(b Troppau, Silesia [now Opava, Czech Republic], 22 Dec 1867; d Düsseldorf, 8 Aug 1908). Austrian architect and designer, active also in Germany. During a brief career of little more than a decade, he produced highly influential work that typified the formal freedoms emerging from the anti-historicist movement in fin-de-siècle Vienna and pointed the way to Expressionism and Neues Bauen (see MODERN MOVEMENT). In 1881 he enrolled in the building department of the Staatsgewerbeschule, Vienna, where he studied under Camillo Sitte; but he returned to Troppau in 1886 to gain practical experience working for a local builder. He then went back to Vienna in 1890 to complete his education at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. A brilliant draughtsman, he won many prizes as a student, including the Rome prize in 1893, the last year of tenure at the Akademie of Karl Hasenauer, one of the creators of Vienna’s Ringstrasse and a guardian of the great historicist tradition in the late 19th century. Olbrich travelled to Italy and North Africa before returning to Vienna in 1894 to work in the office of Otto Wagner, who had just been commissioned to design the buildings for the Vienna Stadtbahn. Olbrich soon became Wagner’s chief assistant, and by 1896 he had begun to develop the characteristic Jugendstil floral decorative style that appeared in some of the Stadtbahn stations, for example in the original interior decoration of the imperial waiting room in the Hofpavillon (1896–7; altered).

• Olbrich, Joseph Maria
  • Austria, §II, 5: Architecture, after c 1890
  • Austria, §VI, 4: Furniture, after 1897
  • Austria, §XI, 2: Textiles, 1800 and after
  • architecture
    • Czech Republic, §II, 3: Architecture, 1780s and after
    • Darmstadt, §2: Artists’ colony
    • Germany, §II, 7(i): Architecture, 1900–39
    • Polychromy, §1(ii): Architecture, after c 1800
    • Terracotta, §II, 2(ii)(d): History and uses in the Western world: Architecture, c 1890–c 1930
    • department stores
      • Düsseldorf, §1: History and urban development
    • exhibition architecture
      • Art Nouveau, §6: Austria
      • Exhibition architecture, §2: France and the USA, 1876–1915
      • Hoetger, Bernhard
      • Modern Movement, §1: Origins, 1860–c 1907
      • Stucco and plasterwork, §III, 10(ii): Western world, after 1850
      • Vienna, §II, 3: Urban development, c 1800–1918
      • Vienna, §III, 4: Art life and organization, 1897 and after
      • Wittgenstein: (1) Karl Wittgenstein
    • galleries (art)
      • Museum, §II, 2: Architecture, 1850–1940
    • roofs
      • Roof, §2: Forms
    • towers
      • Darmstadt, §1(ii): History and urban development, 1806 and after
      • Expressionism, §2: Architecture
    • villas
      • Bahr, Hermann
  • collaboration
    • Moser, Kolo
    • Wagner, Otto, §2: 1894 and after
  • furniture
    • Germany, §VI, 5: Furniture, after 1895
  • groups and movements
    • Darmstädter Künstler-Kolonie
      • Art Nouveau, §5: Germany
      • Germany, §V, 5: Interior decoration, after c 1900
    • Deutscher Werkbund
      • Modern Movement, §2: Deutscher Werkbund and the aesthetics of Functionalism, c 1907–16
    • Secession (Vienna)
      • Austria, §I: Introduction
      • Secession, §3: Vienna
    • Siebenerklub
      • Bauer, Leopold
      • Siebenerklub
  • interior decoration
    • International exhibition
  • silver
    • Germany, §IX, 1(iv): Gold and silver, 1806–1914
  • textiles
    • Czech Republic, §X, 1: Woven fabrics
    • Germany, §XI, 1: Embroidery
  • tiles
    • Tile, §II, 7: Germany, Austria and Switzerland