After studying at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, Franz Schuster began his career in Germany. Influenced by his teacher Heinrich Tessenow, he worked on the garden city of Dresden-Hellerau, where he also established himself as an independent architect in 1922. A period in Vienna followed, before he joined Ernst May’s Neues Frankfurt project in Frankfurt am Main from 1927 to 1931. Projects in the city he designed until 1936.
He became known for developing the “Schuster type” of school building, characterised by classrooms with windows on two sides to allow for effective ventilation. A school based on this system was built in Frankfurt am Main in 1928, although the approach only came into wider use after 1945.
In 1933 he returned to Vienna, where after the Anschluss he designed several large-scale projects that were never realised. After the war, he was able to resume his career without difficulty and, among other roles, headed the City of Vienna’s Research Office for Housing and Building from 1952 to 1957.
Municipal housing was a constant focus of his work. In the mid-1920s, as an independent architect in Vienna, he was involved in the construction of municipal housing. In Frankfurt am Main, he taught housing design and interior architecture at the Städelschule and also designed furniture for the Neues Frankfurt project as the Aufbaumöbel.
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