Karl Ehn (1 November 1884 – 26 July 1957) was a

Viennese Viennese may refer to: * Vienna, the capital of Austria * Viennese people, List of people from Vienna * Viennese German, the German dialect spoken in Vienna * Music of Vienna, musical styles in the city * Viennese Waltz, genre of ballroom dance * V ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and

city planner An urban planner (also known as town planner) is a professional who practices in the field of town planning, urban planning or city planning. An urban planner may focus on a specific area of practice and have a title such as city planner, town ...

Biography

Ehn apprenticed under

Otto Wagner Otto Koloman Wagner (; 13 July 1841 – 11 April 1918) was an Austrian architect, furniture designer and urban planner. He was a leading member of the Vienna Secession movement of architecture, founded in 1897, and the broader Art Nouveau move ...

, began working for the Vienna City Administration in 1908, and as City Architect of Vienna was responsible for many ''

Gemeindebau ''Gemeindebau'' (; plural: ''Gemeindebauten'') is an Austrian German word for "municipality building".''Gemeinde''< ...

'' (public housing projects) of the 1920s and 1930s.Architecture in Austria : a Survey of the 20th Century, edited by Sasha Pirker and the Architektur Zentrum Wien, page 66 It is estimated that Ehn designed a total of 2,716 flats during his career. Initially his designs were informed by the English

Garden City movement The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, and ...

as shown by his early commission at Hermewiese (1923). His most notable single design remains the colossal

Karl Marx-Hof Karl-Marx-Hof (English: ''Karl Marx Court'') is one of the best-known ''Gemeindebauten'' (English: ''municipal housing complexes'') in Vienna, situated in Heiligenstadt, a neighbourhood of the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling. At over a kilo ...

(1926-1930), the largest and best example of innovative public housing built during the Socialist

Red Vienna Red Vienna (German: ''Rotes Wien'') was the colloquial name for the capital of Austria between 1918 and 1934, when the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) maintained almost unilateral political control over Vienna and, for a short ...

movement. According to

Joseph Rykwert Joseph Rykwert CBE (born 1926) is Paul Philippe Cret Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the foremost architectural historians and critics of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in th ...

, Ehn continued to serve the city through the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

in 1938 and afterwards until 1950.

Work

Ehn's work in Vienna includes: * Hermeswiese (1923) * Lindenhof project (1924) * Bebelhof (1925) *

, Heiligenstadt (1927) * Adelheid-Popp-Hof (1932)

References

External links

1884 births 1957 deaths 20th-century Austrian architects Architects from Vienna {{Austria-architect-stub