Oswald Haerdlt (1899-1959)

The beginnings

Oswald Haerdlt was born in 1899. He studied from 1919 to 1921 at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, a school of arts and crafts, mixing arts and crafts, which could also be called an applied school. Today it is the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1922, shortly after his studies, he became assistant to Joseph Hoffman and began a long association. His first major achievement was the Austrian pavilion for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925.

An artist in expansion

He accompanied Joseph Hoffman in the design of the Werkbundsiedlung, a group of housing estates, including social housing. Seventy small single-family houses were built between 1929 and 1932 by some thirty great names in modernist architecture in Vienna. Oswald Haerdlt was in charge of the design of houses 39 and 40, but also of the furniture.

Work experience

He became professor of architecture at the Kunstgewerbeschule in 1935. At the same time, he was responsible for the design of the Austrian pavilions at the 1935 World's Fair in Brussels and the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, also known as the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life. After founding his studio in 1939, he worked on various architectural and interior design projects. He was involved in the reconstruction of buildings that had suffered from the war, in urban research including the improvement of social housing, and in the extension and construction of other buildings.

Plural skills

Known for his architectural work, he nevertheless remained a great designer of furniture and decorative objects. The Werkbundsiedlung building complex, which still exists today, bears witness to the modernist style in architecture, where the social and the industrial cohabit to propose simple and refined forms. The houses of Oswald Haerdlt show us his double vocation: modernist architect who is also interested in interior design, and who thinks about living space.