobaroque Artibus project of 1880 powerfully demonstrates, and it was not until the early 1890s that he fully emerged in the guise of an architectural reformer.
Wagner’s transformation followed in the wake of his successful entry into the Vienna city-planning competition held in 1893. Drawing on his own growing sense of the primacy of functionality, Wagner’s proposal emphasized the creation of an extensive urban rail network as well as the regulation of the Danube Canal and the Wien River. Wagner’s straightforward response to the problems of traffic and urban expansion drew widespread praise, and as a consequence, he was named chief architect of the municipal railway system in 1894. The work, which continued until 1901, not only required Wagner to design more than 30 stations but also involved the siting and design of a series of bridges, tunnels, and viaducts. Wagner’s first stations, executed in brick and stucco with pronounced classical detailing, reflected traditional ideas of building “art.” However, as construction progressed, he began to explore a more stripped and utilitarian idiom. After 1897, Wagner also investigated the possibilities of the new Jugendstil language, which he combined with elements of Renaissance and baroque classicism. In some instances, such as the twin stations on the Karlsplatz that he produced in collaboration with his younger protégé, Josef Maria Olbrich, Wagner’s solutions pointed toward a new mode of building—a light iron skeleton framing thin slabs of marble—that anticipated the constructions of the 1920s and beyond. Yet other features of Wagner’s designs reveal his continuing allegiance to the past: the private railway pavilion he designed for the imperial family at the Schönbrunn Palace—despite its ebullient iron porte-cochère—was still firmly rooted in the “style architecture” of the Ringstrasse era, and many of his other stations included features—swags, statuary, wreaths, and rustication—intended to disguise or aestheticize their structural details.
In 1894, shortly after beginning work on the city railway project, Wagner was appointed professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts. Although the chair, previously occupied by the noted Ringstrasse architect Carl von Hasenauer, was reserved for a “convinced representative of classical Renaissance,” Wagner in his inaugural address called for a new, “realist” approach to the problem of modern building:
Our living conditions and methods of construction must be fully and completely expressed if architecture is not to be reduced to caricature. The realism of our time must pervade the developing work of art. It will not harm it, nor will any decline of art ensue as a consequence of it; rather it will breathe a new and pulsating life into forms, and in time conquer new fields that today are still devoid of art—for example that of engineering. (quoted in Mallgrave, 1993)
Wagner called instead for a visual language suited to the new age, one that could fulfill the requirements of the expanding metropolis. Wagner’s insistence on pragmatism, like his chosen motto for the Stadtbahn project (borrowed from Gottfried Semper), artis sola domina necessitas (Necessity is the only master of art), however, merely concealed his own lofty “artistic” ideals: he maintained that the mission of the architect was to find a means of reconciling the realistic and utilitarian with the forms of artistic expression and that it was only through this mediation that mere building could be elevated to Baukunst (building art).
Wagner sought to communicate these ideas not only through his works but also in his teachings. Between 1894 and 1912, he devoted a significant portion of his time and energy to his “Special class”—the so-called Wagnerschule, or Wagner School—at the Academy; and his students, who included Josef Hoffmann, Joze Plecnik, Jan Kotera, Pavel Janák, Rudolf Perco, Karl Ehn, and Hubert and Franz Gessner, among others, subsequently assumed a central position in the avant-garde in Central Europe. Despite Wagner’s stated conviction that truthful and logical construction should constitute the basis for architecture’s renewal, however, many of his students were more taken with his language of form, which emphasized the importance of masking or wrapping the internal structure in an outer aesthetic veil. This idea, adapted by Wagner from Semper’s theory of Bekleidung, or “dressing,” emphasized the use of poetic forms or symbols to represent themes that could not be expressed through structure alone. Such an approach stood in direct opposition to later concepts of modernism, which advocated clarity and rationality, yet it had a profound and lasting impact on a whole range of younger Central European architects and designers, who reshaped it to articulate a wide array of social, cultural, and economic messages.
In Wagner’s own work, this tactic of Bekleidung assumed various guises. In 1898–99,
in a pair of adjacent buildings on the Linke Wienzeile, it appeared in the form of a florid Jugendstil idiom, the ornament often reduced to two-dimensional graphics or low-relief appliqué. By the early years of the 20th century, however, Wagner had abandoned this language in favor of a stripped, utilitarian classicism, which he combined with geometric forms. His Postal Savings Bank (1904–06, 1910–12), for example, still observed the conventions of a rusticated base and elaborate cornice, but he added to it elements of the new rectilinear Jugendstil. Consistent with his belief in the necessity of adopting new forms of construction, Wagner employed reinforced concrete for the floors of this large office block and made extensive use of aluminum, which he exploited both for its structural qualities and for its aesthetic values. Yet the most dramatic feature of its exterior, the aluminum-headed pins that appear to affix the thin stone panels to the walls while reinforcing the impression of tectonic play, were as much symbolic as structural. Although the pins (which were actually iron but clad in lead with polished aluminum caps so that they would not discolor the marble) served a purpose—to support the underlying mortar—they were also intended to express solidity and stability and thus to reinforce the idea of the building’s “dress.”
If the Postal Savings Bank betokened a new Nutzstil, or utilitarian style, Wagner’s unrealized designs for the Franz Josef-Stadtmuseum (city museum) suggested how past and new forms might be fused to fashion a modern monumentality. Wagner labored on the project for more than a decade, from 1900 to 1912, producing a number of variant designs. However, despite his efforts to forge a “modern way of building” that retained the monumental grandeur associated with 19th-century architecture, his building failed to find official or public acceptance—a telling reminder of how strongly Wagner’s aesthetic, even in its most traditional form, ran counter to the contemporary taste.
Around 1905, Wagner produced two further examples of the stone-panel-and- aluminum-pin idiom he had announced in the Postal Savings Bank: the Church of St. Leopold am Steinhof (1905–07) and the Kaiserbad Control House (1904–05) on the Danube Canal. However, in his subsequent designs he returned to a highly simplified, functional language. This last phase of his work is perhaps best exemplified by the residential apartment building (1909–10) at Neustiftgasse 40, which, with its clear, blocklike form and regular fenestration, pointed firmly in the direction of a developing modularity.
This gesture toward a new practical aesthetic similarly informed the design of the housing blocks depicted in Wagner’s Project for the Future Twenty-second District of Vienna, published in his work Die Grossstadt (1911; The Metropolis). The 23-page pamphlet laid out Wagner’s mature ideas on city planning, describing in precise terms both an architectural and an economic solution to the problem of the expanding city. He argued that future growth could be financed through municipal control of public utilities and by permitting the city authorities to buy and sell properties. To enable the city to grow, he called for new urban districts of 100,000 to 150,000 inhabitants, with both dwellings and places of work in close proximity to allow residents to work and reside in the same area. Each district would have a formal “air center” for its public and cultural institutions surrounded by uniform apartment buildings. The basic street system would follow a grid, and radial arteries and circular belts of roads and rail would provide connections with the center and other districts. Monumentality would not be achieved by the individual residential blocks but would arise out of their regularity and repetition.
Die Grossstadt was by turns both practical and utopian, but in its advocacy of rational approaches to the problem of the modern city, it was consistent with Wagner’s fundamental belief that purpose should be a primary determinant of form. Wagner’s vision of modernism, however, although emphasizing the principle of functionality, was considerably more complex and variegated. Despite his emphasis on the constructional and practical aspects of building, he sought at the same time to perpetuate the monumental and representational values of the old architecture as a means to maintain a link with the past. In addition, he remained committed to the ideals of architectural quality and art that, by the end of his life, were rapidly losing currency. Nonetheless, Wagner stands as one of the great early modernist form givers, and his influence reached far into the 20th century.
CHRISTOPHER LONG
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3. Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.
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Selected Publications
Einige Skizzen: Projekte und ausgeführte Bauwerke, 4 vols., 1895–1914; as Sketches, Projects, and Executed Buildings, 1987
Moderne Architektur, 1896; as Modern Architecture, translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave, 1988
Wagnerschule: Projekte, Studien und Skizzen aus der Spezialschule für Architektur des Oberbaurats Otto Wagner, 1902–1907, 1910
Die Grossstadt, 1911
Die Qualität des Baukünstlers, 1912
Die Baukunst unserer Zeit, 4th edition, 1914
Further Reading
Asenbaum, Paul, Otto Wagner: Möbel und Innenräume, Salzburg: Residenz, 1984
Bernabei, Giancarlo, Otto Wagner, Bologna, Italy: Zanichelli, 1983
Doumato, Lamia, Otto Wagner, 1841–1918, Monticello, Illinois: Vance Bibliographies, 1983
Geretsegger, Heinz, Max Peintner, and Walter Pichler, Otto Wagner, 1841–1918: Unbegrenzte Groszstadt, Beginn der modernen Architektur, Salzburg: Residenz, 1964; 3rd edition, 1978; as Otto Wagner, 1841–1918: The Expanding City, the Beginning of Modern Architecture, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964; New York: Praeger, 1970
Graf, Otto Antonia, Die vergessene Wagnerschule, Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1969
Graf, Otto Antonia, Masterdrawings of Otto Wagner (exhib. cat.), New York: Drawing Center, and Vienna: Otto Wagner-Archiv, 1987
Graf, Otto Antonia, Otto Wagner, 7 vols., Vienna: Böhlau, 1985–2000
Haiko, Peter and Renata Kassal-Mikula (editors), Otto Wagner und das Kaiser Franz Josef-Stadtmuseum: Das Scheitern der Moderne in Wien (exhib. cat.), Vienna: Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1988
Hollein, Hans, Otto Wagner, Tokyo: ADA, 1978
Horvat-Pintaric, V., Vienna, 1900: The Architecture of Otto Wagner, New York: Dorset Press, and London: Studio Editions, 1989
Lux, Joseph August, Otto Wagner, Munich: Delphin, 1914
Mallgrave, Harry Francis (editor), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity, Santa Monica, California: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1993
Müller, Ines, Die Otto Wagner-Synagoge in Budapest, Vienna: Löcker, 1992
Otto Wagner, Vienna 1841–1918: Designs for Architecture (exhib. cat.), Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1985
Peichl, Gustav, Die Kunst des Otto Wagner, Vienna: Akademie der Bildenden Künste, 1984
Pozzetto, Marco, La Scuola di Wagner, 1894–1912, Trieste, Italy: Comune di Trieste, 1979
Tietze, Hans, Otto Wagner, Vienna: Rikola Verlag, 1922
Varnedoe, Kirk, Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture, and Design (exhib. cat.), New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986
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