Otto Wagner

Born in 1841, Wagner started classical, the kind of architecture that looked backward for authority. By the mid-1890s he'd joined the Vienna Secession, the breakaway group trying to pry Austrian design into something new. In 1898 his Metro stations arrived covered in Koloman Moser's flowers, full Art Nouveau bloom. Then came the turn: after 1906 his buildings went spare, geometric, the decoration falling away to reveal structure and material plainly stated. He died in 1918 having drawn the line from one century's language to the next, still within the classical tradition but pointing past it.