Wagner: Werk Museum Postsparkasse

Interior, bust honoring Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830-1916); 1906 refers to dedication of the building; The design for the Postsparkasse, one of his best-known works, won a competition (1903) and is based on a logical trapezoidal plan with a banking hall at its centre. The six-storey entrance façade, surmounted by a simple Sezessionstil pergola flanked by winged figures, has large windows set in walls faced with white marble with aluminium fixings. The central space of the banking hall (modified 1980s) had a glass vault of stilted elliptical section carried on riveted steel columns, and a floor with glass lenses to light the basement below; aluminum ventilation bollards ranged around the wall added to the illusion of an industrial aesthetic. The bank owed its atmospheric effect to the impression of silver light produced by glass, aluminum and marble. One of the earliest icons of the Modern Movement, it is contemporary with Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building, pre-dates Peter Behrens's Turbinenfabrik in Berlin by several years and marks the achievement of Van der Nüll's concept of a tradition-driven modern architecture of the future. [The building now houses a museum dedicated to Wagner]. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 1/26/2008