Austria, Stati Uniti · 1870–1956
Josef Franz Maria Hoffmann è stato uno dei maggiori architetti austriaci, attivo fra la fine del XIX secolo e la prima metà del XX secolo.
Josef Franz Maria Hoffmann è stato uno dei maggiori architetti austriaci, attivo fra la fine del XIX secolo e la prima metà del XX secolo.
Formazione · 1887–1891
Move to the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Brno
His father wanted him to become a lawyer and sent him to a school where Josef was deeply unhappy; he later called his school years a shame and a torture that poisoned his youth and left him with a feeling of inferiority. In 1887 he moved to the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Brno, where he received his baccalaureate in 1891.
Formazione · 1892–1895
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Formazione
Enrols at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna
Studies under two of the most prestigious architects of the day, Karl von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner; his graduation project will also be done under Wagner's guidance. At the Academy he meets his future allies in the fight for new art: Joseph Maria Olbrich, Koloman Moser and Carl Otto Czeschka.
Carriera
Among the founders of the Vienna Secession
In the same year, together with Gustav Klimt, Alfred Roller, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, Ernst Stöhr, Wilhelm List and other artists who had broken with conservatism and the eclecticism of historicism, he takes part in founding the Vienna Secession, modelled on the Berlin and Munich secessions.
Mostra · 1897–1905 · Vienna
Designer of the Secession's exhibitions
In these years he is in charge of designing the frequent exhibitions in the Secession's galleries, including the setting for Klimt's celebrated Beethoven frieze. His work grows more rigorous, more geometric and less ornamental: he favours the square and black-and-white surfaces, explaining that such forms, intelligible to everyone, had never appeared in earlier styles.
Pubblicazione · c. 1897
The Secession's first manifesto
Writes the Secession's first manifesto, calling for buildings stripped of useless ornament: the point is not to overlay a framework with ridiculous industrial moulded-cement decoration but to create a harmonious ensemble of great simplicity. He praises the British Arts and Crafts movement and names authenticity in the use of materials, unity of decor and a style suited to the site as the basic elements of the new style.
Carriera · Vienna
Mostra · 1899–1900 · Vienna
Designs the Eighth Secession exhibition
Designs the Eighth Secession exhibition, devoted entirely to the decorative arts and among the most important of its day thanks to its international participants: alongside the Secession artists it showed works by Jules Meier-Graefe, Henry van de Velde, Charles Ashbee and especially the Glasgow designers Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. It also included model houses in the Hohe Warte district of Vienna with features of the Arts and Crafts movement; after it, the group's work became more innovative.
Carriera · Vienna
Begins teaching at the Kunstgewerbeschule
At twenty-nine he begins to teach at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna (now the University of Applied Arts), where he becomes a highly esteemed teacher: he says little to his students but sets challenging assignments, occasionally on real commissions. Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele and Le Corbusier regarded themselves as his informal pupils: Schiele was helped financially, Kokoschka was given work in the Wiener Werkstätte, and Le Corbusier was offered a job in his office.
In service · 1899–1936
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Mostra
The Austrian section at the Paris Universal Exposition
Devises the concept and design of the Austrian exhibit at the 1900 Universal Exposition, where the Secession style was presented to an international audience. Absorbed by it and by the Vienna exhibitions, he builds very little in these years: he transforms a house for his friend Paul Wittgenstein and builds several town and country houses for colleagues and friends, as well as a Lutheran church and a pastor's house in St. Aegyd am Neuwald in Lower Austria.
Opera · 1900–1911 · Vienna
The Hohe Warte artists' colony
Designs the artists' colony on the Hohe Warte in Vienna; in 1900–1901 he also builds a double house for Koloman Moser and Carl Moll.
Family
Son born: Wolfgang Hoffmann
Opera
The Kubus armchair
Designs the Kubus armchair, an example of his strict geometry and quadratic theme; it was presented at the International Exhibition in Buenos Aires held for the centennial of Argentine independence (the May Revolution). His constant use of squares and cubes earned him the nickname Quadratl-Hoffmann (“Square Hoffmann”).
Opera · Brussels
The Stoclet Palace is completed
The Stoclet Palace in Brussels is finished, the most famous work of Hoffmann, built in collaboration with Gustav Klimt: white cubes clad in Norwegian marble and edged with sculpted metal, and a tower of nearly twenty metres crowned with four copper figures of nude males by Franz Metzner. The interiors were made by Hoffmann and the artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, with three large Klimt mosaics, the Stoclet Frieze, in the dining room; the building is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Opera · 1911–1912
Carriera · 1920s
Public housing for workers
In the 1920s he becomes particularly interested in building public apartment blocks for working-class residents, to relieve the severe post-war housing shortage; he organises exhibitions of urban-planning projects featuring relatively cheap houses of simple construction.
Opera · 1924–1925
Villa Knips in Vienna
Builds a villa for Sonja Knips, famous as the model for one of Klimt's earliest works and wife of the industrialist Anton Knips, a major patron of the Werkstätte. The second of Hoffmann's last two villas (the first being a country house for Edouard Ast at Velden am Wörthersee in Carinthia) is less geometric in its façade, with a roof and dormer windows showing the inspiration of the British Arts and Crafts movement, and its interior was originally complemented by three major Klimt paintings, now in museums.
Opera · 1924–1925 · Vienna
Opera · 1930–1932 · Vienna
Houses for the Werkbund estate
For the experimental estate of the Austrian Werkbund, modelled on the “White City” at Stuttgart, he designs four houses of different sizes and layouts, all simple and practical, of brick covered with plaster. An innovation was the glass-enclosed stairway on the outside of each house, which enlarged the interior and gave variety to the façade, while a roof terrace on each was borrowed from Le Corbusier.
Opera
The Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale
His last major work before the Second World War is the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale: an extremely simple U-shaped building, one side slightly longer than the other, with walls plastered in horizontal stripes. The original entrance portal and sculptural decoration were never made because of budget difficulties, but their absence only heightened the austerity of the structure; the building was unused after 1938.
Premio
Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille
Mostra · 19 marzo 1971 – 22 agosto 1971
Gold + Silber Schmuck + Gerät von Albrecht Dürer bis zur Gegenwart
His graduation project, an updated Renaissance building made under Wagner's guidance, won him the Prix de Rome and a year of travel and study in Italy. On his return in 1897 he joined Otto Wagner's architectural office in Vienna.
Carriera · Vienna
Work on the Secession Building
Immediately after joining the movement he sets to work on the Secession Building, the group's first gallery, designing its foyer and office and planning the first exhibitions.
Affiliazione · 3 aprile 1897 – 1905
Vienna Secession
Carriera · Vienna
Founding of the Wiener Werkstätte
Together with Koloman Moser and the banker Fritz Wärndorfer, who provided most of the capital, he launches the Wiener Werkstätte, an enterprise of artists and craftsmen creating all the elements of a complete work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk: architecture, furniture, lamps, glass and metalwork, dishes and textiles.
Opera · 1904–1905
The Purkersdorf Sanatorium
He builds the sanatorium at Purkersdorf near Vienna, his first great work and a distinct move away from the Arts and Crafts style: its clarity, simplicity and logic foreshadowed the Neue Sachlichkeit; by other accounts, construction continued until 1906. Squares, rectangles and the chessboard pattern, which became Hoffmann's trademark, recur in the interiors and in the furniture designed for the building by the artists of the Wiener Werkstätte.
Opera
“Sanatorium Purkersdorf”
Carriera · Vienna
Leaves the Secession with Klimt and Wagner
Because of internal disagreements he leaves the Vienna Secession together with Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner; he will not rejoin it until 1945.
Opera
“Stoclet Palace”
Opera
Hunting lodge for Karl Wittgenstein
Builds a hunting lodge for Karl Wittgenstein, father of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and an important arts patron who helped fund the Secession House. The exterior is rustic but the interior extremely modern: the walls are panelled in exotic woods in geometric patterns with gilded decorative elements, and the antechamber was decorated by the Wiener Werkstätte, with paintings by Carl Otto Czeschka, ceramics by Richard Luksch and glass painting attributed to Koloman Moser.
Opera
Interior of the Fledermaus Cabaret in Vienna
Designs the interior of the popular avant-garde Fledermaus Cabaret with the help of the Wiener Werkstätte: the walls and counters are covered with white plaster or multicoloured tiles, the floors laid out as a black-and-white checkerboard. In keeping with the Werkstätte doctrine it is conceived as a total work of art, from furniture and dishes to light fittings, menus, tickets and posters, and Hoffmann's Fledermaus chairs became a symbol of the style.
Opera · 1909–1911
Villa Ast in Vienna
Builds a villa for Edouard Ast, a businessman and building contractor who pioneered the use of reinforced concrete in Austria and was a major funder of the Werkstätte. The strongly vertical reinforced-concrete house stands on a stone pedestal and offers a modern interpretation of a classical façade, encrusted with decoration and sculpture; inside are marble plaques of different colours and a colourful painting by Klimt.
The Moriz Gallia apartment
Engaged by Moriz Gallia, a major patron of the Werkstätte, he designs the interiors of the five main rooms of his new apartment, including all the furniture, rugs and light fittings. Much of the furniture, mostly richly carved ebonised wood with boldly coloured upholstery, survives in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne as the Hoffmann Gallia apartment collection.
Carriera
Organises the Austrian Werkbund
Organises the Austrian Werkbund (Österreichischer Werkbund), modelled on the German one (by other accounts it was founded in 1914), and mounts exhibitions for it in which he experiments with modern architecture. In 1914 the German and Austrian Werkbunds held a large joint exhibition in Cologne.
Opera · 1913–1915
Villa Skywa-Primavesi in Vienna
Builds for the industrialist Otto Primavesi a veritable palace in a park, 1,000 square metres not counting the adjoining buildings, all in white and in the neoclassical modern style Hoffmann favoured at the time; the pediments carry sculptures by Anton Hanak. In 1913–1914 he also builds a country house for Primavesi at Winkelsdorf (now Kouty nad Desnou) in Moravia, destroyed by fire in 1922; by other accounts the villa was built until 1916.
The Klosehof housing complex
His first project of this kind is the Klosehof in Vienna: a square five-storey building, sixty by sixty metres, around a central courtyard, in which he plans a six-storey tower with more apartments and a children's day-care centre on the ground floor. The façade is simple, covered in white plaster, with only plain columns and pediments over the entrances, a gabled roof and red trim around the windows; by other accounts the work began in 1923.
Famiglia · New York City
His son Wolfgang emigrates to New York
His son Wolfgang, together with his father's former student Pola Weinbach Hoffmann (later Pola Stout), emigrates to New York, where they make significant contributions to American modernism.
Opera · 1928–1932 · Vienna
The housing block at Laxenburgerstrasse 94
As the economic crisis of the 1930s deepens he builds more public housing in Vienna; the largest project is Laxenburgerstrasse 94, a six-storey block of 332 apartments with small balconies around a central courtyard. This simple, functional structure became a model for similar buildings in Vienna and other cities after the war.
Carriera · Vienna
Professor emeritus of the Kunstgewerbeschule
He becomes professor emeritus and is essentially retired, though he continues to work with his earlier students.
L’epoca · Vienna
The Anschluss and the “Haus der Wehrmacht”
After the Anschluss of 1938 he remodels the former German embassy building in Vienna into the “Haus der Wehrmacht” for army officers. Hoffmann had voted for the union of Austria with Germany, and the Nazis appointed him a Special Commissioner for Viennese arts and crafts.
