Walter Sobotka

http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-a/ldpd_6703067

Walter S. Sobotka was born on July 1, 1888 in Vienna. He was the son of Dr. Ignaz and Hedwig Sobotka. Sobotka attended the Franz-Josef-Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating in 1907. He then enrolled at the Technischen Hochschule Wien, studying under Karl König. He completed his degree in 1912 with the title of Engineer-Architect. Sobotka served as an officer in the Austrian army during World War I. After the war, from 1919 to 1923, he worked for the Viennese firm of Karl Korn while also producing grave monuments and furniture for his family in Vienna and Czechoslovakia. In 1919, he married Gisela Schoenau. Their daughter Ruth was born in 1925 and later became a dancer with the New York City Ballet under Balanchine, as well as a costume designer and actress.

After leaving Korn's firm, Sobotka began to make a name for himself with some larger residential projects, eventually designing the interiors for Peter Behrens's house at the Weisenhoff Siedlung built for the Deutscher Werkbund Seidlung in Stuttgart [1927]. He also designed two large housing projects for the city of Vienna and two houses for the 1932 Österreichischer Wekbund Seidlung. Sobotka was very involved with the Austrian Werkbund and served as vice-chairman of the board of directors for two years. Exhibitions, mostly of furniture, constituted another important part of Sobotka's practice, and in 1937 he designed the Austrian Pavilion for the World Exposition in Paris.

When the political situation in Austria became too tenuous for those of Jewish descent, Sobotka emigrated to the United States. He made the trans-Atlantic crossing aboard the Saturnia, arriving in New York on July 7th, 1938. In 1941, he began to teach at the University of Pittsburgh in the Research Bureau for Retail Training, becoming an Assistant Professor of Textiles and Applied Arts five years later. He also taught architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1941 to 1948. He was appointed Assistant Professor for Interior Decoration in 1946.

Sobotka's practice in the United States focused mostly upon residential interiors and furniture design, for Thonet Brothers (1938-1939) and Russel Wright, among others. He also designed numerous theater interiors for RKO. His architecture can be classified as modernist but he never fully embraced functionalism. His interiors reveal the decorative and ornamental influences of his training in early twentieth century Vienna. Sobotka maintained lifelong friendships with other Viennese architects, most notably Josef Frank.

Two unpublished manuscripts are important for understanding Sobotka's approach to design. His proposal for a Prefabricated House consists of some thirty pages of drawings, delineating a basic unit of construction and providing examples of combinations of that unit for use as single family homes, dormitories and summer resorts. He also wrote a theoretical treatise, entitled Principles of Design, in which he broke the complex process of design into its various components including color and proportion. This treatise was an attempt to create a general methodology of design that could be utilized by the reader. Despite repeated attempts, Sobotka was unable to find a publisher for these manuscripts.

In 1957 he traveled to Japan on a consulting mission for the United States government, specifically for the State Department's International Cooperative Administration. The purpose of the trip was to explore ways of increasing the export of Japanese applied arts to the United States. Sobotka retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 1958, receiving the title of Professor Emeritus of Textiles and Applied Arts (Retailing). He died of a heart attack at his home in New York on May 8th, 1972.