sundays 51

The rooms of Lucie Rie by Ernst A. Plischke, 1928

Not only Plischke’s work as interior and furniture designer but also the museum-like presentation of interiors and questions of restoration and reconstruction are topics of the tour through the exquisite collection of Classical Viennese Modernism at the apartment which the potter Lucie Rie (1902-1995) returned to from her emigration in London.

The apartment is the first work by the architect and later architecture professor Plischke. Plischke began his studies in 1921 at the Viennese School of Arts and Crafts with Josef Frank and Oskar Strnad and graduated in Peter Behren’s class in 1926. He subsequently worked in Frank’s office.
Lucie Gomperz studied ceramics from 1922 to 1926 with Michael Powolny at the Viennese School of Arts and Crafts and soon received international recognition. After her graduation she married the physicist Hans Rie and contracted Plischke in 1928 to design her apartment in Vienna’s Wollzeile.
The design concept by Ernst A. Plischke for the furnishing of the apartment began with a flexible-use ambience and anticipated a closed overall effect of the space. The wall closets made of walnut have a lavish inner life at their disposal, no longer consisting of a series of free standing individual pieces, instead they are completely able to be dismantled, no longer glued, rather screwed together. The stools, tables and armchairs can be easily regrouped according to need. In her emigration from Austria in 1938 Lucie Rie took the complete furnishings of her apartment with her to London. She sent the dismantled furniture with a set of sketches to Albion Mews. The architect Ernst Freud, son of Sigmund Freud, rebuilt them.

Meeting:
Kaiserliches Hofmobiliendepot (“Imperial Furniture Depot”)
Andreasgasse 7
A – 1070 Vienna
2:00 a.m.

Tour guides: Heidemarie Leitner and Eva B. Ottillinger

Tickets: EUR 7.30 (ATS 100.-) / EUR 3.65 (ATS 50.-)