Vienna has forever experimented with urban development and
architecture.And this continues. After the military significance of the
city had diminished in the 19th century and she lost her defensive look
in the form of bastions, walls and towers, Vienna chose, under Emperor
Franz Joseph, to convert to a modern metropolis. In the place of the
fortifications and walls came an unrivalled urban development, the Ringstrasse,
with magnificent new buildings intendend to symbolise the wealth and
self-awareness of Vienna. The new University and the Burgtheater were
admirably ahead of their time.
Otto Wagner, who in 1892 became a professor at the Academy of Visual
Arts, initiated the breakthrough of the Wiener Moderne. Wagner
was the spiritual leader of the Wiener Secession and created
functional model-buildings such as the Postsparkasse, the Kirche am
Steinhof, the municipal transport system and the sluice-complex on the
Danube canal. Out of the township of tradesmen rose an industrial city.
Wagner even wanted to make Vienna into a global trading metropolis, but
this utopic idea was lost, together with the monarchy, in 1918. Yet he
made a mark on the fin-de-siècle town as no other has done. In the 20th
century, Vienna became exemplary in the area of social housing projects.
Inside no more than 10 years, between 1923 and 1933, 65,000 flats were
built in so-called ‘Superblocks’. And the Karl-Marx-Hof in
Döbling, constructed from 1926 onwards, is even a town in itself, with
huge portals lending dignity to its inhabitants. The green inner gardens
are grandly conceived, with communal paths, crèches and kindergartens,
a lending-library, launderette, a dentist’s practice, a mutual health
fund, youth hostel and post office. The recently renovated complex is
still well worth a visit. The Werkbundsiedlung in Hietzing was
created soon afterwards.
Josef Frank and Adolf Loos, courageous modernists of their day, took
part in that project. When fascism swept across Austria like a natural
disaster, architectural freedom came to a precipitous halt. Vienna
subsided into provincialism from which she was unable to liberate
herself until the early 1980s. The city slaked her thirst of
post-modernism and went on to celebrate her ‘style-pluralism’. After
1989, when Vienna suddenly found herself in the heart of Europe, a new
era blossomed. At present, improbable things are happening. Modern
buildings are springing up in the baroque city centre, and the Viennese
are only gradually ceasing to grumble about this phenomenon. For a very
long time the Haas-Haus opposite the Stephansdom was even
regarded as a disgrace! On the banks of the Danube a second town is
being built, called Donau-City. Abandoned industrial complexes,
left to their fate and to nature for long years, are being renovated and
metamorphosed into flats. Wagner’s Stadtbahnbogen (tramway arches)
falling into ruin for years on end, are the best example of this kind of
recycling. Vienna uses her ‘yesterday’ and converts it for tomorrow.
If you stroll through the city with your eyes open, this is in evidence
wherever you look.
