30 Facts About Otto Wagner

Otto Koloman Wagner was an Austrian architect, furniture designer and urban planner.

Otto Wagner was a leading member of the Vienna Secession movement of architecture, founded in 1897, and the broader Art Nouveau movement.

Otto Wagner was the son of Suzanne and Rudolf Simeon Wagner, a notary to the Royal Hungarian Court.

Otto Wagner began his architectural studies in 1857 at the age of sixteen at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute.

Otto Wagner's first realized major project was the Orthodox Synagogue on Rumbach Street in Budapest.

Otto Wagner's design was selected in a competition held in 1868, when he was twenty-seven years old.

Otto Wagner began to develop his own philosophy of architecture, based on the need for buildings to be, above all, functional.

Otto Wagner continued to develop this idea throughout his career.

Otto Wagner used new materials, such as an enduit lisse, and much larger windows than were customary in the period, repeated the plan on each floor.

Otto Wagner called it his "Italian Dream", and it had neoclassical elements inspired by Palladio.

Otto Wagner hired seventy artists and designers for his transit stations, including two young designers who later became very prominent in the birth of modern architecture, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann.

Otto Wagner's style incorporated the use of new materials and new forms to reflect the fact that society itself was changing.

Otto Wagner had a strong influence on his pupils at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Otto Wagner provided sculpture for two other Vienna Secession landmarks by Wagner, including the Angels on the roof of the Kirche am Steinhof church in Vienna, and sculpture for the Austrian Postal Savings Bank.

Otto Wagner had his own town apartment in a third building, at 3 Kostlergasse.

Otto Wagner had the bathroom displayed at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition.

Otto Wagner completed for the design of the hospital, but received a commission only for the church.

Otto Wagner had earlier written an academic study entitled The Modern style in Church construction and this was his opportunity to use his ideas in a building.

Otto Wagner tried new materials, such as aluminum, which he used in the decoration of the entrance of the dispatch office the Die Zeit newspaper in Vienna.

Otto Wagner conceived the building in 1903, when he was sixty-two years old, and continued working on it until it was completed, when he was seventy-one.

Otto Wagner made extensive use of new materials, such as aluminum, for the door knobs, grills, lamps, and other details throughout the building.

Otto Wagner designed the furniture to complement the style of the architecture.

Otto Wagner's continued to produce new editions of his book Modern Architecture, and three volumes entitled Sketches, Projects, Constructions.

Otto Wagner published a series of books on topics including theater architecture, hotel architecture, and a particularly forward-looking work, "The Great City", published in 1911, devoted to urban planning, explaining how the expansion of large cities should be managed.

Otto Wagner participated in the International Congress of Architecture in London in 1906, and traveled to New York to the International Congress of Urban Art in 1910.

Otto Wagner was named Vice President of the Permanent Commission of Congress of Fine Arts in Paris in 1912.

Otto Wagner had his own apartment on the second floor of the Doblergasse building.

Otto Wagner designed all the furniture, carpets and decoration in his apartment, as well as the towels and bathroom fixtures.

Otto Wagner intended the house as the main residence of his wife after his death, but she died before him, and he sold the house in September 1916.

Otto Wagner often designed the furniture to complement the design of the building.