Haus Wittgenstein

Haus Wittgenstein, is a house in the modernist style on the Kundmanngasse, Vienna, Austria. The house was commissioned by Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein, who asked the architect Paul Engelmann to design a townhouse for her. Stonborough-Wittgenstein invited her brother, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, to help with the design.CommissionIn November 1925 Stonborough-Wittgenstein commissioned Engelmann to design a large townhouse. She later invited her brother, Ludwig Wittgenstein, to help with the design, in part to distract him from the scandal surrounding the Haidbauer incident in April 1926: Wittgenstein, while working as a primary-school teacher, had hit a boy who had subsequently collapsed.The initial architect was Paul Engelmann, someone Wittgenstein had come to know while training to be an artillery officer in Olomouc. Engelmann designed a spare modernist house after the style of Adolf Loos: three rectangular blocks. Wittgenstein showed a great interest in the project and in Engelmann's plans and poured himself into the project for over two years, to such a degree that Engelmann himself considered Wittgenstein the author of the final product. During this period, Wittgenstein is listed in the Vienna city directory as: Leudwig Wittgenstein, Architect. He focused on the windows, doors, door knobs, and radiators, demanding that every detail be exactly as he specifieid, to the point where everyone involved in the project was exhausted. When the house was nearly finished, he had a ceiling raised 30 mm so that the room had the exact proportions he wanted.