Karl Langer
return <<
LANGER, KARL (1903-1969),
architect and town planner, was born on 28 July 1903 in Vienna,
only son and elder child of Karl Langer, locksmith, and his
wife Magdalena, née Loitsch. Karl senior's manual
and technical skills fostered his son's interest in design.
Young Karl attended the Staatsgewerbeschule until 1923, worked
for various architects and became a member (1926) of the
Austrian Guild of Architects. Professionally and intellectually
restless, he undertook further study and entered architectural
competitions. He consolidated his skills through his association
with leading progressives, including Heinrich Schmid and
Herman Aichinger, on those public housing projects which
established the socialist credentials of 'Red Vienna' in
the turbulent postwar years. |
|
Peter Behrens, pioneer modernist and director of the Wagnerschule,
had admitted Langer (in 1923) to his renowned school of architecture
within the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Wien (Vienna
Academy of Fine Arts). Langer's work appeared in the catalogues
of a school exhibition which toured Europe in 1926. He graduated
in 1928. That year Behrens employed him to head his architectural
atelier in Vienna. Langer was responsible for some celebrated
buildings attributed to Behrens and his partner Alexander
Popp, most notably the massive tobacco factory at Linz and
additions to the historic St Peter's group at Salzburg. In
his spare hours Langer studied at the Technische Hochschule
(later Technical University of Vienna) for the qualification
of zivilarchitekt (1931) and at the University of Vienna
for his doctorate in art history (1933).
In Vienna on 14 May 1932 Langer married a fellow doctoral
student Gertrude Fröschel; they were to remain childless.
He left Behrens' firm in 1934 and began a small practice,
assisted by his wife. His work, modest in scale, was well
reviewed in Austrian and British journals, but it was not
an auspicious time to launch himself as an architect. The
rise of Nazism generated a cultural climate inimical to creative
expression and threatened the Langers personally. He was
a social democrat; she was Jewish. Kristallnacht (November
1938) confirmed their determination to emigrate, a difficult
task for Karl who was eligible for military service. Adopting
a ruse, they traveled to Greece whence they sailed for Australia.
They reached Sydney in 1939. About this time Karl's former
student contemporaries and lifelong professional confidants
Rudi Baumfeld and Victor Gruenbaum emigrated to the United
States of America; Gruenbaum founded the firm of Victor Gruen
Associates at Los Angeles.
There was little demand for avant-garde architects
in Sydney, though Langer's peers received him cordially.
He found temporary employment with the architects H. M. Cook & W.
J. Kerrison in Brisbane, where he and Gertrude settled. Under
wartime manpower regulations, he was soon transferred to
a mundane post with the Queensland Railways. Brisbane was
then a mixture of provincial city and strategic centre. The
Langers' modernist achievements and sophistication contributed
considerably to the city's cultural life, and a youthful
literary and artistic group gathered around them. Karl lectured
part time in architecture and architectural design at the
University of Queensland, studied the local landscape and
flora, and published his short but influential Sub-Tropical Housing (1944).
Gertrude gave public lectures for the Queensland Art Fund
and later became art critic for the Courier-Mail.
In 1944 the Brisbane City Council offered Langer the position
of assistant town planner. His selection in preference to
a returned serviceman became a political issue and manpower
controls were invoked to block his release from his railways
job for the duration of the war. The protracted, nationwide
publicity attending this episode brought him an impressive
waiting-list of commissions that ranged from revising the
town plan for the city of Mackay to advising on the site
for a civic centre in Perth.
Langer also obtained a consultancy with the Cumberland County
Council (the planning authority for Sydney) which commissioned
him in 1947 to examine the development of the city, and advise
on a comprehensive list of civic and regional planning issues.
He was able to find two periods in 1947 and 1948 for this
work, totalling four months; his fee was set at six guineas
a day, plus a guinea a day for living expenses. His proposals
included a plan to replace the Fort Macquarie (Bennelong
Point) Tram Depot with an opera house. On his way to Australia,
one of the last places in his beloved Attica that he had
visited and sketched was the ancient temple of Poseidon on
the tip of Cape Sounion—a combination of landscape
and landmark which remained with him when he thought about
the Sydney Harbour of the future.
Projects for Darwin, for Ingham, Toowoomba, Yeppoon, Kingaroy
and Mount Isa, Queensland, and for the National Capital Development
Commission, Canberra, were among Langer's other town-planning
tasks. He advised Senator Ian Wood, his old friend and mayor
of Mackay, in his work with the Senate Select Committee on
the Development of Canberra (1954-55) and the Joint Parliamentary
Committee on the Australian Capital Territory (1957-68).
In the controversy over where the new Federal Parliament
House should be located, Langer advocated the Capital Hill
site: in Architecture in Australia (1959) he pondered
over the problems of placing a building there, particularly
how to make the flagstaff topping W.
B. Griffin's design appear significant in the scale of
that landscape.
Commissions which Langer undertook included economical domestic
buildings, the first Gold Coast canal developments and coastal
tourist projects. The best known of these was Lennons Hotel
(1956) at Broadbeach, Gold Coast, then generously set in
wilderness between highway and beach. His favourite building
was the chapel (1966) at St Peter's Lutheran College, Indooroopilly,
Brisbane. Built on the edge of a small hill, it embodied
the lessons he had learned from classical Greece.
Langer's reserve and courtesy accompanied a deep belief in
community responsibilities, particularly in cultural matters.
His campaigns for more creative use of the Brisbane River
as a civic asset, for a Queen Street mall and other facilities
for pedestrians were rejected, not always politely; when
they were later adopted, others received the credit. After
being naturalized in November 1945, Langer was deemed eligible
to join professional bodies. He was active in the Royal Australian
Institute of Architects, first president (1952) of the Queensland
division of the Royal Australian Planning Institute, a founder
and chairman (1966-68) of the Queensland Association of Landscape
Architects and a member (1963-69) of the National Trust of
Queensland. The Queensland Art Gallery Society elected him
its president for 1961-62 and 1967; Gertrude held the same
office in 1965-66 and 1974-75.
At the University of Queensland, Langer lectured in town
planning; he also taught at the Queensland Institute of Technology.
Both institutions were to award student prizes in his memory.
In 1968 he was appointed to the Australian Council for the
Arts and elected vice-chairman of its music board. He died
of myocardial infarction on 16 October 1969 in Brisbane.
Following a service at St Peter's chapel, he was cremated
at Mount Thompson crematorium, another of his buildings.
His wife survived him.
Select Bibliography
K. Bittman (ed), Strauss
to Matilda (Syd, 1988); M. Jurgensen and A. Corkhill
(eds), The German Presence in Queensland (Brisb,
1988); Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and
New Zealand, Nuts and Bolts, or Berries, 1993
Annual Conference (Perth, 1993); Australian Institute of
Landscape Architects, Landscape Australia, vol
7, no 1, 1984, p 48; I. Sinnamon, Karl Langer in Queensland
(paper presented to the Society of Architectural Historians
Australia and New Zealand Conference on Modernism, Perth,
1993, copy held by author); Langer papers (University of
Queensland Library and State Library of Queensland); Langer
architectural drawings (State Library of Queensland); private
information.
return <<
|
|
|
|
