White, everything white? Josef Frank’s Villa Beer (1930) in Vienna, and its materiality in the context of the discourse on ‘white cubes’

Abstract

Abstract In 2017 a group of conservators-restorers conducted a conservation-science study of the materials used in the construction of Josef Frank’s main work, the Villa Beer (1930) in Vienna-Hietzing, and of the building’s surfaces. The study was an opportunity to find evidence indicating whether the contemporary description of the wall colour as a non-colour white corresponded to physical reality. The notion ‘Weiss, alles Weiss’ (‘white, everything white’), celebrated as ‘an expression of values and of the times’ (Hammann, 1930), will be identified as a cultural construct that stands in contradiction to the actual materiality of the buildings of the period. We must rewrite the colour history of Modern Movement architecture. The ‘White Cubes’ were never white.

Keywords

• Modern movement architecture
• Josef Frank
• Villa Beer
• Materiality
• White
• Conservation-restoration