This modernist residence came into existence in Vienna between 1926 and 1928. The project was conceived by a fashionable socialite named Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein.
She was the big sister of much-discussed and seldom-read philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was going through one of his psychological bad-patches in the mid-1920s. He had published a groundbreaking book in 1922, and was thought to be suffering the aftereffects. Margarethe decided that building the house for her was exactly the therapy her brother needed. (She had reason to be concerned, since two other Wittgenstein brothers had already committed suicide.) Ludwig had experience in many practical activities – teaching in an elementary school, market gardening, aerodynamic engineering – but not architecture. Basic plans by Paul Engelmann had already been commissioned, and young Ludwig threw himself into the work.
This now-famous portrait of Margarethe by Gustav Klimt did indeed hang in the house, though not in a prominent place. "She was not satisfied with the resemblance and did not hesitate to repaint the mouth," according to Paul Wijdeveld, author of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Architect published by MIT Press in 1994, from which most of these images are drawn.
Today the portrait hangs in Munich's Neue Pinakothek and the mouth has been restored to Klimt's version.
Wittgenstein left for England shortly after the house was finished. At Cambridge he succeeded for a time in renewing the academic/philosophical career that ultimately landed him on an Austrian postage stamp.
He never went back to architecture.