The Modern Interior

(Wang) #1

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.

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