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Haerdtl, Oswald
(b Vienna, 17 May 1899; d Vienna, 9 Aug 1959). Austrian architect and designer. He studied with Kolo Moser, Oskar Strnad and Josef Frank at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, graduating in 1922. He then became Josef Hoffmann’s assistant at the school and taught architecture and design there until his death in 1959. He also worked for many years in Hoffmann’s studio, becoming office manager in 1927, and serving as a joint partner from 1930 to 1939. In 1939 Haerdtl opened his own office, specializing in exhibition buildings and interiors for homes, hotels and restaurants. His early works display the influences of Hoffmann’s decorative vocabulary, although he later pursued a stripped modernist style more allied with Neue Sachlichkeit. Among Haerdtl’s most important architectural works are a house for two families for the Werkbundausstellung in Vienna in 1932, the Austrian pavilions at the Monza Triennale (1930) and Exposition Universelle in Brussels (1935), and the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien (1954–9). Haerdtl also designed furniture, glass, lamps, metalwork and fashions for a number of firms, including the Wiener Werkstätte, Deutsche Werkstätten, Bakalowits and Lobmeyr. Although characteristic of the Austrian design of inter-war years, his works display an unusual fusion of elegance, formal inventiveness and simplicity.
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