Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

In this 2004 book, Topp offers an interpretation of familiar buildings from turn of the twentieth-century Vienna.

Leslie Topp (Author)

9780521822756, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 June 2004

250 pages, 80 b/w illus.
25.7 x 18 x 2 cm, 0.64 kg

'Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna provides a welcome reading of how architects innovated in concert with institutions. It offers many insights.' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

This 2004 book examines one of the key notions of modernist architecture as it was formulated in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. Providing a close analysis of four major buildings - Olbrich's Secession Building, Hoffmann's Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Wagner's Postal Savings Bank, and Loos's Michaelerplatz building - Leslie Topp investigates how 'truth' could be interpreted in a variety of ways, including truth to purpose, symbolist or ideal truth, and ethical notions of authenticity. Drawing on newly uncovered archival materials, Topp offers an interpretation of familiar buildings that are shown to encompass utopianism, hyper-rationality, and subjectivism. She also explores the connections between Viennese modern architecture and contemporary painting, psychiatry, fashion, labor issues, and anti-Semitic politics.

1. The Secession Building: multiple truths and modern art
2. The Purkersdorf Sanatorium and the appearance of science
3. The Postal Savings Bank: pragmatism and 'inner truth'
4. The Michaelerplatz Building, an honest mask.

Subject Areas: Theory of architecture [AMA]