Book Review: Life Aesthetic and Josef Hoffmann’s Minimalism – Before aesthete, designer, and architect Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) came along, Austrian architecture and design was suffocating under a surfeit of opulent ornamentation and bombastic flourish. With his radical new approach and a band of like-minded figures, Hoffmann was a founding father of the Viennese Secession and Wiener Werkstätte and revolutionized Western aesthetics with a brave new minimalism. See also: Contemporary Residential Architecture and Interiors by James Silverman This essential introduction explores Hoffmann’s key ideas, projects, and designs to understand his radical aesthetics and their continued influence on European architecture and design, from monochrome interior schemes to the cutlery we put on the table. We explore his integral role at the center of both the Vienna Secession in 1897 and the Wiener Werkstätte, and his commitment to stylistic purity, including some of Europe’s first major modernist buildings, such as the Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1904) and the Palais Stoclet (1905–1911). Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Architecture series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and…