characteristic of the interior. The establishment of a modern architec -
tural movement was inevitably followed by a search for an appropriately
expressive form of modern interior decoration to accompany it. In the
years between 1900 and 1939 many attempts were made to address that
challenge. The intense interest in the modern decoration of the interior
that characterized artistic activity in Vienna in the first decade of the
twentieth century proved to be hugely influential. The programme of
urban renewal in that city focused not only on the home but also on the
interiors of public sphere buildings. As we have seen they included coffee
houses and restaurants where the protagonists of the modern decorative
style met to exchange views and develop their ideas. As we have also
seen, the new Viennese interest in the interior was architectural in origin,
rooted in the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. The interiors and interior
artefacts created by men such as Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Dagobert
Peche and Koloman Moser represented attempts to fuse the rationality of
architectural structure with a new, geometric decorative language which 95
Otto Wagner, The Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna, 1906.