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Josef Hoffmann was born in Pirnitz, Moravia, on December 16th 1870, the fourth son and namesake of the town burgomaster. The family, descended from travelers and merchants, had at the beginning of the century founded a spinning mill and was engaged in the production of hand-printed fabrics. Hoffman's mother, Leopoldina, was an enthusiastic and talented musician, and she frequently visited the castle of Prince Collalto, whose art collection and gardens were among the most famous in Moravia. 1879, Josef, called "Pepo", enrolled in the state school at Iglau intending to pursue classical studies and take up a career in law. Seeing his poor performance, and noticing his interest in art and design, his parents subsequently enrolled him in the Institute of Arts and Crafts at Brno, which he left for one year to serve an apprenticeship at Wuerzburg in the military building division of the government. 1892, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under Carl von Hasenauer, collaborator of Gottfried Semper and designer of the Imperial Museum and the Burgtheater. In 1895, Hoffmann received his diploma and his project, "Forum Orbis-Insula Pacis" won him the prix de Rome. A few months later Hoffmann left for his own trip to Italy, a classical grand tour on a route similar to that which Goethe and other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German travelers had taken. He visited Bolzano, Trent, Verona, Vicenza, Venice, Istria, Parenzo, and Volosca; then he went to Ancona, Florence, Rome, Naples, Capri, Pozzuoli, Amalfi, and Pompeii. During the trip he made over 200 sketches, some published in the same year in Der Architekt, as illustrations for an article entitled "Architecture of the Austrian Riviera". In 1907, Hoffmann offered work to Le Corbusier, who passed through Vienna after his first trip to Italy. Hoffmann was intensely involved in design and planning in Vienna: the Villa Wittgenstein near Hohenberg, the Villa Hochstaetter, and the completion of the first shop for the Wiener Werkstaette in the Graben. 1912 Hoffmann designed the residential village of Kaasgraben on the western periphery of Vienna. These six villas, still well preserved today, are an attempt to translate earlier solutions to buildings of a smaller scale. 1914, Hoffmann's work began to point the way towards what would later be called his neoclassical style, designing the Austrian pavilion at the Cologne Fair in collaboration with Anton Hanak and Oskar Strnad. 1915-18, great activity in the area of interior design: Hoffmann was invited to put on one-man shows in Stockholm and Copenhagen. In 1928-29 Hoffmann became interested in large-scale projects. In 1930 Hoffmann was elected vice-president of the Austrian section of the Werkbund. The Werkbund congress held in Vienna was celebrated with an exhibition aiming to interest the whole city through a series of housing pojects based on the typological experiments discussed at the various international congresses. 1934, Hoffmann designed and constructed the Austrian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale. 1954, the first biographical study of Hoffmann and his work was published on his eightieth birthday. 1956, Hoffmann died on May 15th in his house on Salesianergasse 33 in Vienna.
