Today I come back from a visit to the Austrian capital.
Before the departure, I had prepared an itinerary that would touch the major architectures designed by Otto Wagner, because after studying it on books and understanding its historical and cultural importance for the city, I wanted to touch its achievements.
Wienzeile Hauser, Hof Pavillion, Kirche am Steinhof, Karlsplatz, Postparkasse are fascinating architectures because they narrate the beginning of a new era, not only political and cultural but above all architectural.
Otto Wagner was born in Vienna in 1841 and died in 1918, almost completing an art cycle that saw the end of the hopes of a positivist world with the first world war. With his works, Wagner wants to denounce a world, the academic-institutional one, which sees architecture still linked to classical languages, which do not express the modernity that has now begun with the advent of the second industrial revolution. Construction materials have undergone rapid and violent progress, and now provide the possibility of avant-garde and statically rash architectures. However in this period the greatest European and American architects, do not yet know how to relate to the "modern" and try to shape it in various ways.
"Every new creation, if it wants to be truly modern, must correspond to the needs of our time and new materials, must express in the best way our democratic and responsible mentality, must take into account the enormous technical and economic achievements and the practical spirit of modern man [...] The revolution will be so violent that it will no longer be possible to speak of a renaissance of the Renaissance, it will be a completely new birth, a real 'naissance' "Otto Wagner.
He does not design his buildings with disdain for ornament, as he tries to do it Adolf Loos (1870-1933), but he creates a new one, closer to his idea of modernity. Take for example the houses in Wienzeile (38-40), in which there are no mouldings that recall the Roman, Greek or Baroque times, but a new floral style invests our gaze and makes us pleasantly surprised by this view so different compared to the buildings that make up that roude.
"Equally all the rental houses decorated with pilasters, turrets or unmotivated domes are folly or, worst, an artistic false. Those that disguise themselves from buildings almost wearing a mask" Otto Wagner.
But everything is consistent, nothing out of place. This architecture does not enter as a meteorite in a Spanish city, it does not cut our eyes like titanium blades. It is a new language, but that looks to the environment with respect and education.
"The architects indulge the widespread opinion that their work is as fine as itself and must constitute a sort of personal consecration, while it should be related to the dimensions and needs of the square, to the spatial relations, to the overall perspective values, to the existing buildings in the background, etc. " Otto Wagner.
It is thus outlined his idea of elegant and modern architecture, which highlights the construction as decoration, an example of this type of architecture is visible in the church of Saint Leopold, where the interior of the central building is covered by a curved ceiling made in ceramic slabs held together by iron hooks, which create with their composition a unique and decorative texture. As Wagner wrote: "nothing that is not functional can never be beautiful".
This concept reached its peak in the project for the Postsparkasse of 1904, where the facades treated in marble and granite make the building the leader of the Viennese secession movement. The slabs covering the outside are kept on the wall thanks to the hooks that look like bolts from the outside and compose a geometric design that is very simple and coherent with the building and its surroundings. The structure is shown. The entrance shelter is made of iron and glass, the stone uprights that make up the entrance have a totally new shape, in the shape of an "elephant's paw". Otto Wagner pays tribute to modernity with solutions never seen before, and goes down in history for his ideas.
"If the designed work is to be a faithful reflection of our time, it will have to express as perfectly and completely as possible the simplicity, functionality and I would almost like to say the military sense of modern life" Otto Wagner.
I close with this sentence to underline how the architectures of the Austrian master are strongly linked to their place and to the culture of that place. As Renzo Piano teaches: "the architect, with his works, must stop the time in which they were built", we understand that Wagner has succeeded in this goal, which he himself has identified. The city of Vienna without these teachings would be less rich, and certainly secession was an extraordinary period for the city.
New buildings have been designed, like the university campus on the Danube, where the Zaha Hadid building stands out above all. I wonder if these new architectures have the disruptive power of those of Otto Wagner. I wonder if they have the same artistic, cultural and intellectual quality as those of the Viennese master.
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