Wagner, Otto

Wagner, Otto (ôt`ō väg`nər), 1841–1918, Austrian architect. A structural rationalism was exhibited in his stations for the Vienna city railroad, built in the 1890s. His later works, showing an individual and monumental style, include the Vienna Postal Savings Building and the Steinhof Church (1906). He became a professor at the Imperial Academy of Art in 1894. His many executed designs, his projects, his teaching, and his Moderne Architektur, of which there were four editions (1896–1914), were all widely influential both in Austria and abroad.

---

Wagner, Otto

(born July 13, 1841, Penzing, near Vienna, Austrian Empire—died April 11, 1918, Vienna) Austrian architect and teacher. In 1893 his general plan (not executed) for Vienna won a major competition, and in 1894 he was appointed professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. As a teacher, Wagner soon broke with tradition by insisting on function, material, and structure as the bases of architectural design. Among his notable buildings, all in the Art Nouveau style, are a number of stations for the City Railway of Vienna (1894–97) and the Postal Savings Bank (1904–06). The latter, which had little decoration, is recognized as a milestone in the history of modern architecture, particularly for the curving glass roof of its central hall. Wagner's lectures were published in 1895 as Moderne Architektur.