Karl Ehn

Karl Ehn (1884–1957) was a Viennese architect and city planner.

Among other structures, Ehn designed the colossal Karl-Marx-Hof, the largest and best example of innovative public housing built during the Red Vienna movement. Ehn worked as technical director for the City of Vienna and was a student of Otto Wagner. According to Joseph Rykwert, after the Anschluss in 1938 Ehn continued to serve the city under the Nazis.

Austrian architect. He studied under Wagner, became City Architect of Vienna, and was responsible for many public housing-schemes in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially he was attracted by the English Garden City movement, as his development at Hermeswiese shows (1923), but at the Lindenhof project (1924) he was influenced by housing in Amsterdam. His most celebrated works are the Bebelhof (1925), the huge Expressionist Karl-Marx-Hof, Heiligenstadt (1927), and the more Modernist Adelheid-Popp-Hof (1932). The housing-block at Heiligenstadt is nearly half a mile long, designed with 1,382 apartments, offices, laundries, a library, and a clinic, so is a Unité d'Habitation, a forerunner of works by Le Corbusier, and a descendant of C19 ideas, such as those of Charles Fourier (1772–1837). It has simplified façades, powerful cubic, blocky masses, and highly organized geometries.