All the houses Josef Frank designed during his lifetime: the lines of his architecture consciously create spatial and visual references. Spaces, published by Park Books, showcases the art of capturing the spatial complexity of Frank's houses on paper.
Text: Isabella Marboe
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Claëson House, Falsterbo, 1924‒1927, perspective drawing by Frank © ArkDes and Svenskt Tenn, Josef Frank Archive, Stockholm
Artistic and true to life!
Josef Frank's Villa Beer in Vienna is the architectural antithesis of Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat in Brno. While Frank took an artistic approach, Mies van der Rohe followed the principles of the Bauhaus to the letter, with a tendency towards dogmatism. For Frank, freedom was highly valued; with its variety of room heights, niches, and window formats, Villa Beer is a 'house as a path and a place'. Designed as a small town, it leaves it up to the residents to arrange the furniture and decide where to hang pictures. Mies, on the other hand, believed that less was more and that the architect's creative will was paramount.
Floral fabric covers
Nevertheless, in 1927, Mies van der Rohe invited Josef Frank, the only Austrian, to design a semi-detached house in the Weissenhof district of Stuttgart. However, the interior of his white, modernist house with a flat roof was criticised as 'Frank's brothel'. Instead of cool steel tubing, he furnished it with furniture from his company, ‘Haus & Garten’. This included sofas with floral fabric covers, floor-length curtains, cushions, carpets and floor lamps. "You can use anything that can be used," wrote the architect in the exhibition catalogue. This was, of course, a provocation, but it was also an expression of his strong aversion to any claim to absoluteness. He simply found styles such as Bauhaus and Modernism too one-dimensional.
Villa Beer, Vienna, 1930; view up through main staircase © Stefan Oláh, Vienna
Organic floor plans
“Furniture should not make an interior appear rich or simple; it should make it as comfortable as possible.” For Frank, the architect's most important task was to transform the house into a calm oasis where everyone could simply be themselves. His first house was the Scholl House, which he designed with Oskar Strnad and Oskar Wlach in 1913/14. He drew his last house in 1957. This fantasy project was never built, but its organic floor plans were reminiscent of the work of Hans Scharoun and Alvar Aalto.
House for M S, Los Angeles, 1930; different focuses and views from the interior to the exterior in different parts of the house © ArkDes and Svenskt Tenn, Josef Frank Archive, Stockholm
Original plans
Spaces, by Mikael Bergquist and Olaf Michélsen, brings together all the houses designed by Frank during his lifetime. The authors select six houses as case studies, systematically and comprehensively subjecting them to a classic architectural analysis. These plans have something touching about them, with their hand-drawn trees, natural stone cladding, pebbles, and slightly shaky north arrows. Several variants exist for some houses, offering a glimpse into the design process. These variants are all summarised chronologically on the pink pages at the end of the book.
Villa Beer, Vienna, 1930; main staircase in hall with view from living room towards dining room © Stephan Hunger, Vienna
Refinded and banal
‘Joseph Frank is both a complicated and a simple architect,’ the authors write in their introduction. 'There is a deceptive lightness to his drawings and airy perspective sketches — an atmosphere that could tempt one into overlooking the complexity of his architecture.' Frank advocated a freedom that allowed users to indulge their bad taste and display their inherited furniture. This demanded a great deal from the designer; his architecture had to provide a backdrop against which the refined and the banal could coexist. It captures life in all its unpredictability, yet always maintains its dignity.
Claëson House, Falsterbo, 1924‒1927, approach to the house. Room sequences inside, ground floor to the terrace level. Views © ArkDes and Svenskt Tenn, Josef Frank Archive, Stockholm
Pink pages
This book captivates readers with its unique and original layout. What other architecture book features pink plans and red text? It also contains historical black-and-white photographs, hand-drawn plans and sketches, and enchanting watercolours of the extraordinary houses that Frank never built. This blend of playfulness and seriousness reflects Josef Frank's architecture and personality.
Spatial qualities
A fundamental quality of his architecture is scale. From the smallest house to the largest, the same spatial qualities are always present. Frank was well aware that even small changes in dimensions could have a significant impact on architecture. Room heights, the size and arrangement of windows and the way light guides us through a building are all important factors,' according to the authors. Spatial qualities, pathways and the relationships between open and closed niches and between inside and outside are illustrated with red lines, arrows, axonometric projections and photographs. The thickness of these lines and the contrasting colours used to delineate the spatial areas give Frank's plans a rough appearance, but this makes them much easier to understand.
Spiral staircases and more space
Case Study House No. 1 is the Claëson House in Fasterbo. Frank designed it between 1924 and 1927 for his sister-in-law, Signhild, and her husband, Axel Claëson. All three versions of the plans are printed here. The half-spiral staircase moves from the edge to the centre, converging as a spiral staircase around a central point. The rooms are grouped around this point like the blades of a windmill. One can trace the development from the conventional approach to this open solution. “To create more space, I often use attached 'pockets',” Frank is quoted as saying. He often reflected on his own work in his writings. Case Study House No. 4 is the famous Villa Beer. The outstanding black-and-white photographs taken when the Beer family still inhabited the house convey its spatial qualities and furnishings. The colourful axonometry is also very helpful here.
Fantasy House no. 9, 1947; watercolor by Frank from the late 1950s © ArkDes and Svenskt Tenn, Josef Frank Archive, Stockholm
Fantasy houses without right angels
Case Study House No. 9 is one of these houses, taken from a series of sketches that he made for Dagmar Grill. It is completely free-form. 'If you've read my theories, you'll know that a crooked floor plan drawn without thinking would still be better than a carefully drawn, right-angled plan by a functionalist architect,' he wrote on the sketch dated 4 August 1947. 'There could be even less glass,' he noted on the first floor. Of his thirteen designs, number nine was his favourite; in this project, there are no more right angles or straight lines.
Mikael Bergquist, Olof Michélsen, „Josef Frank. Spaces“, hardcover, 144 pages, English, 14 x 23 cm, Park Books. Zurich 2025, ISBN 978-3-03860-018-3
This article by Isabella Marboe first appeared with our media partner genau!
