Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner was already a celebrated imperial neoclassical architect and professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts when, in his fifties, he courageously embraced the radical young rebels of the Vienna Secession. In his 1895 manifesto 'Modern Architecture', he declared that only what is practical can be beautiful.

Wagner shaped the urban fabric of turn-of-the-century Vienna, designing the elevated stations, bridges, and tunnels of the Vienna Stadtbahn. His crowning achievement, the Austrian Postal Savings Bank (Postsparkasse, 1906), utilized reinforced concrete, exposed aluminum rivets, and a glass-ceiling banking hall to create a triumph of functionalist elegance.