Josef Frank, Helmuth Plessner and Heinrich Tessenow: towards a philosophical-anthropological architecture?

This chapter examines Josef Frank’s interwar work in Vienna – his writings and buildings – and sheds new light on the relationship this had with the German architect Heinrich Tessenow and some of the Tessenow-Schüler*innen. Departing from the insistence on the significance the Wiener Kreis might have had on Frank’s architectural thinking and production, the paper finds an uncanny relationship between the German philosopher Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology and Frank’s – and Tessenow’s – architecture of spatial and positional relationships.