Josef Hoffmann (December 15, 1870 – May 7, 1956) was an Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods. He studied with Otto Wagner. He played a major part in the shaping of the aesthetic perception and aesthetic understanding of the 20th century.

In today’s Czech Republic (including Bohemia and Moravia), the results of the Industrial Revolution were more obvious than in the other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Josef Hoffmann (born in 1870 in Pirnitz, Moravia, now Brtnice, Czech Republic) and Adolf Loos both came from that same area. Many creative minds derived from this region and enriched Vienna’s economic life in the empire at the turn of the century.

From 1887, Hoffmann attended the technical college in Brünn, where he studied the methods of classical architecture. After his practical year in Würzburg as a student of architecture, Hoffmann studied from 1892 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna built by Theophil Freiherr von Hansen. His teacher, Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer was then at the peak of his popularity due to his “Ringstraßenbuildings”.

After Hasenauer’s death, Otto Wagner, the most famous architect at the end of the nineteenth century, took over his class. A scholarship from the “Prix de Rome” enabled Hoffmann to stay in Italy. After his return, Hoffmann joined the office of Otto Wagner. There he got acquainted with Josef Maria Olbrich.