Josef Hoffmann (15 December 1870 – 7 May 1956) was an Austrians-Sudeten Germans architect and designer. He was among the founders of Vienna Secession and co-establisher of the Wiener Werkstätte. His most famous architectural work is the Stoclet Palace, in Brussels, (1905–1911) a pioneering work of Modern Architecture, Art Deco and peak of Vienna Secession architecture.
In 1887, he transferred instead to the Higher School of Arts and Crafts State in Brno / Brünn beginning in 1887 where he received his Mittlere Reife in 1891. In 1892, he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, two of the most prestigious architects of the period. There he also met another rising architect of the time, Joseph Maria Olbrich. In 1895, Hoffman, together with Olbrich, Koloman Moser and Carl Otto Czeschka and several others, founded a group called the Siebener Club, a forerunner of the future Vienna Secession. Under Wagner's guidance, Hoffman's graduation project, an updated Renaissance building, won the Prix de Rome and allowed Hoffmann to travel and study for a year in Italy.
He wrote his first manifesto for the Secession at this time, calling for buildings which were stripped of useless ornament. "It is not a matter of overlaying a framework with ridiculous ornament in molded cement, made industrially, nor imposing as a model Swiss architecture or houses with . It is a matter of creating a harmonious ensemble, of great simplicity, adapted to the individual... and which presents natural colors and a form made by the hand of an artist..." In his writing, Hoffmann did not entirely reject historicism; he praised the model of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, and urged artists to renew local forms and traditions. He wrote that the basic elements of the new style were authenticity in the use of materials, unity of decor, and the choice of a style adapted to the site.
In 1899, at the age of twenty-nine, he began to teach at the Kunstgewerbeschule, now University of Applied Arts Vienna. He designed the Vienna arts exhibition for the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, which exposed the Secession style to an international audience. In 1899, he also designed the Eighth Exposition of the Secession, one of the most important exhibitions at the time, due to its international participants. In addition to works by Secession artists, it featured works by the French artist Jules Meier-Graefe, the Belgian Henry van de Velde, Charles Ashbee, and especially the works by the Scottish designers Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh from Glasgow. This exhibit included a group of model houses in the Hohe Warte neighborhood of Vienna which displayed features of Arts-and-Crafts movement, including windows divided in small squares, and the gable roof.
During this period, Hoffmann's work became more rigorous, more geometric, and less ornamental. He favored the use of geometric forms, especially squares, and black and white surfaces, explaining later that "these forms, intelligible to everyone, had never appeared in previous styles". He was in charge of designing the frequent exhibits held in the Secession gallerias, including the setting for Gustav Klimt's celebrated frieze devoted to Beethoven.
In 1903, along with Koloman Moser, and banker Fritz Wärndorfer, who provided most of the capital, he launched a much more ambitious venture, the Wiener Werkstätte, an enterprise of artists and craftsmen working together to create all the elements of a complete work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk. including architecture, furniture, lamps, glass and metal work, dishes and textiles.
Hoffmann designed a wide variety of objects for the Wiener Werkstätte. Some of them, like the Sitzmaschine Chair, a lamp, and sets of glasses are on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. MoMA.org | The Collection | Josef Hoffmann. (Austrian, 1870-1956) and a tea service in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.All Josef Hoffmann: Tea service (2000.278.1-.9) | Works of Art | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Many of the works were hand-made by the artisans of the group and some by industrial manufacturers.
Some of Hoffmann's domestic designs can still be found in production today, such as the Rundes Modell cutlery set that is manufactured by Alessi. Originally produced in silver, the range is now produced in high quality stainless steel. Another example of Hoffmann's strict geometrical lines and the quadratic theme is the iconic Kubus Armchair. Designed in 1910, it was presented at the International Exhibition held in Buenos Aires on the centennial of Argentinean Independence known as May Revolution. Hoffmann's constant use of squares and cubes earned him the nickname Quadratl-Hoffmann ("Square Hoffmann"). Hoffmann's style gradually became more sober and abstract and his work was limited increasingly to functional structures and domestic products.
The workshop concept flourished in its early years and spread. In 1907, Hoffmann was co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund, and in 1912 of the Österreichischer Werkbund (or Austrian Werkbund). But the workshop ran up against the First World War and then the Great Depression, which hit Germany and Austria especially hard. It was forced to close in 1932.
The exterior is extraordinarily modern, in strict geometric forms, with touches of decoration. It is covered in white Norwegian marble, while the edges of the forms and the windows are bordered with sculpted metal. The central tower, nearly twenty meters high, is made of assembled cubic forms and crowned with four copper statues with statuary. The plan has two axes, perpendicular to each other. The railings around the building and on the tower have had stylized ornamental designs, and even the plants in the garden are sculpted into geometric forms to complement the architecture.
The interior, by Hoffmann and the artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, is like a series of stage sets, offering carefully planned views from one room to the other, and decorated with colorful mosaics made by Klimt, as well as walls of white marble and antique green marble. The floors are made of parquet from exotic woods, with different designs in each room. The dining room features a set of two mosaic murals by Klimt, in a setting of marble columns and mosaics by Klimt, along with geometric marble columns and walls covered with stylized floral patterns designed by Hoffmann and Klimt. Every detail of the house, including the rectangular while marble bathtub, surrounded by marble plaques with sculpture and placed on a blue marble floor, the polished pallisander wood paneling in the bedroom, and the kitchen counters, floor and furniture, were made by the Werkstätte and planned to harmonize with the overall design. The building is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A more modest but colorful creation of Hoffmann was the interior of a popular avant-garde night club, the Fledermaus Cabaret in Vienna (1907) made with the help of the Vienna Werkstätte. The walls and counters were covered with white plaster and or multicolor tiles, while the floors had a checkerboard pattern of black and white. It was designed, following the Werkstätte doctrine, as a total work of art, from the furniture and dishes to the light fixtures, menus, tickets and posters. Hoffmann designed the Fledermaus chairs, which became a symbol of the style.
Other important works include the Hochstetter House in Vienna (1906–1907), and the Villa Ast in Vienna (1909–1911) which was constructed 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 house was built of reinforced concrete, encrusted with decoration and sculpture. Strongly vertical in design, it was sited atop a stone pedestal that contained the basement, and featured a modern interpretation of a classical facade. It had a loggia with windows on one side, looking out at the garden, which connected with a gallery giving access to the garden, decorated with winding water basins made of concrete. Like the Stoclet Palace, the interior was decorated with fine veined marble plaques of different colors, and with a colorful painting by Klimt.
In 1911–1912, Hoffmann was engaged by Moriz Gallia, a major patron of the Werkstätte, to design the interiors of the five main rooms of his new apartment, including all furniture, rugs, and light fittings. Much of the furniture, mostly in richly carved, ebonised wood with boldly coloured upholstery, survives in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, as the Hoffmann Gallia apartment collection.
Another major work was the Villa Skywa-Primavesi (1913–1916), also in Vienna, for the industrialist Otto Primavesi. This was a veritable palace, 1000 square meters not counting the adjoining buildings, placed in a park and built in the neoclassical modern style, all in white, that Hoffmann favored during this period. The frontons of the building featured sculptures by Anton Hanak. The interiors were in the same modernized neoclassical style, decorated with parquet floors of rare woods, marble plaques on the walls, and sculptural decoration.
The second project was a villa for Sonya Knips, famous as the model for one of Klimt's earliest works. She had married the industrialist Anton Knips, who was a major patron of the Werkstätte. This house was different from the others, less geometric in its facade and showed the inspiration of the British Arts and Crafts Movement in its roof and dormer windows. The interior featured a perfect harmony of furniture, wall decoration and detail, and was originally complemented by three major Klimt paintings, now in museums.
In the 1920s, Hoffmann became particularly interested in building public housing and apartment buildings for working-class residents, to relieve the severe housing shortage after the War. His first such project was in Klosehof, a wealthy neighborhood in Vienna. This was a square building five stories high, sixty meters by sixty meters, with a central courtyard, in which he planned a tower six stories high, with more apartments and, on the ground floor, a day care center for children. The facade was simple, covered with white plaster. The only decorative details were simple columns and pediments over the entrances, and a gabled roof, red trim around the windows.
As the Great Depression deepened, Hoffmann built more public housing in Vienna. The largest project was at Laxenburgerstrasse 94, built between 1928 and 1932. It contained 332 apartments, each with a small balcony, organized in a six-story buildingblock around a central courtyard. This simple, functional structure became a model for similar buildings built in Vienna and other cities after the War.
Hoffmann had been a founding member of the Austrian Werkbund, founded in 1914, modeled after the celebrated German Werkbund. He organized several exhibitions for the Werkbund, experimenting with modern architecture. In 1930–32, the Austrian Werkbund created an experimental city, modeled after the German "White City" version created at Stuttgart in 1928. For the Exposition, Hoffmann designed four different houses, of different sizes and designs, all simple and practical. They were made of brick covered by plaster. One innovative feature added by Hoffmann was a glass-enclosed stairway on the exterior of each house, which made the interior of the house larger and gave variety to the facade. Another modern feature, borrowed from Corbusier, was a roof terrace on each residence.
In 1945, following the War, Hoffmann rejoined the Vienna Secession, the artistic movement that he, Klimt and Otto Wagner had dramatically quit in 1905. He was elected President of the Secession from 1948 to 1950. Between 1949 and 1953, based on his experience before the War, he designed three large public housing projects in Vienna.
He died on May 7, 1956, at the age of eighty-five, at his apartment at 33 Salesianergasse in Vienna. As an acknowledgement of his contribution to modern architecture, the city of Vienna gave him an honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery (Wiener Zentralfriedhof). A picture is in one of the external links.
Despite honours and praise on the occasions of Hoffmann's 80th and 85th birthdays, he was virtually forgotten by the time of his death. Although his true stature and contribution were acknowledged by such masters as Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti and Carlo Scarpa, the younger generation of architects and historians ignored him.
The process of rediscovery and reappraisal began in 1956 with a small book by Giulia Veronesi, and gained momentum during the 1970s with a number of exhibitions and smaller publications. In the 1980s several monographs were published and major exhibitions held. Imitations of his style also began to appear, and replicas of his furniture, fabrics, and of some objects he had designed became commercial successes, while original pieces and drawings from his hand fetched record prices in the auction-rooms.
In Brtnice the birthhouse of Josef Hoffmann was transferred into a permanent exhibition centre after an initial exhibition of his work in 2006. It is administered by the Moravian Gallery in Brno. The Brtnice article features a picture of the museum.
A complete list of his architectural works is in the German-language version of this article, with details and photos.
=== 1910 to 1954 ===
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