Encyclopedic in its coverage, this seminal work focuses on the architecture of Prague from the turn of the century to the end of the Second World War: a rich matrix within which to place the figures who created the powerful, innovative spirits of modern Czech architecture. The book documents the architects, structures, and theoretical underpinnings that helped to shape Prague's cultural heritage and present-day artistic spirit.
At the mention of Vienna, many visitors think of Sachertorte, romantic open carriage trips and an evening in one of local wine taverns. But the old imperial city has much more to offer: this book presents a comprehensive, richly illustrated view of the art treasures to be found in the Danube metropolis. The main focus is on the baroque era with its magnificent church buildings and palaces including the Hofburg, Schönbrunn and Belvedere; historicism with its architectural highlights on the new Ringstrasse; and Viennese art nouveau including artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, the Wiener Werkstätte und Sezession. Well-founded essays on the beginnings of the history of art in Vienna and on the state of contemporary Viennese art round off the book.
Set within the fascinating cultural and political world of Vienna from the fin-de siecle to the present day, this book provides an insightful analysis of the city's extraordinarily rich architectural tradition. Since 1900, Vienna has produced many great architects and their work includes some of the finest masterpieces of the twentieth century such as Otto Wagner's Stadtbahn stations, his Postsparkasse and his Majolica House, Adolf Loos's American Bar and Goldman & Salastch, the Secession building by Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Josef Hoffmann's Palais Stoclet, not to mention Ludwig Wittgenstein's House for his sister. Beginning with Wagner's polemical manifesto, Moderne Architektur, it stresses the importance of the fraught and highly polarized cultural politics that engulfed Vienna for most of the twentieth century and ultimately produced much of what is modern in every field of culture and science. It shows how leading cultural figures such as Freud, Mahler, Schoenberg, Klimt and Twain encouraged a 'rebellious' architecture, which continued in later eras with the Wiener Gruppe, amongst others. The book also places architectural history within the context of the political economy that has shaped Vienna and highlights the relatively unknown tradition of Viennese social housing, initiated by social democratic Red Vienna in the 1920s. Today, 60% of Vienna's population lives in the most successful social housing in the world, which has proved to be an important factor in stimulating the highly successful economy of the country as a whole.
Vienna: Art and Design: Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann, Loos is a stylish and timeless publication that highlights this extraordinary and provocative period when a unique generation of artistic and intellectual geniuses laid the foundations for life in the twentieth century. Beginning in 1897 artists such as Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Adolf Loos and Egon Schiele transformed Vienna into a dynamic, vibrant metropolis at the forefront of groundbreaking modernism.
While Constructivism and Stalinist architecture are familiar to a specialist audience, knowledge of postwar Soviet Modernism in architecture is very limited. Much of the former Eastern Bloc's architecture is regarded as monotonous and uninteresting. Yet
Leslie Topp investigates how "truth" in Viennese architecture at the turn of the twentieth century could be interpreted in a variety of ways, including "truth" to purpose, symbolist or ideal "truth", and ethical notions of authenticity. Drawing on newly uncovered archival materials, Topp offers a new interpretation of familiar buildings, demonstrating how they encompass utopianism, hyper-rationality, and subjectivism. She also explores the relationship between Viennese modern architecture and contemporary painting, psychiatry, fashion, labor issues, and anti-Semitic politics.
Throughout the world, Vienna is seen as the secret capital of social housing. Indeed, since the 1920s, the Austrian capital has developed a unique system of subsidized housing construction, independent of the?free? market, in which more than sixty percent of its population lives today.0'The Vienna Model 2', the book accompanying the successful exhibition by the same name, analyzes the latest developments in housing and documents the best Viennese examples from the last ten years. It shows how technical, ecological, and social qualities are continuously developed further as part of a wide participatory process, and can thereby set new standards. The0IBA_Vienna 2022, which is presented in this book for the first time, will also be dedicated to the topic of?New Social Housing.? Alongside this, renowned experts present the current housing construction situation in North America, Asia, and the EU. This volume therefore represents, together with its predecessor book The Vienna Model, a significant contribution to the worldwide discussion on the future of housing in cities, which will soon accommodate two-thirds of the world?s population.
