Case Study: The Weiner Werkstätte

1. Wiener Werkstätte was a sort of arts-and-crafts movement in the very beginning of the 20th century in Vienna bringing together artisans, artists and designers specializing in handmade metalwork, glassware, jewelry, ceramics, textile design and furnishings, whose main goal became to restore the values of handcraftsmanship in the industrial society. The Weiner Werkstätte masters took their inspiration mostly in Classical style employing simple rectilinear forms, clean lines and geometric patterns and rejecting the flamboyant décor of the past, while using only functional and delicate ornamentation; but some of them liked to include the floral and figurative elements and used much of organic-inspired symbolic decoration, reflecting the curvilinear

The Theater Cabaret ‘Fledermaus’ designed in 1907 by Josef Hoffmann and decorated by other members of Weiner Werkstätte, was conceived as a meeting and entertainment place for the Viennese avant-garde. It was a kind of manifesto for the Weiner Werkstätte group of designers working in the advanced style of the time. The interior design included not only arrangement of the hall, stage, surface materials and furnishings, but were also designed posters, postcards, cutlery, crockery, glassware and small decorative objects by the Weiner

He started the construction of the house because he had to come back to Belgium after his father’s death. Adolphe Stoclet became the head of the biggest Belgium bank called Societe Generale.

Adolphe Stoclet and his wife died in 1949. His son became a legal owner of the mansion. As he passed, his four daughters started court trials to define the fate of the mansion. Three of them wanted to have the ability to sell contents of the house. While the fourth one wanted to keep the Stoclet Palace as Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art”. Neither of them wanted to move back to “the enchanted mansion” as they called the house. There have already been many thefts and deterioration according to a conservator working there for more than 20 years.

The Belgium government listed the house as a Belgium landmark in 1976. And the house was name a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009. But the content might be dispersed. And in February 2011 the fourth sister, Aude, and her son Laurent Flagey successfully fought to keep house and contents together, while suggesting it be run by a foundation. The house remains intact as on the day the Stoclets moved in. It seems as if it were still 1911 according Belgium