In the 1890s Central European architects introduced new approaches to city planning. In most other parts of the Western world city planning
meant modernizing the city by constructing boulevards and monumental buildings. By contrast, Central European architects developed
Regulierungspläne ("regulatory" plans) that considered the city in its entirety and treated it as a biological organism with
infrastructures that needed to work in unison in order to maintain the citys health. These plans broke the city down into its constituent
parts (streets, building blocks, public spaces, green spaces), projected various service systems (municipal railways, trams, sewage, gas,
electricity, and drinking-water systems), and reassembled the parts into a rational urban grid that theoretically could be extended infinitely.
In 1892 the well-known architectural
innovator Otto Wagner took this approach a step further in his entry in the international competition for
a city plan for Greater Vienna. His prize-winning (though unexecuted) scheme presented two-dimensional plans for streets, tramways,
canals, and other infrastructures. Three-dimensional, architectonic plans indicated how the spatial relationships of major plazas and intersections
might be configured, with important structures, such as railway stations and bridges, as focal points in a coherent whole.
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Otto Wagner,
Metropolitan Railway,
Vienna, 1884-1900
Study for the title page of the
publication on the elevated section
of a municipal railway over the
Gumpendorferzeile.
India ink and watercolor on paper,
61.8 x 44.8 cm
(24 3/8 x 17 5/8 in.)
Historisches Museum der
Stadt Wien, Vienna |