Vienna: Villa Wagner II

1912 – 1913

Architect: Otto Wagner

Hüttelbergstraße 28, Vienna, Austria

The architect Otto Wagner built two villas on neighboring properties in Hüttelbergstrasse in Vienna from 1886 to 1888 and from 1912 to 1913.

The second villa shown here goes back to a design from 1905 and shows Wagner’s further stylistic development.

Villa Wagner II

Villa Wagner II was located near and within sight of his first villa, which he had sold in 1911.

It was much smaller and designed simply and functionally, with maximum light and using new materials, including reinforced concrete, asphalt, glass mosaic and aluminum.

A cubic structure with a flat roof and white plastered walls, high-rectangular window openings, and a projecting parapet with coffered soffit, the reinforced concrete structure is also structurally up-to-date at the time.

The primary decorative elements of the exterior are bands of blue glass tiles in geometric patterns.

The facade decoration, consisting of blue glass strips and aluminum nails, is geometric and used sparingly. The designs for the leaded glass windows above the entrance portal are by Koloman Moser.

The mosaics on the walls of the veranda are by Koloman Moser and Leopold Forstner (“The Winter”).

Interior

On the first floor were the rooms for servants and on the main floor a large single room that served as a salon or dining room.

For the furnishings, Otto Wagner chose several pieces designed and made by one of his former students, Marcel Kammerer.

 

Wagner had intended the house to be a widow’s residence for his wife after his death, but she died before him and he sold the house in September 1916.

Wagner himself died on April 11, 1918, shortly before the end of World War I, in his apartment on Döblergasse in Vienna.

Today the villa is privately owned.