Martin Wagner (architect)

Martin Wagner (1885–1957) was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.

Tall, angular, loyally Socialist, and uncompromising in his opinions, Wagner was educated at the Technical University of Berlin and worked as draftsman in the office of planner Hermann Muthesius, before being appointed the City Building Commissioner for Schöneberg in 1918 (now an inner-city area of Berlin).

He served as the chief city planner of Berlin from 1925, and most of Berlin's Modernist Housing Estates, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were constructed under his leadership. In 1924 he founded the building society GEHAG (), which was responsible for seventy percent of Berlin's housing built from 1924 through 1933, amounting to many thousands of residential units.

Wagner was more planner than design-architect, and few individual building designs are directly attributable to him. His role was parallel to Ernst May's role in Frankfurt-am-Main: the leader of a large-scale effort to standardize building requirements, rationalize construction practice, organize industrial suppliers and labor unions, all in the effort to mass-produce housing.

In his German projects Wagner was a frequent collaborator with German landscape architect Leberecht Migge.

As the Nazis came to power through the early 1930s, Wagner fell under increasing pressure and suspicion as a committed Social Democrat and longtime member of the SPD. He was expelled from the Deutscher Werkbund in 1933 and decided to leave the country. He spent three years in Turkey in exile. His work there included the city plan for Ankara, and a brief reunion with colleague Bruno Taut.

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