His architectural work reflects his time as a student of the Vienna architect Otto Wagner, who disdained excessive decoration and employed new materials such as steel girders and reinforced concrete to create buildings with airy, open interiors full of light.Īs a designer of furniture and interiors, Hoffmann was consistently open-minded about the aesthetics he explored. But what, exactly, would replace that order was in question - and Hoffmann’s career embodies the developing patterns of design’s new spirit. Hoffmann came of age amidst a shift in the culture of the applied arts, as a conservative order that looked only to the past for inspiration was pushed aside. The Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann was a central figure in the evolution of modern design, and a leader in an aesthetic movement born in Europe in the late 19th century that rejected florid, extravagant ornamentation in favor of a new emphasis on simplicity of line.Īs a founder of the Vienna Secession - a union of artists and designers determined to upend Austria’s artistic conservatism - and later, a founder of the turn-of-the-century Wiener Werkstätte (in English: the Viennese Workshops), a design cooperative that produced superbly crafted furniture and housewares, Hoffmann was a pioneering practitioner of what would become a fundamental principle of modernism: that good design is a way of life.
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