austrian design

Otto Wagner colouring book featured image

By the time the Viennese architect Otto Wagner (1841-1918) began publishing the drawings included in this colouring book, he had already spent much of his career designing historicist-style buildings. But his attitude was changing, and he completely ignored those early designs in time.Read More →

He began painting on glass at a young age and worked as a stained glass artist in Munich. He worked in many workshops in Paris starting in 1919, including Jacques Gruber’s. He saw that electric illumination was nothing more than a transformation of oil lamps and candlesticks. He made his first lamps in the style of Romanesque church windows. Read More →

Shrine of the Book, 1965, by the architects Frederick John Kiesler (1890-1965) and Armand Phillip Bartos (1910-2005)

Frederick John Kiesler, an Austrian-American architect, theoretician, theatre designer, artist, and sculptor, was born Friedrich Jacob Kiesler in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary Empire (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), in 1890. 1965 saw his passing.Read More →

Otto Wagner featured image

Architect Otto Wagner was one of the leading figures in the Vienna Secession. After studying architecture at the Vienna Technical High School (1857–1860) and the Vienna Academy (1861–183), he worked in various historical styles for many years until he joined the Secession.Read More →

Universal Typeface - Herbert Bayer

The universal typeface, 1925, was a geometric alphabet based on bar and circle and was designed by Herbert Bayer. READ MORERead More →

Gerhard Haderer Illustration Shark Selfie

Haderer had even gone to court over one of his works, “The Life of Jesus,” which sparked heated reactions across the country, particularly among Catholics. He was able to change the verdict a few months later, after being sentenced to a six-month ban.Read More →

Franz Schuster featured image

He was active in Vienna from the 1910s. As part of a municipal program to construct workers’ homes after World War I, he designed a small row in the Viennese suburb Laaer Berg. At this time, he also produced his modular stacking furniture.Read More →

Porsche 356 designed by Erwin Komeda

In 1934, he joined Ferdinand Porsche’s design bureau in Stuttgart and began work on the styling of the Volkswagen, the people’s car.Read More →

Richard Neutra

Richard Josef Neutra (1892 – 1970) was an Austrian American artist and designer. He was born in Vienna and lived in Los Angeles and southern California for much of his life.Read More →

Shoe Chair featured image

Birgit Jürgenssen works with constellations and interactions influenced by gender-specific projections, physicality, and identification. Her affiliation in the feminist-oriented group DIE DAMEN (with Evelyne Egerer, Birgit Jürgenssen, ONA B., Ingeborg Strobl, and Lawrence Weiner) aided her in placing her objects between everyday life and role play. Read More →

Hans Hollein featured image

Hollein was born in Vienna and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1956. He studied in Clemens Holzmeister’s master class. He studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1959 and subsequently at the University of California, Berkeley. Read More →

Biscuit Tin designed by Emanuel Josef Margold

He was a prolific designer of furniture, glass, and porcelain in Darmstadt.Read More →

Wiener Werkstätte Decorative arts in the Musée d'Orsa

Wiener Werkstatte was based on the ideals of the guild system & developed a direct relationship between designers and craftspeople. READ MORE >Read More →

Valerie Wieselthier featured image

She was the head of the Wiener Werkstätte’s ceramic workshop. She worked in a highly distinctive style with coarse modelling and drip-glass effects. Read More →

Ceramic container designer by Dagobert Peche featured image

He devised wholly new, amusing forms, frequently in simple materials like tole and cardboard; the conditions caused by World War I dictated the use of low-cost raw materials. Read More →

Werkstätten Hagenauer featured image

Werkstätten Hagenauer were Vienna-based Austrian metalsmiths. Over its nearly ninety-year history, it was a family business in Vienna that produced fine, handcrafted objects for decoration and use. The workshop closed in 1987, but the company’s retail premises on Vienna’s Opernring, which opened in 1938, is still open today as a museum and shop.Read More →

Bruno Pollack stacking chair

Pollack invented a tubular steel stacking chair, model RP7, which was manufactured from c1932 and revolutionised auditorium seating with its stacking concept. Cox, a British furniture maker, was embroiled in a legal battle with rival Pel in 1934 over the Rp6 stacking chair, which Pel had bought the rights from Pollack.Read More →

Swarovski is an Austrian glass manufacturer. Daniel Swarovski founded the company in 1895. In 1895, he left Bohemia for the Austrian Tyrol. He established a factory in Wattens for the industrial production of cut crystal stones. From 1917 on, these stones were marketed as ‘Tyrolite,’ which is now the company’s industrial division.Read More →