Otto Wagner, Moderne Architektur (1896; 1911) | The Textbook of Architecture

The handbook Wagner wrote for his students at the Vienna Academy, arguing that a new style must come from modern life, construction and materials; and his late essay on the modern metropolis as an endless, regular city of uniform apartment blocks relieved by monuments and parks.

Otto Wagner (1841–1918) had spent thirty years as a successful architect of the Ringstrasse era before he turned, in his fifties, against historical styles. His entry to the competition for a general regulation plan of Vienna in 1893 bore the motto Artis sola domina necessitas (“necessity is the only mistress of art”) and won one of the two first prizes; in 1894 he was appointed artistic adviser to the Stadtbahn, the city railway, whose stations, bridges and viaducts he designed, and professor at the Academy.

Moderne Architektur (1896) is the lecture course of that professorship. Its argument: every style has grown from the construction, materials and needs of its age, so the art of the present must do the same; construction comes first, and architecture turns it into art-form; nothing impractical can be beautiful. Die Großstadt (1911) applies the same thinking to the city: the metropolis will grow without limit, district by district, in regular streets of uniform apartment houses, each district with its own centre of parks and public buildings.

The book, part by part

I Moderne Architektur (1896)

Style from necessity; construction as the origin of art-form; the modern façade.

Rules: Necessity is art’s only mistress · Construction first, then art-form

II Die Großstadt (1911)

The unlimited city, its uniform streets and its district centres.

Rules: The uniform street of the metropolis · River, railway and boulevard as one work

Rules drawn from Moderne Architektur

Necessity is art’s only mistress

Take the forms of a new architecture from modern life, modern materials and modern construction, not from past styles: what is not practical cannot be beautiful, and a building should show plainly what it is for.

Construction first, then art-form

Begin every design from its construction; the architect’s task is to turn the construction into art-form, never to hide it behind forms borrowed from another material.

The uniform street of the metropolis

Accept that the modern city is made of rental apartment blocks of equal height and similar floors; line its streets with them in long uniform rows, and give it variety and dignity through monuments, squares and parks rather than through fancy dress on each house.

River, railway and boulevard as one work

Regulate the river, run the city railway beside it, vault the river over and build a great boulevard on the vault, so that engineering and city beauty are planned together.