Loos, Adolf

Loos, Adolf (1870–1933). Influential Austro-Hungarian architect and polemicist. Born in Brno, Moravia, he studied in Dresden, where Semper's ideas made a great impression on him, and in 1893 visited the USA, where he absorbed the lessons of the Chicago School, and was influenced especially by an essay of Sullivan (1892) in which the latter advocated refraining from all ornament for a period, so that architects could concentrate on the design of buildings ‘well-formed and comely in the nude’. He was also influenced by the work of F. L. Wright (whom he also met), by the English Arts-and-Crafts movement, and by the designs of Otto Wagner. Loos settled in Vienna, and in a series of articles denounced the ornamenting tendencies of Jugendstil, notably in the works of Hoffmann and Olbrich, so he was opposed to aspects of the Sezession. He likened extravagance and dishonesty in architecture to the fake fronts of streets in towns erected for show by Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739–91) in Russia, publishing his views in the important journal Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring) in 1898.

In 1908 came the publication of Ornament und Verbrechen (Ornament and Crime), in which he claimed that lack of ornament was a sign of spiritual strength: this has led to his beatification as a ‘pioneer’ of the Modern Movement, but he was nothing of the sort, for his designs of the period are almost entirely Neo-Classical in spirit, reflecting his admiration for Greek architecture and for Schinkel. A prime example of this stripped Classicizing tendency is the Goldman & Salatsch block on the Michaelerplatz, Vienna (1909–11), with its simplified Tuscan columns and unornamented façades using the finest materials, but nearly two years before, in 1907–8, his Kärntner Bar, Vienna, had demonstrated a type of stripped Classicism, but using fine materials. The Steiner House, St-Veit-Gasse, Vienna (1910) is usually shown in a view from the garden, but the street-front, an almost single-storey symmetrical composition with a great curved roof, is hardly ever illustrated because it shows how Loos was deeply rooted in tradition, as it is an interpretation of a small Baroque building stripped of ornament and with its curved roof simplified.

In both the Steiner and Scheu (Larochegasse 3, Hietzing—1912–13) Houses, Loos suggested exposed timber beams (they were not always structural), and drew heavily on the Arts-and-Crafts tradition of England (a country he greatly admired), with inglenooks, brick fireplaces, and wooden panelling. His reverence for Greek architecture was expressed in his competition entry (1923) for the Chicago Tribune Building: his design was a skyscraper shaped like a gigantic Greek Doric column. For a brief period (1920–2) he was the Chief Architect for the City of Vienna's Housing Department, and produced several schemes, including proposals for a model estate at Heuberg. He designed a ‘row-house with one wall’ which he patented.

He spent the next five years in Paris, where he made contact with the leading figures of the avant-garde and built the celebrated house for Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) (Avenue Junot 15, Paris XVIII—1925–6), which, like the Michaelerplatz building, had an innovative plan with the volumes divided up to form rooms of differing heights, but the architectural language was more stark, and followed Modernist tendencies. After he returned to Vienna in 1928 Loos designed a few houses, including the Moller House, Starkfriedgasse 19, Pötzleinsdorf, Vienna (1927–8), and the Müller House, Střešovická 33, Prague (1929–30), both of which had complex interiors with ingenious spatial planning, and had smooth rendered walls that were very much de rigueur as International Modernism acquired its essential language. In 1931, he designed houses for the Werkbund at Woinovichgasse 13–15–17–19, Vienna, also with stark geometries and white rendered walls. These late works appear to have influenced the younger generation of architects. Both Neutra and Schindler were among those who were profoundly affected by Loos's ideas before the 1914–18 war. His early writings on architecture and design (1897–1900) were collected as Ins Leere Gesprochen (Spoken into the Void—1921) and his later works (1900–30) as Trotzdem (In Spite Of—1931).

Bibliography

Arts Council of Great Britain (1985);
R. Banham (1960);
Duzer & and Kleinman (1994);
Gravagnuolo (1982);
Hitchcock (1977);
Kristan (ed.) (2001, 2001a);
Kulka (ed.) (1931);
Les'nikowski (ed.) (1986);
Loos (1962);
Lustenberger (1994);
Münz & and Künstler (1966);
Opel (eds.) (2003);
Safran & Wang (eds.) (1985);
Schezen et al. (1996);
Schweighofer (2000);
J. Stewart (2000);
Tournikiotis (1994);
Trevisiol (1995);
Jane Turner (1996)