NGV Vienna Art and Design - Klimt Schiele Hoffmann Loos

A growing Vienna demanded new buildings, both public and private. On the site of the old walls, the Viennese built a circular boulevard – the Ringstrasse – to construct major civic buildings reflecting the grandeur and opulence of the Empire. The architecture employed styles of the past – Gothic, Baroque or Neo Classical – depending on the building's intended purpose.

Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, these ostentatious, historicised buildings seemed out of date and many thought a new architecture was needed to embody the changing character of Viennese society. It was also essential to adapt the city's architecture to new, larger dimensions to accommodate Vienna's growing population; by 1900 Vienna had become Europe's fourth-largest city after London, Paris and Berlin.

Architect Otto Wagner was the right man in the right place at the right time, and integral to Vienna's transformation form a city of historicism to a city of modernism.

In his 1895 book Modern Architecture, Wagner expressed his view that modern architectural design should be based on the requirements of function and therefore of modern life. The new architecture was a reaction to the excessive decoration and ornamentation of the past. Its expressive strength would come from the function and construction and the character of the materials used.

As a professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Wagner was well placed to champion these artistic ideas and his style of modernism, influencing an entirely new generation of architects.

This new generation, among them Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich, strove to create buildings that represented the modern age. Their work laid the foundations for future movements such as Art Deco and the architecture of the twentieth century.