Berlin exhibition with drawings by Otto Wagner | EUROtoday

At first look, masking a drawing with gold leaf appears over-the-top and even decadent. In the case of Otto Wagner’s architectural drawings, nonetheless, it served for readability; superb golden ornaments had been, in spite of everything, a vital attribute of his elegant facades. In normal, the drawings of the Viennese Art Nouveau architect had been of a degree that has hardly been reached twice within the historical past of structure, which is impressively demonstrated by an exhibition on the Berlin Museum of Architectural Drawings.

The present additionally reveals how necessary it might be for the present constructing tradition to have architects of Wagner’s caliber – particularly at a time when the state is getting ready to build up gigantic mountains of debt with the intention to renew the nation’s infrastructure. Artistically proficient designers like Wagner, who additionally grasp the principles of city planning and on the similar time are educated in technical points, are urgently wanted.

Ultimately, it is very important be certain that the time strain attributable to the sudden windfall doesn’t trigger the design high quality of the initiatives to fall behind. It might even get to the purpose the place uncared for previous bridges, viaducts, practice station entrances and weirs are changed by carelessly thrown away by the dozen.

The Berlin exhibition is a reminder that Art Nouveau didn’t solely encompass floral ornamentation, however relatively is seen because the excessive level of recent city structure, particularly when it comes to structure. Wagner was capable of sketch the way forward for all of Vienna on a single sheet of paper. He shone on all scales: he devoted himself to the concentric growth of the metropolis of Vienna, in addition to the smallest element of a ticket counter on the Vienna Stadtbahn – to the delight of right this moment’s passengers.

Leaving behind the overloaded historicism of the Ringstrasse and on the similar time nonetheless unencumbered by the later inflexible ideology of classical modernism, Wagner’s artistic energy had matured to its full potential within the years round 1900. The cleverly composed sheets had been the common designer’s good communication medium. Andreas Nierhaus from the Vienna Museum has chosen one of the best drawings from his home’s assortment of greater than a thousand sheets for the Berlin exhibition.

You can see Wagner’s cowl design for his ebook “The Architecture of Our Time”. Wagner was simply as necessary as a training architect as an creator: his ebook on “Modern Architecture” from 1896 acquired a terrific response and is now probably the greatest architectural theoretical texts of the fin de siècle. Wagner, who had come to know and admire the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a scholar on the Berlin Building Academy, can be an acceptable position mannequin for the constructing academy within the heart of Berlin – which is able to most likely solely be resurrected as a drained reflection.

The works of the Vienna Secession at the moment are among the many crowd pullers within the Austrian capital. Without Wagner’s drawings, these world design successes of the First Viennese Modernism would have been unthinkable. It’s a bit sentimental that this inventive type of promoting for the respective initiatives, which leaves room for creativeness, has been misplaced. Instead, renderings of the initiatives are generated on the pc, which could be modified in any means inside seconds and whose hyperreality has one thing soulless.

Otto Wagner – architect of recent life. In the Museum for Architectural Drawing, Berlin. Until May seventeenth. The catalog prices 29 euros.