Blog Assignment 3: Adolf Loos

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At the time of Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement in the early 20^th century, there were also many counter or parallel movements and thoughts.  One of the most pronounced and outspoken of these thinkers was the architect Adolf Loos.

Adolf Loos was born in Moravia (Czech Republic) on Dec. 10, 1870.  Now regarded as one of the pivotal architects of the early 20^th century, he was originally disregarded and considered having limited success.  He was also, and better well known for at the time, as being a rather witty and avid critique of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts Movement.  Adolf Loos displayed in his buildings and writings a desire to separate the private and the public, remove ornament from architecture and that separation of art and craftsman were permanent and should stay that way.  To go into more detail of Loos’ houses, this paper will compare and contrast with one of his contemporary’s homes, one done by Adolf Rading.

Rading House

Adolf Loos's Steiner House

Scheu House

In Alan Colquhoun’s book, Modern Architecture, he briefly contrasts English and French houses, saying the former is based on privacy and the latter on family. Loos seemed to take both of these ideas and combined them.  The exteriors of his buildings are stark.  “This is a building,” is about the only message you get from their façade.  There is nothing at all to tell you of the inhabitants or the interior. Even the back patio of the Villa Muller is starkly planed, serving as what it is, a backyard seating area.  This is in contrast to Rading’s housing (#25) which has a the back patio surrounded by a rather thick wall, which allows for a good deal of privacy here, but the patio seems more decorated in Rading’s.  Also, Rading chose to have patios facing public view, which contrasts with Loos’s idea of patios in Scheu House and slightly with those of Villa Muller.  The patio of Villa Muller is plane, and from the image, it would seem so is Rading’s, but Rading has many more windows in public view on his patios.  The Scheu House is truly bizarre with its patios.  Built like a flight of stairs, each tread and rise paring has a patio.  However, being a stair step pattern and being so high takes them out of much of the public view.  This allows for limited view from the one side that does have it.

Loos’s interiors were truly the most interesting.  This is where everything changed. While many of the rooms remained cubical, there was a vast amount of detailing that went into the interior design and décor.  Rich detailing went into the design and choice of material employed in Loos’s interiors.  Using only pure textures like marble or wood, Loos would make stark, but strangely comfortable interiors to his homes.  He would have them furnish by craftsman, not architects (why will be discussed later).  This all seems very different by today’s standards where the exterior is generally more decorated and the interior is stark dry wall with monotone paint.  What differs with Loos’s interiors to Rading’s interiors is the perception of space.  It was very common in Loos’s homes for all the rooms of the house to run together.  No real circulation, no distinguishable order at times, his homes on the inside were very open, allowing for the family feel of a French home.  While there was not much for circulation, he did dedicate a room to the staircase, celebrating the stair in it’s own way.  Like Rading’s house, which just had a staircase and halls, Loos seemed to build from a single modular unit, turning it and setting it as needed to get the desired form to his rooms.  One final note to privacy, there was a degree of it on the interior of Villa Muller, where beyond the front door was a solid wall to keep the rooms beyond unseen from the outside. 

As said above, Loos did not see any need for ornament, constantly speaking out against it and those who tried to rationalize it.  Being a Darwinist, he believed in an evolution of architecture where the eventual shedding of architectural ornament would create a new modernist style that everyone else seemed to be looking for.  He did speak out for new techniques and technologies.  Because he did so, he said that artist and the craftsman, who had grown apart over the past centuries, would and should stay apart.  An artist was meant to dream and the craftsman was meant to build (and build well).  The two becoming mixed would bring about something similar to the medieval age, where good furnishings were for the rich and the rich alone.  Through craftsman working on their work alone, they would be more able to produce work en mass and could therefore keep furniture, good furniture, affordable.  Another reason artist and craftsman could not mix was because it was a bit of a distraction.  Loos barely designed furniture.  If he had spent more time on furniture, his short list of buildings done may have been shorter. 

Adolf Loos, an architect who may have been more influential than people think, designed very original structures.  Perhaps his buildings were not completely without ornament, but without conventional ornamentation.  He despised those who believed ornament could be useful and felt for architecture to evolve, it must do away with ornament.  In his buildings he made certain to keep the private and public areas separate and just that, public or private. As a writer and an architect, Adolf Loos has made a lasting impression.

Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York; Oxford University Press. 2002.

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


http://ngc.dukejournals.org/content/36/3_108/39.abstract


Curtis, J.R. William. Modern Architecture Since 1900 Edition 3. New York; Phaidon Press 
Limited. 2009.


Some images from readings