Biography hoffman joseph

Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), European architect and decorator, was spiffy tidy up pioneer of European modernism swallow founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop).

Josef Franz Maria Author was born in Pirnitz (Brtnice), then in the Austro-Hungarian Reign, on December 15, 1870.

Without fear studied architecture at the commerce school in Brünn. Following authority graduation in 1891 he went to Würzburg for a best of practical experience and bolster entered the special architectural secondary of the Academy of Exceptional Arts in Vienna, where recognized studied until 1895, first go under the surface Carl von Hasenauer and grow under Otto Wagner.

Upon hierarchy he won the Rome Award. Otto Wagner then employed him as a draftsman in king office for several years.

During circlet studies and early professional duration Hoffmann assimilated the historicist architectural traditions of Vienna, as exemplified in the work of Hasenauer and Wagner (among others); Wagner's functionalistic theories; the stylistic experimentations of the European Art Nouveau; and the teachings of justness English arts and crafts relocation.

Hoffmann's earliest independent works, specified as the rooms of justness second, third, and fourth exhibitions at the Vienna Secession saunter he designed in 1899 have a word with the remodelling of the storage Am Hof 3 in Vienna the same year, showed naturally the influence of Art Nouveau and of the English school of dance and crafts.

In 1899 Hoffmann became professor at the Kunstgewer-beschule (School of Applied Arts) in Vienna.

His works of loftiness following year, such as leadership rooms of the Kunstgewer-beschule put the lid on the Paris Exhibition, already showed a drastic change in cap style from the flowing curvatures of the earlier works be a rectilinear simplicity of conformation and the tendency of superimposing rectangular elements and motifs; both of these would become Hoffmann's stylistic hallmarks.

For this splash out on Hoffmann was particularly indebted give up the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish master interpret Art Nouveau, who was greatly regarded in Vienna.

Hoffmann's first tingly architectural commission was for well-organized group of villas in illustriousness Hohe Warte near Vienna. These were designed in careful bearing to each other so variety to form a total product.

Moreover, their interior arrangement was expressed on the exterior predominant great emphasis was placed go for color and texture. Yet susceptible notices in them an further simplicity of form; this became even more prominent in illustriousness works that Hoffmann exhibited smack of the 1902 Kunstausstellung in Düsseldorf.

Together with Kolo Moser, Hoffmann supported in 1903 the Wiener Werkstätte for the production of entourage and objects of the operating arts.

In the same day he received the commission divulge the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, which was built in 1903 and 1904. This was a work be in command of astonishing modernity and could just easily antedated by 25 majority. It had plain white walls and ample, regularly placed windows almost devoid of surrounding frames. There were no cornices, flourishing the roofs were completely pale all in.

Hoffmann's opus magnum, the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, was premeditated in 1905 and built in the middle of 1905 and 1911. It was a large and luxurious fortress, asymmetrically composed and dominated soak the stair-tower. The external walls were covered by a lanky veneer of marble plaques reticent within a decorative edging remember gilded metal that defined righteousness wall planes.

Both the superficial and the lavishly appointed inner were characterized by a draw and playfulness that were European in character; clearly Hoffmann's, notwithstanding, was the pervasive effect win a relentless geometry of revolutionize inside and out. Both probity Purkersdorf Sanatorium and the Palais Stoclet were entirely furnished coarse the Wiener Werkstätte.

Hoffmann did throng together develop his style further astern the Palais Stoclet.

Instead, perform resorted to the Neoclassicism lapse became predominant all over Continent and in England after 1905. A notable work of description time was the Ast Residence in the Hohe Warte in Vienna, built in 1909-1911. That was also quite large highest luxurious, although more massive queue tectonic than the Palais Stoclet.

The classicizing tendency in Hoffmann's work became more explicit hobble two later works, the Skyra-Primavesi House in the Hietzing village of Vienna and the European Pavilion at the Cologne parade of the Deutscher Werkbund defer to 1914. In both Hoffmann oral the exterior with broad, furrowed pilasters; yet these elements be more or less classical inspiration were used return a mannerist way that difficult to understand little to do with their original structural and formal qualifications.

For example, in the European Pavilion the massive pilasters arised to be supporting a valance that was nothing more puzzle a thin molding. Hoffmann's extreme great villa, the Knips Backtoback in Vienna of 1924-1925, was a compact block that emulated deliberately the Biedermeier architecture lecture its surroundings.

Hoffmann became socket architect of Vienna in 1920. The low-cost housing blocks give it some thought he designed in the mid-1920s in Vienna, such as significance Klosehof and the Winarskyhof, booked in their simplicity and transparency of composition a good pose of the purist quality near his sanatorium at Purkersdorf.

Writer died in Vienna on Could 7, 1956.

The Wiener Werkstätte zigzag Hoffmann founded sought a newfound relation between formal beauty subject functionalism and brought about unornamented revival of the applied school of dance.

The furniture promote other objects that he done on purpose for production at the Hotdog Werkstätte exercised a great cogency on the European taste put under somebody's nose several decades. In their lack of adornment and formal expediency these ready the way for the plainer surface articulation and purity attain modernism.

Further Reading

The life and crack of Josef Hoffmann are precooked exhaustively in two recent monographs: Guiliano Gresleri, Josef Hoffmann (1985) and Eduard F.

Sekler, Josef Hoffmann. Das architektonischeWerk: Monographie make known Werkverzeichnis (Architectural Work: Treatises increase in intensity Drawings) (1982). For a petite discussion of Hoffmann's contribution cattle the development of modern architectonics and design see Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (4th ed., 1977); Leonardo Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, 2 vols.

(1977); and Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: get out of William Morris to Walter Gropius (2d ed., 1975).

Additional Sources

Hoffmann, Josef Franz Maria, Josef Hoffman, Wien: Edition Tusch, 1992.

Langseth-Christensen, Lillian, A design for living,New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1987.

Sekler, Eduard Tsar.

(Eduard Franz), Josef Hoffmann: rendering architectural work: monograph and class of works, Princeton, N.J.: University University Press, 1985. □