"Architettura in divenire. L'opera viennese di Jože Plečnik(1899-1911)” Università degli Studi di Palermo, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia. Tesi di laurea di Raimondo Mercadante, Relatore: Ch.ma Prof.ssa Eva di Stefano, Co-relatore, Ch.ma Prof.ssa Teresa Pugliatti, A.A.2003-2004

At the beginnings of the 1900s, Otto Wagner’s architectural school may be considered like one of the highest expressions of the International rationalism, as it is testified by the interest shown by many American masters of Early Modern, like Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, in Wagner’s work. The Viennese School of Architecture can be considered the most important attempt made by the Austrian bourgeoisie to transform the Hapsburg Capital, Vienna, at that time seen as a City seriously on delay, if compared to the other European Modern towns, into a technologically advanced Metropolis, having its own subway lines, fast-traffic boulevards, low cost housing, and, of course, the luxury ornaments suitable to the middle class. The facade of the Zacherlhaus first of all wants to break off with the exaltation of the ephemeral products realized by the Sezession, and declares outside, polished and aggressive with its flakes of drake on the frame, its intention of doing a serious and strong art, its will to resist to the time like the ancient palaces. Different in the forms but not in the substance from Bruno Taut’s utopias, Plečnik’s work emerges again, partially mastering in Ljubljana the challenge with the restoration of the Dukes of Spannheim’s castle, recently used as an Hapsburg prison: following the indications of a plan by Max Fabiani of 1895, the Castle Hill becomes in Plečnik’s plans the spiritual center of the new Slovene Capital. The master would have devoted all his artistic strength, modifying the main sites in an unique way: he creates an architectural promenade, going through the Three bridges, to the University Library to the public squares, to the parks. He begins rethinking the city as an aggregation of places rather than on those of transportation, and speed.