2010

HISTORY OF CIVILZATION AR-311

QURAT-UL-AIN JALALI AR-17 HIRA ANSARI AR-22

[ ADOLF LOOS]

LIFE AND WORK

In the name of ALLAH the most Beneficient and Merciful.

We are really thankful to

our teachers Mme
Fariha Amjad Ubaid, Sir
Shafqat and Mme
Naeema for their
continonus support,
guidance and
encouragement.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter no.1

1. HIS LIFE
1.1 Introduction……………………

1.2 Chronology………………………….

1.3 His life……………………………………………………………………..

1.3.1 Early years…………………………………………………..

1.3.1.1 Education ………………………………………………..

1.3.1.2 Military service…………………………………………….

1.3.1.3 Escape to America…………………………………………

1.3.2 Middle years………………………………………………………

1.3.2.1 Return to homeland……………………………………….

1.3.2.2 Revolution………………………………………………..

1.3.3 Family life………………………………………………………..

1.3.4 Old age…………………………………………………………….

1.3.5 Death……………………………………………………………….

Chapter no. 2

2.

2.1 Deviation from tradition

2.1.1. The Crisis of culture

2.1.2 Denying the ornament; road to simplicity

2.2 Reasons for deviation

2.2.1 Socio-political conditions of Vienna…………………

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 2.2.2 Impression of American society……….
2.2.3 Major influences……………………….

2.3 Psychological need for ornament in Vienna

2.3.1 Resistance by the bourgeois

2.3.2 Opposition of the labor class

Chapter no. 3

3. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY AND WORKS

3.1 Concepts and ideas

3.1.2 Raumplan

3.2 Projects; a chronology

3.3 Case studies

3.3.1 Pre- ornament & crime

3.2.1.1 Café Museum, at Vienna, Austria, 1898 to 1899.

3.2.1.2 American Bar, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.

3.3.2 Post-ornament and crime

3.3.2.1 House on the Michaelerplatz, at Vienna, Austria, 1910 to

1911

3.2.2.2 Steiner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1910.

3.2.2.3 Villa Stross, at Vienna, Austria, 1922

3.2.2.4 Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.

3.2.2.5 Scheu House, Vienna, at Austria, 1912 to 1913.

3.2.2.6 Moller House, Vienna, at Austria, 1927 to 1928.

3.2.2.7 Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria, 1930

Chapter no. 4

4. LITERARY AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS

4.1 The critique and writer

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 4.1.1. Essay “ornament and Crime”

4.1.2 Synopsis and understanding

4.1.2.1 Simplicity is self denial

4.1.2.2 The socio-economic crime

4.1.2.3 Denying the style

4.1.2.4 Individuality over ornament

4.2 The Teacher………………………..

4.3 The innovative designer

4.4 Exhibitions and Seminars

4.4 Quotations…………………………..

Chapter No.5

5. AT THE CLOSE
5.1 Contributions to architecture

5.2 Our critique of Loos’s work

5.3 Conclusion…………………………..

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………..

APPENDIX……………………………..

1.

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INTRODUCTION

This report is the result of our hard work and the continuous guidance and
support of our teachers to whom we are very grateful.

In preparation of this report the first stage was to collect information and put
it in an order. We used primarily internet as our source and then tallied and
verified the information through books. The second stage was organizing the
information and sorting through it. We used other reports on the architect
and also looked up the critiques and analysis of other writers to help us
understand the information so that we could draw our own conclusions and
analysis.

The first chapter begins with a basic introduction and then proceeds to
describe his early years, which includes his childhood influences, education,
his defiance towards Viennese society and his time spent in military. Further
the escape of the troubled youth to America and how he returned as a
changed man, continuous family problems, scandals and death.

The second chapter is view into what lead him to deviate his path from the
then contemporary Viennese architecture and to develop a new attitude. His
contempt for tradition and admiration for American industrial functionalism.
And how he was resisted by the society both the bourgeois and labor class.

The third chapter describes his concepts, visions and ideas. A reference to
few of his projects will better help the reader to understand his style.

The fourth chapter looks into his literary achievements for which he is best
known among scholars, architects and academics. His design innovations
other than architecture will help the reader to truly grasp the various facets
of this man. Also the exhibitions and seminars he conducted to market his
new ideas.

At the close includes the exceptional contribution made by him to the

national and international architecture. And our own understanding of him as
a man, a revolutionary, architect, designer, writer and teacher.

This report is intended not only to serve as an information source but also an
attempt to understand and analyze his style and work. How he developed
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and established himself as a renowned architect and attempted to break the
traditions. He is a pioneer of modernist philosophy, his essay “ornament and
crime” best describes the need of modernism in the society at that time. How
from a rebellious youth he became a man who continued to defy and
challenge traditions throughout his life.

CHRONOLOGY

A life in dates

Dec. 10 1870 born in Brno, the only son among the three children of a sculptor and
stonemason

1876 - 1880 Attended primary school at Nová ul. in Brno

Attended the Second Upper Gymnasium in Brno and the Upper

1880 - 1883
Gymnasium in Jihlava

1883 - 1884 Attended the Benedictine Gymnasium at Melk in southern Austria

1885 - 1888 Attended the State Technical College at Liberec

1888 - 1889 Attended and graduated from the State Technical College in Brno

1889 - 1890, Studied architecture at the Dresden Technical University, where the
1892 - 1893 influence of Prof. Gottfried Semper remained

1890 - 1891 Completed basic military training, served as a one-year volunteer

1891 - 1892 Resident in Vienna

1893, 1896 Military service at Uherské Hradiště

1893 - 1896 Visited the United States (Chicago World's Fair, visits to St Louis,
Philadelphia and New York), returning to Vienna via London and Paris

1896 - 1897 Worked in the ateliČr of architect Carl Mayreder in Vienna

1897 His first solo design - the outfitting of the Ebenstein couturierie in Vienna;
the beginning of his theoretical and critical activity in the Viennese Neue
Freie Presse - in scathing essays he distances himself from the Viennese

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 Secession

1899 His first important work - the Café Museum in Vienna

1902 Military service at Kroměříž

July 21 1902 Married the actress Lina Obertimpfler at Lednice

1903 Foundation of Das Andere review

1905 Divorced Lina, partnered dancer Bessie Pruce

1908 Published the essay "Ornament and Crime"

1910 - 1911 Designed and built the Goldmann & Salatsch department store on the
Michaeler Platz opposite the Hofburg in Vienna, causing a great scandal in
which he was supported not only by his friends but also by Otto Wagner

Mar 17 1911 First seminar in Prague, on the theme of "Ornament and Crime"

1912 - 1914,
Ran his own private school in Vienna
1920 - 1922

1913 Seminars in Prague and Olomouc

1917 - 1918 War service in Vienna and St. Pülten

After the dissolution of the monarchy, elects to take Czechoslovak

1918
citizenship

1919 Married the dancer Elsie Altmannová, in Vienna strove to have a Ministry
of Arts created and published "Richtlinien für die Kunstamt" ("Directives
for the Office for Support of the Arts")

1920 Visited the Čapek brothers in Prague

Proposed projects for economical terraced housing for a self-build

1920 - 1921
construction group in Vienna--Lainz

1921 Published an anthology of his critical essays from 1897-1900 in Paris under
the title "Ins Leere gesprochen" ("Spoken into Emptiness")

Lead architect for the urban self-build construction office in Vienna,

1921 - 1924
resolving residential problems

1923 Exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris and became a member

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 Collaborated with the UP works in Brno, managed by Jan Vaněk, and
1924 - 1925 became a member of the editorial board of Vaněk's magazine Bytová
kultura ('Indoor culture').

Lived in Paris and on the French Riviera, making frequent trips to Austria,
1923 - 1928
Germany and Czechoslovakia

1925 Seminars in Prague and Brno on "Economy in Architecture" as part of the

"New Architecture" cycle, and in Brno on the theme of "Housing Estates".
Became an honorary member of the Architects' Club in Prague

1926 Divorced from Elsie; designed and built the house for Tristan Tzara in Paris

1927 The organisers of the construction of the exhibition Werkbund colony "Die
Wohnung" in Stuttgart-Weissenhof reject his participation.

1928 Invited to represent Czechoslovakia at the first CIAM Congress in La

Sarraz; returned to Vienna, and due to projects often stayed in Plzeň
(Pilsen)i

In collaboration with architect Karel Lhota designed and built the Müller
1928 - 1930
Villa in Prague-Střešovice

18. 7. 1929 Married Plzeň photographer Claire Beck in Vienna

1930 Resident in Plzeň, treatment at Zlatá Hora and in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad);
travelled to Paris with Claire.
Spent his 60th birthday in Prague, and awarded an honorary pension from
the City of Brno on the initiative of President T. G. Masaryk.
A retrospective exhibition of his life's work opened at the Hagebund in
Vienna, and a book by H. Kulka and R. Lanyi devoted to Loos published

1931 A travelling retrospective exhibition, organised by the magazine Das Neue

Frankfurt, opened in Frankfurt am Main, later moving to various German
and English cities, and on to Basle; Loos' pupil Heinrich Kulka published a
monograph on his works.
Travelled with Claire to Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy and the
South of France. Treatment at Jˇchymov, Karlovy Vary and at the Prague-
VeleslavĚn sanatorium.

1932 Divorced from Claire

Treatment at Karlovy Vary, St Margaret's Spa near Prachatice and the
Rosenhuegel Sanatorium in Vienna
From the beginning of October to the end of November in Prague for the

9
 last time

23. 8. 1933 Died at the Kalkoburg Sanatorium near Vienna, where he was buried; a
year later his remains were exhumed and moved to the main cemetery in
Vienna

10
 HIS LIFE

Adolf Loos was a Czech-born Austrian architect. He was influental in European Modern
architecture, he repudiated the florid style of the Vienna Secession, Loos became known
for his very modern views on architecture, he contributed to the elaboration of a body of
theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture. Adolf loos was an artchitect who
became more famous for his ideas than for his buildings. He believed that reason should
determine the way we build and he opposed the decorativre art nouveau movement he
was the pioneer of European modern movement. He admires roman architecture, in
ornament and crime and other essays loos described the suppression of decoration as
nessessary for regulatig passion. He introduced first time reinforced structure in
residence.

He is one of the few influencial and colourfully original enouf to successfully reject the
artistic and architectural trends in turn-fo-the centuryu Vienna. Adof loos was not merely
an architect but a philosopher on what he regarded to be a corrupt Viennese society. Both
his structures and penned essays show the indivisualism in this great vienese architect,
and present an exellent critique of his own creations and the society within which he
worked. Establishing the contrast between art and architecture adolf loos identifies thew
two pronged mantra of functionality and evoked emotions of architecture reflecting on

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the perversity of ornamentation too often lauded by the surrounding fin-de-siecle vienese
society’s attempt to hide mediocrity beneath the novelty of modernity.

Adolf loos rank as one of the most important pioneers of modern movement in
architecture . ironically his influence was based largely on a few interior designs and a
body of controvertial essays. Adolf loos’s buildings were rigorous example of beauty,
ranging from controvertial country cottages to planar compositions for storefronts and
residences.

To adolf loos the lack of ornamentation in architecture was a sign of spiritual strength.

EARLY YEARS
Adolf Loos was born in Brunn, Moravia, and Czechoslovakia on December 10, 1870. His
father was a stonemason and a sculptor, and at a young age he received training in his
father's trade however Loos was only nine when his father died. A rebellious boy who
rather lost his bearings, he failed in various attempts to get through architecture school.

EDUCATION
At the age of seventeen, Adolf Loos attended the Royal and Imperial State College at
Reichenberg in Bohemia. From 1890 to 1893, Adolf Loos studied architecture at the
Technical College in Dresden. As a student, Adolf Loos was particularly interested in the
works of the classicist Schinkel and, above all, the works of Vitruvius. He contracted
syphilis in the brothels of Vienna, by 21 he was sterile and in 1893 his mother disowned
him.

MILITARY SERVICE

In 1889 he was drafted for one year of service in the Austrian army.

From 1893 to 1896, he served at Uherské Hradiště

In 1902, he served at Kroměříž

From 1917 to 1918, in the Great War, he served in Vienna and St. Pülten

ESCAPE TO AMERICA
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He went to United States of America and stayed there for three years, he had an uncle
living in Philadelphia, he visited the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, appreciated
the work of Louis Sullivan, visited St. Louis and did odd jobs in New York. The 23-year-
old architect was particularly impressed by what he regarded as the innovative efficiency
of U.S. industrial buildings, clothing, and household furnishings. He worked in the
United States as a mason, a floor layer, and a dishwasher.

MIDDLE YEARS

RETURN TO HOMELAND
Loos returned to Vienna ready to be an architect. He somehow found himself in that
process and returned to Vienna in 1896 a man of taste and intellectual refinement, and
started working in the building firm of Carl Mayreder, immediately entering the
fashionable Viennese intelligentsia. His friends included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arnold
Schönberg, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus. He quickly established himself as the
preferred architect of Vienna’s cultured bourgeoisie. He joined a builders' firm there in
1896.

REVOLUTION

Aphoristic

FAMILY LIFE
On 21st July 1902, he married the actress, Lina Obertimpfler at Lednice. Later in 1905, he
divorced her. And partnered dancer Bessie Pruce.

In 1919, married the dancer Elsie Altmannová. From 1924 to 1928, Lived in Paris and on
the French Riviera, making frequent trips to Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia In
1926, Divorced from Elsie Altmannová.

On 18th July 1929, Married Plzeň photographer Claire Beck in Vienna. During 1930, he
remained a Resident in Plzeň travelled to Paris with Claire. Travelled with Claire to
Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy and the South of France. In 1932, Divorced from
Claire.

From the beginning of October to the end of November 0f 1932, lived in Prague for the
last time.

LATE IN LIFE

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He was diagnosed with cancer in 1918, his stomach appendix and part of his intestine
were removed. For the rest of his life he could only digest ham and cream. He had several
unhappy marriages. By the time he was fifty he was almost completely deaf; in 1928 he
was disgraced by a paedophilia scandal

DEATH
He died on 23rd august 1933, at the Kalkoburg Sanatorium near Vienna, where he was
buried; a year later his remains were exhumed and moved to the main cemetery in
Vienna. At his death in 1933 at 62 he was penniless.

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 DEVIATION
FROM
TRADITION

THE CRISIS OF CULTURE

The cleft between city and country especially bothered loos. In all of their blindness, the
Viennese failed to recognize the responsibility of their city to disseminate culture and
civilization throughout the country side in a process of development. Idealizing the new
world as a land unfettered by aristocratic traditions, the Austrian architect claimed to see
fewer discrepancies between the American city and countryside. Instead, he perceived
America was dissolving unhealthy divisions depended on loos’s consideration of
different criteria of social development and economic activity, making different cultures
seem alternately more primitive and more advanced. This thought contributed to the
models of individual and societal development that progressed linearly from primitive
savagery to modern civilization. This view was linked to a deep-rooted tradition of
modern social scientific thinking that rested upon problematic assumptions of western
superiority.

In view of numerous historical accounts of Viennese theatricality, it is easier to

understand Adolf loos’s contemporary criticism of a culture that bore so much historicist
ornament in its architecture and design of everyday objects that it undermined the very
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idea of modern culture. His designs for building, furniture, and everyday objects were in
part a critique of an urbanity loos regarded as intrusive and grossly out of steps with the
time.

Loos had arrived on this literary scene in 1897, after returning from 3 years in the United
States. Loos supported himself for several years in Vienna by publishing design criticism
in various Viennese newspapers and journals. He published scathing satirical reviews of
Viennese society and cultural groups, diagnosing hypocrisy and cultural anachronism
everywhere.

ADOLF LOOS AND THE CRISIS OF CULTURE 1896- 1931:

May I lead you to the shores of a mountain lake? The sky is blue the water green and
everything is profoundly peaceful. Moun tains and clouds are reflected in the lake, and so
are houses, farmyards, courtyards and chapels. They do not seem man- made but more
like the mountains and trees the clouds and the blue sky . and everything breathes beauty
and tranquility.

Ah, what is that? A false note in this harmony. Like an unwelcum scream. In the center ,
beneath the peasants homes which were created not by them , but by god, stands a villa.
Is it the product of a good or a bad architect? I do not know. I only know that peace ,
tranquility and beaty are no more……..

And I ask yet again: why does the architect both good and bad violater the lake? Like
almost every town dweller, the architect possesses nn culture. He does not have the
security of the peasant to whom this culture is innate. The town dweller is an upstart.

I call culture, that balance of inner and outer man, which alone can guarantee reasonable
thought and action.

Adolf loos, architektur 1910.

Adollf loos’s ultimarte argument against ornament was not only that it was wasteful and
labour and material, but that it invariably entailed a punitive form of craft slavery that
could only be justified for those to whom the highest achievements of burgouies culture
were in accessible/ for those craftsman who could only find their asthetic fulfillment in
the spontaneous creation of ornament. Loos justified the ornamentation of his bespoke
footware- which he would have preferred to be plain – in the following terms: “ we go to
beethovenor Tristan after the cares of the day. My shoe ma

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Er cant. I must not take away his joy as I have nothing to replace it with. But whoever
goes to the ninth symphony and then sits down to design a wallpaper is either a rogue or a
degenerate.

Such challenging ethical and aesthetic pronouncements isolated loos not only from the
secession and his conservative contemporaries, but also from his true successors, those
latter-day purists who even now have yet to comprehend fully the profundity of his
insights.

By the time of his critical essay architectur of 1910, loos had already begun to sense
thefull force of a modern predictament, which persists to this day. Given, as loos argued ,
that the architect from the city was uprooted by definition and hence categorically
alienated from the innate agrarian (or alpine) vernacular of his distant forebears, then it
followed that he could not compensate for this loss by pretending to inherit the
aristocratic culture of western classism. For the urban bourgeoisie \- whence he
invariably came and whom he naturally served- were, whatever else they might be,
patently not aristocrats. That much was already clear to loos in 1898 when he wrote in die
potemkinsche stadt, his satire on the ring strasse:

Whenever I stroll along the ring. I always feel as if a modern potempkin had wanted to
make somebody believe he had been transported into a city of aristocrats. All that the
Italian renaissance could inhabit….viennese landlords were delighted with the idea of
owning a mansion and the tenants were equally pleased to be able to live in one.

Loos’s solution to this dilemma , as posited in architektur, was to argue that most modern
building tasks were appropriate vehicles for building rather than architecture: ‘only a very
small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else,
everything that serves a purpose, should be excluded from the realms of art.’

At the same time loos considered that all culture depended on a certain continuity with
the past; above all, on a consensus as to a typification. He could not accept the romantic
notion of the highly gifted indivisual transcending the historical limits of his own epoch.
Intead of self- conscious ornamental design , loos favoured understated dress, anontmous
furniture and efficient plumbing of the anglo-saxon middle class. Naturally, in this
respect he had America in mind rather than England. In this he anticipated le corbusier’s
notion of the objet- type, the refined, normative object, spontaneously produced by the
craft- based industries of the society. To this end, objects of Anglo- saxon affinity, such
as clothing , spots wear and personal accessories appeared as advertisements in loos’s
short- lived periodical das andere (the other) of 1903, significantly subtitled ‘ a journal
for the introduction of western civili zation into Austria.’

Despite all his anglophilia, the ‘vernacular’ of the English arts and crafts movement (as
documented in Hermann muthesius’s book das englische haus of 1904 ) presented loos
with a problem: where was one to draw a line between such architecture, however
sensible and convienient , and the self- conscious , craft- based hermetic fantasies of the
17
 secession ? since for loos the last western architect of stature h ad been schinkel, his self-
imposed predicament seems to have been how to combine the informal comfort of the
anglo- saxon interior with the aspirities of classical form.

DENYING THE ORNAMENT; ROAD TO SIMPLICITY

REASONS FOR DEVIATION

SOCIO-POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF VIENNA

IMPRESSION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

MAJOR INFLUENCES

Adolf Loos was impressed by the efficiency of American architecture, and he admired
the work of Louis Sullivan

 In 1896, returned to Vienna and worked for architect Carl Mayreder

 In 1898, Loos opened his own practice in Vienna and became friends with philospher
Ludwig Wittgenstein, expressionist composer Arnold Schönberg, satirist Karl Kraus,
and other free-thinkers.

PSYCHOLOGICAL NEED FOR ORNAMENT IN VIENNA

RESISTANCE BY THE BOURGEOIS

OPPOSITION OF THE LABOR CLASS

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19
 DESIGN
PHILOSOPHY AND
WORK
20
CONCEPTS AND IDEAS

To understand fully Loos’s radical, innovative outlook on life, his admiration for the
classical tradition, his passion for all aspects of design, lifestyle and taste, and the breadth
of his ideas, it is essential to read his own collected writings “Spoken into the Void” .

Loos became known for his very modern views on architecture. He didn't see
architecture as just an art, he saw it as a way of updating people's lifestyles to truly more
modern ones. Loos also felt that all building methods should be supported by reason, he
believed that if an architectural work could not be justified on rational grounds, then it
was just for show and should be eliminated.

To Adolf Loos, there was always a big difference between architecture and art. He saw
architecture mostly as a way of helping the people of his time move forward into a more
modern age by designing things that were more modern and unlike other things being
built at that time. But Loos believed that architects should use the artistic ability to help
the people out, and give the customers what they want.

This included the designing of furniture, graphics, carpeting and domestic appliances. He
thought that it was better to be original and come up with his own original ideas instead
of designing things that have already been designed. In this way the cities will be
expanded and made more modern, forming the metropolises that exist today.

Loos believed that architects should not duplicate styles from the past but they should
definitely know about traditional styles. Many of his designs included interiors, which he
believed were very important to creating good modern architecture. He put a part of
himself into everything that he created. In this way, the architect can express his own
thoughts through his own architectural language. This so accurately captures what Loos
attempted to do with his architecture. Loos really put his heart and his beliefs into his
designs. His work was very unique, he had his own style. Knowing the traditional
architecture will eliminate any chance of copying created architecture. Another point of
contention decried by Adolf Loos was the masking of the true nature and beauty of
materials by useless and indecent ornament. In his 1898 essay entitled "Principles of
Building," Adolf Loos wrote that the true vocabulary of architecture lies in the materials
themselves, and that a building should remain "dumb" on the outside. In his own work,
Adolf Loos contrasted austere facades with lavish interiors. Much like Mies van der
Rohe, Adolf Loos arrived at the reduction of architecture to a purely technical tautology
that emphasized the simple assemblage of materials. This article was followed by the
1910 essay entitled "Architecture," in which Adolf Loos explained important
contradictions in design: between the interior and the exterior, the monument and the
house, and art works and objects of function. To Adolf Loos, the house did not belong to
art because the house must please everyone, unlike a work of art, which does not need to
please anyone. The only exception, that is, the only constructions that belong both to art
21
and architecture, were the monument and the tombstone. Adolf Loos felt that the rest of
architecture, which by necessity must serve a specific end, must be excluded from the
realm of art.

"The house should be like by all. Unlike a work of art, which does not require everybody
to like it. The work of art is the private affair of the artist. The house is not. The work of
art is sent out into the world, without anyone needing it. The house fulfils certain
requirements. The work of art is not answerable to anyone, the house to everyone. A
work of art seeks to draw people out of their comfort. The house should serve comfort.
The work of art is revolutionary, the house conservative. The work of art shows humanity
new paths and thinks of the future; the house thinks of the present. Man loves everything
that serves his comfort. He hates all that seeks to draw him from his customary and
secure state, and all that constricts him. And thus I love the house and hate art."

Adolf Loos, Architektura ('Architecture'), 1910.

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 Adolf Loos's buildings were rigorous examples of austere beauty, ranging
from conventional country cottages to planar compositions for storefronts and residences.
His built compositions were little known outside his native Austria during his early years
of practice.

Adolf Loos 's private residential works were characterized by unembellished white
facades. As a result, these buildings have routinely been associated with the work of Le
Corbusier, J. J. Oud, and others. Among the more famous were the much published
Steiner House (1910) and Scheu House (1912), both in Vienna. One of Adolf Loos's best
known projects was the entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922. Adolf
Loos 's surprising combination of Doric columns at ground level with modern skyscraper
technology indicated that Adolf Loos was less doctrinaire about ornament than his
modernist colleagues believed. To Adolf Loos, the polished black granite columns,
durable classical symbols in a building, were altogether useful and therefore beautiful.

Adolf Loos was appointed to the post of Chief Architect of the Housing Department of
the Commune of Vienna. His projects during this time were primarily con structions
modulated around simply-composed layouts utilizing basic construction technology.
Flexible interior arrangements were achieved through the use of movable partitions.
Exteriors were typical of suburban housing Vegetable gardens, which were considered
essential extensions of the dwellings, were assigned high priorities. Adolf Loos soon
grew disillusioned with his work as chief architect. As a result of his opposition to the
then current ideology of Austrian Marxism, Adolf Loos resigned from his post the same
year Adolf Loos was appointed. Adolf Loos moved to France in 1922. Adolf Loos lived
there until 1927, dividing his time between Paris and the Rivier with frequent journeys to
Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. Adolf Loos was received enthusiastically by the
French avantgarde. Adolf Loos also exhibited regularly at d'Automne, and became the
first foreigner to be elected to its jury. Adolf Loos built some of his most significant
works during this period. These included The Tzara House in Paris (1926-1927), Villa
Moller in Vienna (1928), Villa Muller (1930), Villa Winternitz in Prague (1931-1932)
and the Khuner Country House at Payerbach in lower Austria. Monolithic in nature, these
works contrasted greatly with the glass architecture that dominated rationalist styles of
the 1920s. Once again, Adolf Loos as in a posture of contentious indifference to
fluctuations in current taste.

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 In 1930, on his sixtieth birthday, Adolf Loos was officially recognized as a master of
architecture. Adolf Loos was bestowed with an annual honorific income by the president
of the Czechoslovakian Republic. His collected essays were published the following year.

Stylistic Features:

Homes designed by Adolf Loos featured:

 Straight lines
 Clear planar walls and windows
 Clean curves
 Raumplan ("plan of volumes") system of contiguous, merging spaces
 Each room on a different level, with floors and ceilings set at different heights

RAUMPLAN

"My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces (cubes). I do not design floor
plans, facades, sections. I design spaces. For me, there is no ground floor, first floor etc....
For me, there are only contiguous, continual spaces, rooms, anterooms, terraces etc.
Storeys merge and spaces relate to each other. Every space requires a different height: the
dining room is surely higher than the pantry, thus the ceilings are set at different levels.
To join these spaces in such a way that the rise and fall are not only unobservable but also
practical, in this I see what is for others the great secret, although it is for me a great
matter of course. Coming back to your question, it is just this spatial interaction and
spatial austerity that thus far I have best been able to realise in Dr Müller's house"

24
 ....

The composition of the inner, primarily residential spaces in the family houses of Adolf
Loos is based on entirely unique architectural thought, on the principle of the spatial
structure of the plan, the so-called "Raumplan". "Raumplan" is embodied amongst other
things by Loos' understanding of economy and functionality, and Loos applied it in his
designs for social housing. "Raumplan" rests on the stepped heights of the individual
rooms according to their function and symbolic importance. The organisation and
division of interior space delineated by "Raumplan" can also be traced in the outer walls,
on the facades. A vertical plane of undecorated outer walls runs around the lower level of
the plan, and only on the upper floors does it divide into several mutually offset levels,
which form for example the plinth of the underground rooms or a protruding balcony. As
a result the facade appears to be a composition of offset and recessed planes, strictly
respecting lines.

While Adolf Loos did not regard himself as an architect, his opinions and above all his
work influenced generations of his contemporaries and followers, both architects and
generally arts-minded, educated men and women. His position and works placed him in
the pre-war "other Austria", the free-thinking alternative to the solidly conservative social
classes loyal to the Habsburg throne. Among his close friends in the literary,
philosophical and artistic circles were the writers Karl Kraus and Peter Altenberg, the
painter and graphic artist Oskar Kokoschka, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and
many others. The culture of the "other Austria" could only flourish to the full in the more
tolerant post-war environment of the Austrian Republic, although even here the Loos the
eternal warrior found enough stimuli to sharp criticism. The foundations of the
intellectual space of open discussion and the free clash of ideas, however, were laid as
early as at the turn of the century, and Loos was one

The articles and seminars by which Adolf Loos advocated sobriety, pragmatism,
economy and rationality in architectural thought, and his architectural and interior design
projects (particularly the Goldmann & Salatsch department store) provoked fierce debate
25
in Vienna even before the Great War. The radicalism of literary opinion was corrected by
Loos in his works, using noble materials, an austere wrapping contrasting with
comfortable interior fittings and elegant tastes. Among his pioneering acts was a radical
departure from the Secession and all figural and ornamental decoration, which of course
he replaced by the natural structure of selected stones, wood and other fine materials, and
the entrance of the term "Raumplan" ("spatial plan") into architectural practice. Despite
his character of social feeling he was not an advocate of social experiment through
architecture, but through his works prepared the way for Constructivism and
Functionalism.

PROJECTS

 Café Museum, at Vienna, Austria, 1898 to 1899.

 Wohnung Leopold Langer, at Vienna, Austria, 1901.
 Villa Karma, Clarens, at Montreux, Switzerland, 1904 to 1906.
 Wohnung Rudolf Kraus, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
 Schmuckfedern-gesch Sigmund Steiner, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
 American Bar, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
 Wohnung Bellak, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
 Schneidersalon Knize, Vienna, Austria, 1909 - 1913.
 House on the Michaelerplatz, at Vienna, Austria, 1910 to 1911.
 Steiner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1910.
 Scheu House, Vienna, at Austria, 1912 to 1913.
 Horner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1921.
 Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
 Villa Stross, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
 Landhaus Spanner, at Gumpoldskirchen, Austria, 1923.
26
 Big shop (project), at Alexandria, Egypt, 1924.
 Tristan Tzara House, at Paris, France, 1926 to 1927.
 Moller House, Vienna, at Austria, 1927 to 1928.
 Wohnung Hans Brummel, at Vienna, Austria, 1929.
 Wohnung Willy Hirsch, at Pilsen, Czech Republic, 1929.
 Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria, 1930.
 Villa M? Prague, Czech Republic, 1930.
 Wohnung Leo Brummel, at Vienna, Austria, 1930.
 M?House, at Prague, Czech Republic, 1930.
 Landhaus Khuner, Payerbach, Austria, 1930.
 Bojko House, at Vienna, Austria, 1929 to 1930.
 Mitzi House, at Vienna, Austria, 1931.
 House in the Vienna Werbund, Austria, 1930 to 1932.
 Semler House, at Pilsen, Czech Republic, 1932.

27
PRE- ORNAMENT AND
CRIME

28
1899 Café Museum, Vienna:

In 1899, Adolf Loos designed the Cafe Museum, which proved to be one of the most
notable projects of his early work. The austere interior was a mature architectural
embodiment of his theorized renunciation of stylish ornamentation. The starkness of the
"untattooed" facade that inspired the popular name Cafe Nihilismus asserted Adolf Loos
's developing theory of the predominance of technique over decoration. The cafe also
affirms his aesthetic equation of beauty and utility by bringing every object back to its
purely utilitarian value. To Adolf Loos, that which is beautiful must also be useful. Thus,
the only elements Adolf Loos used to pattern the vaulted ceiling of the cafe interior were
strips of brass, which also served as electrical conductors. A more refined work, the tiny
Karntner Bar Vienna (1907), reveals in microcosm the architect's great sensitivity to
spatial manipulation. Once again, Adolf Loos showed his fondness for the expressive use
of natural materials as Adolf Loos skillfully manipulated classical materials including
marble, onyx, wood, and mirror, into a careful composition of visual patterns.

29
30
Kärntner Bar (American Bar)1908:

Kärntner Passage (off Kärntner Strasse)

1010 Vienna
This small bar, just off the Kärntner Strasse in central Vienna, show Loos' combination of
simple, unadorned forms with opulent materials and fine, simple detailing to give a
modern, rich impression.
Mirrors covering the whole width of the wall above the bar, and the parallel wall
opposite, mulitplies the apparent size of the small room, giving the image of an array of
seaminlgy freestanding columns. The simple geometry of the columns and joists in this
image matches that in Loos's House on Michaelerplatz of the same period.
Seating is in small booths around three backlit tables, which glow white in the dark,
yellowish brown atmosphere of the bar.

31
32
POST- ORNAMENT AND
CRIME

33
House on the Michaelerplatz, at Vienna, Austria, 1910 to 1911.

The House of Michaelerplatz is Loos' most famous building, and – though it is hard to
see now – at the time, his most controversial. One of the first modern office buildings in
Vienna, the steel concrete construction provides wide structural spans with flexible space
use. (The marble pillars across the storefront entrance are not load-bearing.)
The building occupies a commanding position opposite the imperial Hofburg, and
provides four stories of apartments above the business floors. The business floors were
originally a gentlemen's outfitter, but are now a bank
The facade of the lower stories is quite ornate, chiefly through the rich, green Cipollino
(Greek) marble. Inside the business floors are opulent through the richness of their
materials, contrasting a modern minimalism in the detailing.
The controversial part of the design was the bareness of the undecorated white facade of
the higher, residential stories. Construction was even stopped in 1910 in reaction to the
simplicity of these floors. The flower boxes were a compromise form of decoration to
resolve the dispute.

34
35
36
Steiner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1910:

Steiner House
St. Veit-Gasse 10
Vienna

The Steiner house was designed for the painter Lilly Steiner and her husband Hugo. It is
located in a Vienna suburb where the planning regulations were strong enough to have a
direct impact on the final design.
Loos was a remarkable architect when working within the limits imposed by the shape of
the site or external forces like the planning codes. The regulations only permitted a street
front with one story and a dormer window (a window built in a sloping roof). The large
window at the front brings light into the atelier of the painter, which was situated on the
first level. The garden facade is three storied and with the use of the semi-circular metal-
sheathed roof Loos manages to articulate the transition between the front and garden
elevations.
The Steiner house became a highly influential example of modern architecture; it played
a significant role in establishing Loos' reputation as a modern architect to the audience

37
outside of the Viennese community, and became an obligatory reference for architects
during the 1920s and 30s. Almost all of the literature of the Modern Movement has
reproduced the garden façade as an indisputable example of radical rationalist modern
architecture.
The stripped façade was rapidly assimilated into the formal purism of the 1920s and was
the major reason for the success of the building. In this respect it is interesting to note the
comments of the writer Panayotis Tournikiotis* who states that
'This house renews classical tradition, is not a desire to negate history.'

As the authorities would only grant planning permission for a one-storey house with a
converted mansard roof, while the clients wanted a comprehensive spatial programme,
the compromise was this unusual piece of architecture. Loos arched a metal roof down to
the ceiling of the ground floor at the front of the house, but turned it into a flat wood-and-
cement roof at the apex. It was thus possible to develop the garden front on three storeys.
The rear faade is smooth and symmetrical like the front; the two outer window axes
protrude like projections."

— Peter Gossel and Gabriele Leuthauser. Architecture in the Twentieth Century. p87.

"Built in the same year as the essay Architecktur was published (1910), Hugo Steiner's
house is one of Loos's most significant and well-known works. Because of its severe and
advanced modernity of form it has been adopted in the histories of contemporary
architecture as an example of the phase of transition and an anticipation of the language
of Rationalism.

"In this view certain aspects have been stressed, such as functional coherence, the
absence of ornaments, spatial economy, use of the flat roof on the garden side, the
reduction of the external image to a pure white shell. All these aspects are undoubtedly
present in the work and, moreover, exerted an unquestionable influence on the stylistic
revolution of the postwar years. But, in emphasizing the elements of anticipation, the
evolutionistic interpretation has shown its limits, leaving unexplored the theoretical
weight and specifics of methodology of Loos's design, which it reduces to a trivial search
for functional solutions.

One far from negligible fact that it fails to grasp is that the surprising modernity of the
Steiner House is the result not so much of a process of abstraction as of an updated
tradition. Proof of this is afforded by just those elements that appear to be the newest
ones, such as the total absence of decoration on the outside walls (in fact, plastered with
simple lime mortar like the old Viennese houses) or the use of the curved sheet-metal
roof (in turn drawn from the local historical building culture).

"In short, the disruptive and innovative character of this work derives from an analytical
and selective reflection on history, and not yet from the desire for the denial of history on
which the Bauhaus will build its theories after the war, and still less from an adherence to
functionalism."

— From Benedetto Gravagnuolo. Adolf Loos: Theory and Works. p139.

38
The Creator's Words

"...I have discovered the following truth and present it to the world: cultural evolution is
equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use. I thought I was giving
the world a new source of pleasure with this; it did not thank me for it. People were sad
and despondent. What oppressed them was the realization that no new ornament could be
created. What every Negro can do, what all nations and ages have been able to do, why
should that be denied to us, men of the nineteenth century? What humanity had achieved
in earlier millennia without decoration has been carelessly tossed aside and consigned to
destruction. We no longer possess carpenters' benches from the Carolingian period, but
any trash that exhibited the merest trace of decoration was collected and cleaned up, and
splendid palaces built to house it. People walked sadly around the showcases, ashamed of
their won impotence. Shall every age have a style of its own and our age alone be denied
one? By style they meant decoration. But I said: Don't weep! Don't you see that the
greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We have
conquered ornament; we have won through to lack of ornamentation. Look, the time is
nigh, fulfillment awaits us. Soon the streets of the town will glisten like with walls. Like
Zion, the holy city, the metropolis of heaven. Then we shall have fulfillment."

— Adolf Loos. From Ludwig MŸnz and Gustav KŸnstler. Adolf Loos: Pioneer of
Modern Architecture. P226-227.

Details:

St. Veitgasse 10, Vienna 13

the facade on St. Veitgasse has been so radically tampered with, the original curved and
plated roof having been replaced by a pitched roof, that it is almost unrecognizable. The
interior has also been subjected to substantial alterations.

39
40
41
42
43
Scheu House, Vienna, at Austria, 1912 to 1913:
The Scheu house was built for Gustav and Helen Scheu. Mr. Scheu was a lawyer and
Viennese intellectual aligned with the Garden City Movement. He was also very aware
about the significance of having Loos design his new house and it was most likely his
progressive sensibilities and his unconditional support to the project which saw it come to
a successful conclusion.
The house which was to be located in the Hietzing area, met resistance from the building
authorities from the planning stage. The suburb of Hietzing is a wealthy neighborhood
where most of the houses are symmetrical and of neo-classical style. The residents of the
suburb were shocked by the new aesthetics that the house would bring into their area and
saw the house as a disgrace and an insult to common sense. Loos remained firm behind
his rational decisions; the only concession that he made was to plant ivy on the garden
façade to make it less severe. The planning authority asked Loos to draft proposals for the
lot next door, showing how the house could fit with the surroundings; that plan was never
built, but the Scheu house was.
The Scheu house is definitely alien to its surroundings, and has a striking form. The
house is an asymmetrical stepped volume. The building contains two dwellings, the main
house and a renting apartment located on the highest module. The door at the right side of
the building, which looks like the main access, is actually the private door to the small
apartment. The main entrance of the house is on the left side. Because of the stepped

44
form, each of the east-facing bedrooms gains a generous balcony in front. The terraces
recede four meters, and the building is 16 meters long in total, with all the different size
windows based on the combination of a single module.
This building is probably the first in which a flat roof was used as an outdoor terrace.
What is certain is that these terraces played an important role in the development of 20th
century architecture in a time where the use of flat roofs was subject to a great deal of
controversy.
The interiors are Richardsonian, with the walls covered in dark oak in the social areas and
wood painted white in the bedrooms. This distinction of the spaces between public or
private interiors reflects the notion of spatial domesticity that Loos had developed.

45
Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922:
This dwelling was built for Joseph and Marie Rufer. It is considered by critics as the first
built house that portrays in its totality Loos' concept of Raumplan regarding the interior
spatial organization of the building.
The house has the shape of a cube with the external walls serving as a structural shell.
These four bearing walls contain the house within a small area (just 10x10 meters). At the
center of the volume, a column articulates the spaces under the Raumplan logic and also
conceals the plumbing for the water and heating. The Raumplan also affects the exterior
since the elevations are in part a reflection of the interior organization; however, in order
to achieve a balanced composition Loos also gave attention to the resulting contrast
between the naked white walls and the dark patches of the windows.
Although it can be said that the surfaces of the house are completely bare, with even the
window frames stripped of any superfluous parts, there are three other elements of the
façade that remain intriguing. Loos included in the elevations a squashed frieze and a
cornice to top the cubic volume. The cornice projects out from the façade and slightly
covers the view of the frieze, which apart from having an extremely elongated proportion
and being almost imperceptible as an element in the façade remains completely blank.
The third element is a complement to the previous two, a rectangular molding depicting a
Parthenon frieze and positioned low on the street front. It is a piece that completes the
balance of the elevations but it is also an ornament, a fragment of classical work. Some
critics have stated that this frieze not only balances the formal composition between voids
and surface but also balances the purist abstraction of the cube with the figurative. In a
way it also places the house and its ideals into the wider picture of the history of western
architecture and argues in favor of a classical image of Loos instead of the architect as a
radical functionalist. This seemingly straightforward house remains rich in subtle
complexities that still challenge our understanding of space.

"...The house has four floors, plus a basement where the janitors lodging and services are
located. The living area is on the first floor while the upper floors are used for the
nighttime zone. The whole is concluded by a garret (with various service rooms and a
terrace). The pivot of the composition is the single central pillar that serves both a
structural function and to conduct the electrical, water and heating systems. The structural
scheme is in fact extremely simple, made up of the load-bearing external walls and the
above- mentioned single pillar. This has the advantage of reducing the internal dividing
walls to a minimum, and they are largely replaced by thin wooden partitions or by pieces
of furniture. ...Thus we find confirmation of the logical priority of an internal planning
that projects an indirect, involuntary semantics onto the exterior, producing an impression
of transparency."

— from Benedetto Gravagnuolo. Adolf Loos: Theory and Works. p172.

The Creator's Words:

46
"Every material possesses a formal language which belongs to it alone and no material
can take on the forms proper to another. As these forms develop out of each individual
material's potential for application and from the building procedures proper to it, they
have grown up with and through the material. No material permits any intrusion on its
own repertoire of forms. Anyone who still dares to make such an intrusion is branded by
the world as a forger. Art has nothing to do with forgery, with the lie."

47
.

Simple boxy massing with somewhat irregular window arrangements.

48
49
50
51
52
53
Villa Stross, at Vienna, Austria, 1922:
The Strasser house was a remodeling of an existing dwelling. The planned modifications
for the interior were quite extensive and the new reconfiguration required structural
modifications to the house, but the exterior volume of the building was not significantly
changed. However one of the changes was the use of the semi-circular metal-sheathed
vault to create a roof attic like in the Steiner house, which would provide another
accessible floor. In the case of the Strasser house, the vault was implemented in the front
and garden façades.
Another sign of Loos that can be seen from the exterior is the identification of
protuberances with individual interiors. This form of organization was an early stage
during the developing of the Raumplan, and later disappears in favor of a more coherent
massing. The interiors are typical Loosian; each space is articulated with different
materials of rich textural qualities, creating a varied and complex sequence of interiors.

54
55
Moller House, Vienna, at Austria, 1927 to 1928:
The realisation of this, the most important of Adolf Loos' works in the Czech Lands,
would have been unthinkable without the perfect understanding that existed between the
architect and the investors - the M¸ller family. Their harmonious relationship,
underpinned by mutual respect and faithful friendship, created the ideal foundations for
the building of the architectural work. During their many consultations the M¸llers
revealed much about their private life to the architect, who was endowed with intuition
and social sensitivity. For their contentment he created a multi-purpose, universal
dwelling combining both formal and intimate functions. In this way a work was created
that spoke of architecture rooted in an intellectual basis, now both unusual and yet
contemporary. Known as an innovative landmark of early modernist architecture, the
Villa Müller embodies Loos' ideas of economy and functionality. The spatial design,
known as Raumplan, is evident in the multi-level parts of individual rooms, indicating
their function and symbolic importance. Raumplan is exhibited in the interior as well as
the exterior.
“ My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces (cubes). I do not
design floor plans, facades, sections. I design spaces. For me, there is no
ground floor, first floor, etc...For me, there are only contiguous,
continual spaces, rooms, anterooms, terraces, etc. Storeys merge and
spaces relate to each other.[3] ”
56
Completed in the same year as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in Paris and Mies van der
Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat in Brno, the Villa Müller is Loos’s defining modern house in an
era when rich, progressive industrialists were the source of modernist commissions. In
Loos’s case the client owned a building company pioneering the use of reinforced
concrete, so the house was a particularly relevant showcase.
Loos uses the different levels of the Raumplan to create a careful “architectural
promenade” from outside to inside. The first entrance way is low, with strong but dark
colors such as deep green/blue tiles. This opens onto a cloakroom area that is generous in
plan, brighter with white walls and a big window, but still low. At the far end a short,
modest staircase takes the visitor round a right-angle bend, emerging dramatically
between marble pillars into the double-height, open-plan sitting room.
The promenade continues past the raised dining room to the upper floors of the house, the
Raumplan providing unusual and exciting views into adjacent rooms. On the top level is
a roof terrace, with a “window” in the freestanding end wall to frame the view of Prague
cathedral.

57
58
59
Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria, 1930:
The Khuner Country House is a late work of Loos, completed when he was sixty, in the
same year as the Villa Müller in Prague. Like the Villa Müller, a restrained (in this case
somewhat traditional) facade hides a subtle interior design of different room heights –
Loos' Raumplan.
The house is organized around a central, double-height living and dining space, with the
upstairs landing forming a gallery around three sides. On the fourth side, a full-height
picture window provides dramatic views of the Alpine meadows.
The house was built as a country home for a Viennese food manufacturer, Paul Khuner.
The rooms are tailored to each of his family members, with an impressive number
additionally for guests. Khuner himself died only two years after the house was
completed, and his widow left for America in 1938. The house has spent most of its life
in its present role as a restaurant and hotel, still run by the family that bought it in 1959.
The Raumplan design gives different heights, and very different characters, to the
different spaces within the house. Mr Khuner's study combines a small, cosy feel
emphasised by the low ceiling and the steps down into the room from the main hall,
combined with generous, bright views of the scenery from the outsize landscape window
Conversion of the country house into a hotel has necessitated some changes, such as extra
bathrooms, but the details of the house, and indeed of the individual family members'
rooms, have been carefully preserved.

"Contemporary to the whitewashed masterpieces of his last phase... this country house
that is so vernacular, so anachronistically alpine, so rustic, raises a theoretical question. It
has to be asked if, or to what extent, this manifest contradiction of languages reveals a
poetic dissociation, a sort of architectural schizophrenia." "...Loos...rationally explores
the possibilities of artisan skill within the limits of an unbiased logic that is founded on
the potential of the material. This detachment is corroborated by the introduction of
significant technical innovations into the rural building pattern, such as the opening of
large windows onto the lower floor, the strong overhang of the roof and the use of sheet
metal for the roofing itself."

— from Benedetto Gravagnuolo. Adolf Loos: Theory and Works. p204-205.

The Creator's Words:

"As ornament is no longer organically linked with our culture, it is also no longer an
expression of our culture. Ornament as created today has no connection with us, has no
human connections at all, no connection with the world as it is constituted. It cannot be
developed. ...The artist always used to stand at the forefront of humanity, full of health
and vigour. But the modern ornamentalist is a straggler, or a pathological case. He rejects
even his own products within three years. To cultivated people they are unbearable
immediately, others are aware of their unbearableness only after some years....Modern
ornament has no forbears and no descendants, no past and no future. It is joyfully
60
welcomed by uncultivated people, to whom the true greatness of our time is a closed
book, and after a short period is rejected."

61
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63
64
65
66
Woinovichgasse 13, 15, 17 and 19, 1931:

Werkbundsiedlung
Vienna XIII
Austria
The Werkbundsiedlung at the western edge of Vienna is one of several socially and
architecturally progressive settlements created around Europe in the late 1920s and early
1930s, together with others at Stuttgart (Weissenhof), Breslau, Prague, Stockholm and
elsewhere. The architectural innovators of the day were assigned plots in a new
residential settlement, to create contemporary answers to low-cost family housing.
The Vienna Werkbundsiedlung has a mix of apartment blocks and individual houses, by
international architects including Gerrit Rietveld, Richard Neutra and others as well as
the local Adolf Loos.
Loos' two semi-detached houses are based on his Raumplan architecture with complex
volumes and heights, keeping the open gallery and double-height central room of his
larger, grander work (such as the Khuner house outside Vienna, also designed with
Heinrich Kulka), but working here at a more domestic scale.
The opulent marble of his grander buildings is missing from these workers' houses, which
therefore rely even more on the effective spaces and light created by the unusual
Raumplan arrangement.

67
68
LITERARY AND OTHER
CONTRIBUTIONS
69
LOOS AS A WRITER/CRITIQUE
Loos early and formative writings give him a significant relationship to other late-
nineteenth century rhetorical masters, who together make up a group known as
“Viennese language circle” because of their commitment to language as0 tool of
cultural reform.

Muck of the Viennese society exhibited an increased tendency to embrace

theatricality in cultural forms and behaviors. It is not surprising therefore that
theatrical performance and social dissembling figured as central themes in the work
of Arnold Schnitzler and Robert Musil.

Adolf Loos did not directly address architecture in his writings. Instead, Adolf Loos
examined a wide range of social ills, which Adolf Loos identified as the motivating
factors behind the struggle for a transformation of everyday life. Adolf Loos 's writings
focused increasingly on what Adolf Loos regarded as the excess of decoration in both
traditional Viennese design and in the more recent products of the Vienna Secession and
the Wiener Werkstatte. In 1898, in the pages of the review Ver Sacrum, which was an
organ of the Wiener Secession, Adolf Loos published an essay that marked the beginning
of a long theoretical opposition to the then popular art noveau movement.

It was this hypocricy and seemingly decadent frills that gave rise to radical cultural
critics like Adolf Loos.

I n 1897, in the pages of The Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, Adolf Loos initiated a series
of polemic articles that later established his international reputation. Adolf Loos did not
directly address architecture in his writings. Instead, Adolf Loos examined a wide range
of social ills, which Adolf Loos identified as the motivating factors behind the struggle
for a transformation of everyday life. Adolf Loos's writings focused increasingly on what
Adolf Loos regarded as the excess of decoration in both traditional Viennese design and
in the more recent products of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstatte. In 1898,
in the pages of the review Ver Sacrum, which was an organ of the Wiener Secession,
Adolf Loos published an essay that marked the beginning of a long theoretical opposition
to the then popular art noveau movement.

What sets the Austrian architect and critic apart from the other modernists is his writings
and mastery on rhetoric—only Le Corbusier comes close towriting so eloquently and in
surpassing Loos in influencing the architectural thought through the written word. If Loos
is known for his writing, none is more famous than his lecture and subsequent essay,
“Ornament and Crime” (Ornament und Verbrechen).

To Adolf Loos, the lack of ornament in architecture was a sign of spiritual strength.
Adolf Loos referred to the opposite, excessive ornamentation, as criminal - not for

70
abstract moral reasons, but because of the economics of labor and wasted materials in
modern industrial civilization. Adolf Loos argued that because ornament was no longer
an important manifestation of culture, the worker dedicated to its production could not be
paid a fair price for his labor. "The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of
ornament from useful objects", Loos proclaimed, thus linking the optimistic sense of the
linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying
evolution to cultural contexts. In the essay, Loos's "passion for smooth and precious
surfaces"[1] informs his expressed philosophy that ornamentation can have the effect of
causing objects to go out of style and thus become obsolete. It struck him that it was a
crime to waste the effort needed to add ornamentation, when the ornamentation would
cause the object to soon go out of style. Loos introduced a sense of the "immorality" of
ornament, describing it as "degenerate", its suppression as necessary for regulating
modern society. He took as one of his examples the tattooing of the "Papuan" and the
intense surface decorations of the objects about him—Loos considered the Papuan not to
have evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man, who, should he
tattoo himself, would either be considered a criminal or a degenerate.

The essay rapidly became a theoretical manifesto and a key document in modernist
literature and was widely circulated abroad. Le Corbusier later attributed "an Homeric
cleansing" of architecture to the work. The essay was written when Art Nouveau, which
Loos had excoriated even at its height in 1900, was about to show a new way of modern
art. The essay is important in articulating some moralizing views, inherited from the Arts
and Crafts movement, which would be fundamental to the Bauhaus design studio and
helped define the ideology of Modernism in architecture.

Another point of contention decried by Adolf Loos was the masking of the true nature
and beauty of materials by useless and indecent ornament. In his 1898 essay entitled
"Principles of Building," Adolf Loos wrote that the true vocabulary of architecture lies in
the materials themselves, and that a building should remain "dumb" on the outside. In his
own work, Adolf Loos contrasted austere facades with lavish interiors. Much like Mies
van der Rohe, Adolf Loos arrived at the reduction of architecture to a purely technical
tautology that emphasized the simple assemblage of materials. This article was followed
by the 1910 essay entitled "Architecture," in which Adolf Loos explained important
contradictions in design: between the interior and the exterior, the monument and the
house, and art works and objects of function. To Adolf Loos, the house did not belong to
art because the house must please everyone, unlike a work of art, which does not need to
please anyone. The only exception, that is, the only constructions that belong both to art
and architecture, were the monument and the tombstone. Adolf Loos felt that the rest of
architecture, which by necessity must serve a specific end, must be excluded from the
realm of art.

Even a simple survey course will mouth the received opinion that Loos was militantly
against ornamentation, and note the precociousness of this short, barbed denunciation of
decoration. It has often been noted that Loos’s masterpiece had a subterranean influence

71
on the giants of high modernist architecture. Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius credited
Loos with being the first to advocate the radical elimination of all ornamentation in
buildings.

Loos’s writing as a whole is thus often read as one point on the timeline of architectural
modernism’s development.

This received opinion is problematic. On January 21, 1910, Loos did lecture onthis
subject for nearly a half-hour at the Akademiscehr Verband fur Literatur und Musik of
Vienna [the Fremden Blatt of January 22 reports on the lecture].” He repeated the lecture
in 1913 in Vienna and in Copenhagen. These lectures were followed by a French
translation of the notes as an essay under the same title in Les Cahiers d’aujourd’ hui of
June 1913, and were also released in the second volume of L’Esprit nouveau (November
15, 1920). The text did not appear in German until 1929 (Frankfurter Zeitung, October
24), after which it was published many times. This brief historical account rectifies the
widespread theory that the suppression of ornament in modern architecture was in part a
consequence of an article published in Vienna in 1908, under the title of “Ornament and
Crime”.

1 Loos, Adolf. Lecture. 21 Jan 1910.

The Will to Ornament Chapter 1:

ESSAY ORNAMENT AND CRIME

SYNOPSIS AND UNDERSTANDING

“The case of the anti-ornamentalists Crime.” One would search in vain for this article
which, in reality, does not exist. It should be dated from 1920, the year of its publication
in L’esprit nouveau. Overall the essay is distillation of the ideas Loos began developing
in newspaper articles during the 1890s. In the lecture and the essay Loos does argue
against ornaments done without consideration. But his argument is for the suppression of
ornament in functional objects. At the same time, he makes a distinction between
superfluous and integral ornament, which he considered the “grammar” of classical
ornament and he protests against only the former. In fact, the latter is used generously in
his works, particularly in interiors. His lecture when translated and published in Paris as
“Ornament is Crime” was read as a purist manifesto for purging ornamentation from
architecture. A shocked Loos reacted to this with a text titled “Ornament and Education”
in which the misinterpretation was labeled absurd and exaggerated. He argued that
cultures will, through nature of evolution, evolve beyond ornamentation and the
systematic abolishment of ornamentation is totally unnecessary. Loos then places a
complex dialectic between culture’s advancement or individual people’s taste and the
inclination for ornamentation.

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Understandably his nuanced argument was also misread and deployed for the service of a
anti-ornamentation modernist manifesto. Loos’s distinction between either unnecessary
or acceptable practice of ornaments further explained with the example of tattoos2. He
presents a startling contrast between tattooing of Papuans to the tattooing of modern man
(which at the time was frowned upon). The contrast lay within the function of each.
Where the former were a sign of conformity and were expressive of their nature, the other
merely took it upon itself to disguise and mask the mediocrity of their holder’s identity
(or so it seemed). He labeled the latter to be degenerate, falsified and unethical but gave
consent to the former. Thus he approved the rules put in place (grammar) to render
architecture more palatable, while conveying the identity of a structure simply and
directly.

This argument is further elucidated with how we wear clothes. Loos believes clothes
should be neutral and transparent of the person within. It should reflect discretion and
simplicity. Here ornament should only be used to be compliant to common culture of
society. Similarly, architecture should be universal and durable, able to withstand tastes
and times by being like these clothes.

Loos doesn’t appreciate constant renewal of ornaments as it would then lean heavily on
fashion, and its existence is then justified not by its solidity but the prevailing taste.
However, functional objects with a small shelf life (like carpets and such) can be
adequately adorned and ornamented, remaining submissive to fashion.

Loos says that a woman adorns and ornaments herself to become a mystery to man.
Eroticism is linked to the need to ornament considering it to be elementary artistic
expressions. But to rise above a primitive art, consciously produced, ornamentation needs
to be suppressed. To merely reduce art to ornament is considered ‘immorality of the
age’3, similar to architecture.

To support a rationalist, cultural tradition, Loos criticized the superfluous character of

ornament. Forms that resisted the passage of time were inherent in most typologies and
were truly modern and durable. Classical architecture, hence, incorporated Greek,
Roman, or Renaissance styles because its traits were simple and universal.

AS A TEACHER

Adolf Loos started his own school of architecture. His students included Richard Neutra
and R. M. Schindler, who later became famous in the United States.

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.THE INNOVATIVE DESIGNER

Adolf Loos is one of the few men influential and colorfully original enough to
successfully reject the artistic and architectural trends in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Why
then, when performing an analysis of Viennese culture, do we turn to an architect, active
in the first three decades of the 1900's, who so clearly stands as an exception to the
society with which he so strongly disagreed? The answer lies in this very contrast. Adolf
Loos was not merely an architect, but a philosopher on what he regarded to be a corrupt
Viennese society. Both his structures and penned essays show the individualism in this
great Viennese architect, and present an excellent critique of his own creations and the
society within which he worked. Establishing the contrast between art and architecture,
Adolf Loos identifies the two-pronged mantra of functionality and evoked emotions of
architecture, reflecting on the perversity of ornamentation too often lauded by the
surrounding fin-de-siecle Viennese society's attempt to hide mediocrity beneath the
novelty of modernity.
To comprehend all the idiosyncrasies we might glean from Loos' philosophizing, we
must first capture the essence of what is art, and what is architecture; what sets each apart
from the other and whether they might intersect. To establish the role of each also
requires an understanding of their respective purposes: what do we label as art or
architecture, and what goal does the artist have in mind, as opposed to an architect?

74
Loos created an almost exclusive division between art and architecture. The field of art is
comprised of nonfunctional creations born to arouse the emotions of the viewer. Art
attempts to disturb the viewer, to cause an emotional response. Good art is not required to
be aesthetically pleasing, although it may be; rather, if it causes discomfort or
supplementary emotional reactions by the viewer, it has also successfully attained its goal
of emotional arousal. Like the work of Viennese artist Kokoschka, art remains art even as
it disturbs us, by its very ability to arouse within us this feeling of disgust.
Architecture, in contrast, is an enclosure of space attempting to comfortably
accommodate a structural need in the most efficiently functional manner possible. 1 Art
must therefore be exclusive from architecture for a multitude of reasons: art is
responsible to no one, and fulfills neither function nor requirement. Drawing people away
from comfort, it is often hated by man and aimed towards something futuristic. As
Panayotis Tournikiotis said of Loos' views in Adolf Loos: "He defined art as the personal
affair of the artist-oriented to the future, distracting man from his daily comforts: art is by
its essence revolutionary." 2 Architecture, therefore, cannot be art, since it accommodates
the clients' requirements that it be functional and emotionally comforting, a more public
structure responsible to the collective.

EXHIBITIONS AND SEMINARS

On Mar 17
First seminar in Prague, on the theme of "Ornament and Crime"
1911

1913 Seminars in Prague and Olomouc

1923 Exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris and became a member

Seminars in Prague and Brno on "Economy in Architecture" as part of the

1925 "New Architecture" cycle, and in Brno on the theme of "Housing Estates".
Became an honorary member of the Architects' Club in Prague

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76
QUOTATIONS
 Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make
those sentiments more precise.
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned tradition, it's at that
point that I intend to renew it because the present is built on the past just as the
past was built on the times that went before it.
 Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.
Be truthful, nature only sides with truth.
Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an
improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be
hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by
our side.
 Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture
not to be included in the arts? Only a very small part of architecture belongs to
art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfils a function is to be
excluded from the domain of art.
 It does not do to use it with forms whose origin is intimately bound up with a
specific material simply because no technical difficulties stand in the way.
 Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to
draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he
loves the house and hates art.
 Supply and demand regulate architectural form.
 The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The
work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.
 The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is
conservative.
 The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture toward secret vice. The bank
must declare: here your money is secure and well looked after by honest people.
 The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear
Vienna herself.
 The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable.
 The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The
house satisfies a requirement. The work of art is responsible to none; the house is
responsible to everyone. The work of art wants to draw people out of their state of
comfort.
 The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house
thinks of the present.

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 "Architects are there to understand life deeply, in order that they might consider
needs to their most extreme ramifications, that they can help the socially weaker,
that they can outfit the greatest number of households with perfect, utilitarian
objects, but they are never architects in order that they may discover new forms."

Adolf Loos - 'On economy', 1934

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 AT THE CLOSE
CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHITECTURE

Father of Modern Architecture in Austria

In 1908, he published his most famous pamphlet: "Ornament und Verbrechen"
("Ornament and Crime") in which he attacks both the historicism that dominated those
days and the Jugendstil with its floral designs and attempts to expand the concept of art to
all sorts of things, including items for daily use (think of decorated mirrors, furniture,
vases of Art Nouveau). Adolf Loos opposed it by arguing that functionality and art
should be divided and that art should be constrained to fine arts. This was just the
opposite of what the "Wiener Werkstätten" or "Vienna Workshops" did.
Loos′ designs, on contrast, were non-ornamental and plain, but used expensive materials
that were applied in generous amounts: Brass, marble and other valuable stones, exotic
woods like teak. In combination with Loos′ popular - and often controversial - articles in
the "Freie Presse", he had soon built up quite a reputation. He was friends with many
important intellectuals of his days: Karl Kraus, Oskar Kokoschka, Arnold Schönberg or
Peter Altenburg. He was part of Vienna′s modernist circles, which were closely
connected with the city′s remarkable café culture.
By no means was Adolf Loos a revolutionary: Despite of being a purist regarding modern
architecture, he was a keen defender of genuinely historic buildings. He viciously
criticized the Imperial madness expressed in the demolition of entire blocks of Baroque
buildings at and around the Ringstraße. He himself saw his work as a continuation of
traditional Viennese styles based on ancestors like Josef Kornhäusl, a Biedermeier
architect who designed the main synagogue and many buildings in Baden.

Adolf Loos & his "Scandalous" Houses

His architectural work is mostly concerned with private villas for industrialists and other
"winners" of the Gründerzeit boom. They often resemble the style of architectural
cubism. In 1910, Adolf Loos′ most important Viennese building was erected, the "Loos
Haus" on the Michaelerplatz right next to the Hofburg Palace. Its plain façade covered in
green stone with no shutters, mantle stones or other ornaments made the Viennese
condemn it as a "house with no eyebrows".
It caused such a scandal that the general public demanded its demolition and even
79
Emperor Franz Joseph I refused to enter the Hofburg from the Michaelerplatz ever again.
Today, the fuzz is not really understandable, as the building doesn′t look that unusual (I
find the Starbucks to its opposite much worse). The man who had commissioned Loos for
the job, a Jewish banker named Goldmann, didn′t give a damn about the criticism and
hired Loos for designing his private house right away.
Beyond that, Loos continued to be tremendously popular as a designer for interiors. He
was responsible for the interiors of the recently refurbished "Café Museum" on the
Karlsplatz Square (also called "Café Nihilism" by the Viennese, who again disliked the
plain designs) and the first American-style bar of Vienna, appropriately called "American
Bar" in the Kärntner Straße (still in its original shape and worth a visit).
Interiors & later Work by Adolf Loos
For private rooms, Loos style was influenced by the styles of rustic American and
English interiors - I am not a big fan of his interpretation of these styles. For a classic
example, go to the Wien Museum at Karlsplatz Square, where Adolf Loos private living
room is part of the exhibition on the Wiener Moderne.
In the 1920ies, Adolf Loos lived primarily in Paris, where he designed various villas. One
of his most famous buildings is the Müller Villa in Praque ("Müllerova vila"), which is
now a museum. Today, Adolf Loos′ work is regarded to be a bit of a side-line in the
history of architecture, but by no means is he a dead end. His style and his understanding
of the role of an architect influenced generations of Austrian architects that followed.
A quantification on this matter, however, is difficult, since the Bauhaus school and other
influential modern styles that Loos was not part of (or even criticised) followed similar
principles of functionality, lack of decoration and linearity.

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OUR CRITIQUE OF LOOS’S WORK

81
CONCLUSION
Adolf Loos is one of the few men influential and colorfully original enough to
successfully reject the artistic and architectural trends in turn of the century Vienna.

Why then, when performing an analysis of Viennese culture, do we turn to an architect,

active in the first three decades of the 1900’s , who so clearly stands as an exception to
the society with which he so strongly disagreed. The answer lies in this very contrast.
Adolf Loos was not merely an architect but a philosopher on what he regarded to be a
corrupt Viennese society. Both h is structures and penned essays show the individualism
in this great Viennese architect, and present an excellent critique of his own creations and
the society within which he worked. Establishing the contrast between art and
architecture, Adolf Loos identifies the two pronged mantra of functionality and evoked
emotions of architecture, reflecting on the perversity of ornamentation too often lauded
by the surrounding Viennese society’s attempt to hide mediocrity beneath the novelty of
modernity.

Adolf loos gained greater notoriety for his writings than for his building. He believed that
everything that could not be justified on rational grounds was superfluous and should be
eliminated. Loos recommended pure forms for economy and effectiveness. He rarely
considered how this effectiveness could correspond to rational human needs.

Loos argued against decoration by pointing to economic and historical reasons for its
development, and by describing the suppression of decoration as necessary to the
regulation of passion. He believed that culture resulted from the renunciation of passions
and that which brings man to the absence of ornamentation generates spiritual power.
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Loos attacked contemporary design as well as the imitative styling of the 19th century. He
looked on contemporary decoration as mass- produced, mass consumed trash. Loos acted
as a model and a seer for architects of the 1920’s. his fight for freedom from the
decorative styles of the 19th century led to a campaign for future architects.

Loos wishes to revert to a style of architecture, structure on the tradition of previous eras,
a time where truth in architecture rained supreme and additions were not merely altering
but improving established design. Loos was often scornful of historic works an attitude
which bred con fusion when placed in contrast to his encouragement of traditional
architectural examples. He had no objection to tradition indeed he praised it . Loos was
more concerned with the tainted use of tradition by his peer counter parts.

Loos ……. Took aim at the false seeming the act of hiding materiality behind an
appearance of truth. He did not challenge historical references in contemporary art
merely the false usage common to the age.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Internet

www.wikipedia.com

www.google.com

http://architect.architecture.sk/adolf-loos-architect/adolf-loos-architect.php

 Adolf Loos, Spoken into the void: collected essays, 1897-1900, MIT
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982.

 -B. Gravagnuolo, Adolf Loos, Rizzoli, New York, 1982. L. Miin2,

Adolf Loos, Praeger, New York, 1966.

http://architecture.about.com/od/greatarchitects/p/loos.htm

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/adolf_loos.html

http://www.mullerovavila.cz/english/Loos-e.html

http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Adolf_Loos.html

83
www.galinsky.com

http://www.mullerov avila.cz/english/raum-e.html

Books

 The will to Ornament

 “Adolf Loos and the Aphoristic Style: A Rhetorical Practice in Early

Twentieth century Design Criticism” by John V. Maciuika,
Design Issues, vol. 16, no. 2, summer 2000
 Copyright 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
􀀦􀁕􀁌􀁐􀁈􀀃􀁄􀁑􀁇􀀃􀁑􀁇􀀃
􀀰􀁈􀁏􀁒􀁑􀁜􀀃􀀺􀁄􀁕􀁇􀀏􀀃􀀻􀀼􀀽􀀃􀀥􀁒􀁒􀁎􀁖􀀏􀀃􀀕􀀓􀀓􀀕
 -Modern Architects

 -Encyclopedia Britannica

 -“Ornament and Crime”, The Arts and Popular Culture in the shadow
of Adolf Loos, edited by Bernie Miller and Melanie ward, XYZ
Books

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APPENDIX

85
 THE ESSAY;
ORNAMENT AND
CRIME

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