Jindřich Vybíral

Die Uniformität der modernen Welt versus Genius Loci: Friedrich Ohmann und Otto Wagner im Wettbewerb

There was no vision of a revolutionary turn to utilitarian values behind the conception of modernism Viennese architect Friedrich Ohmann embodied in his work, unlike the case of Otto Wagner. Ohmann’s modernism was evolutionary, based on a dialectic synthesis of the best ideas from the past with contemporary types of construction and structure. Ohmann and Wagner differed also in their approach to genius loci. While Wagner embraced the ‘uniformity and democracy’ of the modern lifestyle, Ohmann strove for ‘proper integration into the face of the town or landscape’. Ohmann’s work must be interpreted through the notion of architecture’s ability to engage in a dialogue with its environment both in the direct physical sense and in the sense of a collective historical consciousness. The author of this article examines the design of Ohmann’s idea of contextual architecture through the example of the Colonnade in Karlovy Vary built in 1909–1913. In this project Ohmann responds to the morphology of this spa town and to its local architectural tradition, and particularly to the classicism of the 1830s. The Colonnade is all the more interesting in that it was created in a confrontation with projects by Otto Wagner and other modern architects, who all took part in the same architectural contest in 1906. The author argues that Ohmann’s respect for the physical context and the cultural memory of a place was not indicative of a conservative outlook on his part, and that, on the contrary, a consistent contextual tradition existed even within the modernist movement and that contextual and acontextual approaches cannot simply be presented as an attribute of an anti-modernist or modernist position.

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