Josef Frank (born July 15, 1885, in Baden near Vienna; died January 8, 1967, in Stockholm) was an Austrian–Swedish architect and designer. Together with Oskar Strnad, he founded the Vienna School of Architecture, which developed an independent concept of modernism in architecture, housing, and interior design.

Life and Work

Josef Frank was of Jewish origin. His parents were the merchant Ignaz (Isak) Frank, originally from the Hungarian county of Heves, and Jenny Feilendorf, the daughter of a Viennese merchant. Frank later designed his parents’ gravestone in the Old Jewish Section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery. His brother was the Austrian philosopher, physicist, and mathematician Philipp Frank.

Frank began studying architecture at the Vienna University of Technology in 1903. In 1908, he completed an internship with architect Bruno Möhring in Berlin, and in 1910 he earned a doctorate in engineering based on his dissertation on Renaissance architectural theorist Leon Battista Alberti. His first international commission took him to Cologne, where he designed the interior of the Museum of East Asian Art. In early 1912, he married Anna Sebenius, a Swedish pianist trained in Berlin.

From 1919 to 1925, Frank taught at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. He was a founding member of the Vienna Werkbund and served as initiator and artistic director of the Vienna Werkbund Housing Estate, built in 1932 under the auspices of the municipal housing company Gesiba.

In 1933, Frank emigrated to Sweden, where he became a Swedish citizen in 1939. That same year, he participated in the New York World’s Fair, designing a room for the Swedish Pavilion on behalf of the Stockholm design firm Svenskt Tenn. In close collaboration with Estrid Ericson, he created numerous designs for the company, many of which remain in production today. In 1934, he also designed a grand piano for Bösendorfer.

After 1945, Frank remained in Sweden. From 1964 onward, he was an honorary member of The Circle, a London-based association of exiled architects, planners, and designers. Josef Frank is buried together with his wife Anna at Norra begravningsplatsen in Solna, Sweden.

Reference List

Josef Frank (architect). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19, 2026, from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Frank_(Architekt)