Villas in Hietzing – Vienna
A short walk down the Gloriettegasse is enough, west of the palace park, to find out about the architectural richness of the streets of Hietzing, where a beautiful villa stands every step of the way. Exceptional lovers of contemporary architecture will surely continue their wandering west to the Werkbundsiedlung, the rest can return to the Hietzing metro station by tram #60 the 61 or continue west to Lainzer Tiergarten.
Gloriettegasse
The first noteworthy building is a modest Biedermeier villa on Gloriettegasse 9 attracting attention with its subtle pediments of the windows adorned with silhouettes of swans with intertwined necks. Franciszek Józef's mistress used to live in this house, Katarzyna Schratt, Burgtheater actress. The apartment was given to his beloved by the emperor. Thanks to this, he was able to visit her every day 7.00 for breakfast and enjoy a few moments of intimacy, just sitting and talking. Then he could get down to paperwork again. "I beg you – he wrote to his mistress – don't get up too early tomorrow. Let me come and sit on your bed. You know, that nothing gives me more pleasure”. Then the emperor went out with Catherine for a walk around Schonbrunn, greeted with applause of random passers-by. The happy couple was going to the zoo, where she fed the bears, tossing them breakfast scraps.
Turning right, it comes to an interesting terraced apartment block at Wattmangasse 29. W 1914 r. Ernst Lichtblau decorated it between the windows with a majolica depicting medieval figures with flowers and fruit. At the Gloriettegasse 21 stoi willa Schopp, a beautiful Art Nouveau house erected in 1902 r. designed by Friedrich Ohmann. The building is slightly set back from the street, hidden behind a neat wrought-iron railing. There are solid posts on the sides of the gate, with large lamps topped with black hoods. The house needs renovation, but the stucco and floral motifs on the façade are still very impressive.
Across the street in Gloriettegasse 14-16 stands the most extraordinary of all Hietzing villas, Villa Skywa-Primavesi surrounded by a large garden. He built it in the years 1913-15 Josef Hoffmann for wealthy patrons of the Wiener Werkstatte. This obscenely large private house, designed in a classicist prayer, decorated with fluted columns and huge triangular tympanums. At the top of the columns there are miniatures of naked figures. Two larger statues in a reclining position can be seen on the tympanum. Unfortunately, you cannot see a peculiar modern small tea temple with a pergola and a pond from the street, built by Hoffmann in the garden.
Adolf Loos i Werkbundsiedlung
“Loos cleared the way for us. He was it, who Homer for literature, he imposed his precision, philosophy, logic. He influenced the creative path of each of us”, confided in years 30. Le Corbusier. The office for architecture and town planning in the town of 1912 r., when permission was applied for to build the first Loos house in Hietzing. It was Haus Scheu on Larochegasse 3, on the opposite side of Lainzer Strasse from Gloriettegasse. As was the case with the Loos Haus in the Old Town, the architect's orthodox reluctance to ornaments aroused a hostile reaction. The asymmetry of the building caused by the terraces facing the west side also contributed to this, and giving the body a stepped appearance. In Hietzing, Loos designed four other houses in different parts of the district: the Strasser villa at Kupelwiesergasse 28, Rufer's villa at Schliessmanngasse 11, House Steiner przy St-Veit-Gasse 10 and Haus Horner on Nothartgasse 7. When you watch the works of Loos, the fact is the most astonishing, that the strengths of his designs – np. open plan of the building, use of built-in furniture – they are relegated to the background in the face of austere, unadorned facades.
If you are looking for Bauhaus style gems, should go in the direction of Werkbundsiedlung, a model housing estate composed of 70 houses. It is located on the west end of Veitingerstrasse. She erected them in the years 1930-32 Socialist-dominated city council, especially for the exhibition organized by the Deutscher Werk-bund. It was an association for the development of industrial design that had built a similar housing estate in Stuttgart in 1927 r. When designing the Werkbundsiedlung, the emphasis was not on technological innovation, but for saving. It was about that, to build cheap single-family houses occupying the smallest possible area. Josef Frank was in charge of the project, which invited a team of modernists to perform, m.in. Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann. Fortunately, many houses remain the property of the city to this day and have recently been renovated, and the whole thing makes a good impression. The size of the estate is the most interesting: miniature streets lead to small houses. In the Werkbundsiedlung at Woinovichgasse 32 there is an information desk designed by Frank. You can read the history of this project there.
Egon Schiele w Hietzingu
W 1912 r. painter Egon Schiele rented a studio on Hietzinger Hauptstrasse 101. He devoted himself not only to creative work, but also flirting with two sisters, Adela and Edyta Harms from a respectable bourgeois family living opposite, at no. 114. The flirtation ended with Schiele's wedding with Edyta in 1915 r. The young wife was expecting a baby, when in 1918 r., after the end of World War I, A flu epidemic has raged, taking its toll across Europe. In Austria, it claimed more lives than the war effort. Schiele and his wife were also among them. Edyta died first in a new apartment with a studio in Wattmanngasse 6, Schiele passed away three days later at his mother-in-law's house. He was buried in the nearby Ober-St-Veit cemetery. W 10. On the anniversary of his death, friends commissioned a tombstone made by a Hungarian sculptor for him, Beniamin Ferenczy.