mheu, Historical Museum of the Urban Environment

The architect

The Austrian architect Otto Wagner, born in 1841, studied in Vienna and Berlin. His first buildings were classical in style until he discovered the possibilities of iron, which paved the way for functionalism and Art Nouveau. Wagner played a key role in urban planning in Vienna and was responsible for some thirty stations on the city's urban rail network, the Stadtbahn. He also designed a model for an infinitely expandable modern city (based on the example of Vienna), called Die Grossstadt (The Large City) in which he deemed it essential to resolve the transportation question. As Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he wrote a manifesto entitled Modern Architecture and founded the Vienna Secession movement with Gustav Klimt. He died in Vienna in 1918.