LOOS, Adolf

Loos’s professional design work at the end of the 1890s consisted mainly of interiors (mostly destroyed), in which furniture was built-in where possible. The best-known example is the Caf� Museum (1899; partly destroyed) opposite Olbrich’s newly completed Secession Building. Loos’s design for the Caf� Museum attained such an extreme of unornamented simplicity, with plain segmental ceiling and undecorated walls, that it became known as ‘Caf� Nihilismus’, much to Loos’s satisfaction.

The picture shows the interior of the Caf�; the furniture is not original.

It took almost fifty years for the steam-bent wood furniture, invented by Michael Thonet and widely distributed, to acquire its letters of nobility. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the great Viennese architects who gave new functionality to these long-proven pieces of furniture. The curved wood furniture is indeed ideally suited to the program of utilitarian art that they defend.

Adolf Loos opted for this practical and economical furniture when he designed the Caf� Museum in Vienna, whose interior layout was an exemplar in simplicity. In terms of seating, Loos refined the popular bistro chair developed by Thonet in 1849.

The Caf� Museum still exists today, and this model of chair is still used there.

Loos admired Karl Friedrich Schinkel as the last architect he considered able to use the architectural orders without rhetoric, and in the Goldman & Salatsch Building, his own classicism found expression in the marble columns of the entrance canopy and the entablature raised above the mezzanine.

The interior of this building, with its marble veneers and mahogany joinery, also reveals Loos’s preference to use rich materials in place of applied ornamentation.

After its completion, the house caused a shock in the city which was still characterized by its historical taste. It was called by the Viennese “a house without eyebrows” since the window-roofing, which was usual at that time, was completely missing. It was said that Emperor Franz Joseph had not only avoided passing next to Looshaus for the rest of his life by using the exit at the Michaelerplatz but also had to leave the windows of the Hofburg nailed so that he did not have to see the “hideous” house anymore.

In 1987 the Raiffeisen Bank bought the building and renovated it.

This store and apartment block was commissioned by Goldman and Salatsch; however, this firm’s choice of location was controversial. Not only is the building situated in the centre of “old” Vienna with its traditional architecture, but it faces the entrance to the Imperial residence. From the beginning, the building was criticized for its contradictions: the lower commercial level in marble, with classical columns and a grand recessed entrance in contrast to the severity of the upper section with bare plaster walls, lack of ornament, and plain windows without mouldings.

The picture shows the lower part of the fa�ade. The business area is preceded by a colonnade with Tuscan columns, designed as an allusion to the portico of the Michaelerkirche.

The interior of this building, with its marble veneers and mahogany joinery, also reveals Loos’s preference to use rich materials in place of applied ornamentation.

The picture shows the skylight at the main staircase.

The interior of this building, with its marble veneers and mahogany joinery, also reveals Loos’s preference to use rich materials in place of applied ornamentation.

Loos completed the Rufer House in 1922, the first of the cubiform houses in which he further developed the Raumplan concept (the free disposition of volumes within a simple building form to give more complex interior spaces than are possible with continuous horizontal floor divisions). The building is one of the well-known images of the early Modern Movement, with its classical cornice and plain frieze above plain wall surfaces and an asymmetrical arrangement of windows that reflected the free planning of the spaces within.

Loos was very adamant about the pure form of the cube above all, and decoration is kept to a bare minimum. The walls are a stark white, and the windows frames contain the least amount of structure. This, however, is balanced by the frieze and cornice that runs along the top of the building, and a replica of some portions of the Parthenon frieze, positioned on the street side low enough for viewing. The frieze and cornice tie together the entire building while still contributing to the austere nature, seeming almost invisible.

Another key part of the Rufer house is the seemingly random arrangement of windows. With the blank white walls giving no distraction, the windows are the most noticeable aspect of the house. While the windows make no sense to the casual viewer from the exterior, the windows make perfect sense from the interior. These interiorly programmed windows give light and views where they make sense on the inside.

View the axonometric drawing of the Rufer House.

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 painter’s atelier situated on the first level. The garden fa�ade 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’s reputation as a modern architect to the audience 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 fa�ade as an indisputable example of radical rationalist modern architecture.

The stripped fa�ade was rapidly assimilated into the formal purism of the 1920s; it was the main reason for the success of the building.

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 painter’s atelier situated on the first level. The garden fa�ade 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’s reputation as a modern architect to the audience 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 fa�ade as an indisputable example of radical rationalist modern architecture.

The stripped fa�ade was rapidly assimilated into the formal purism of the 1920s; it was the main reason for the success of the building.

In 1908, Loos designed the famous interior of the American Bar with its coloured glass, marble floor and panelled ceiling.

To Loos, Vienna was a Potemkin village. He saw its splendiferous circular boulevard, the Ringstrasse, as a deluge of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque embellishments, drowning every smidgen of authenticity. He loathed those arabesques of charm with which the Viennese disguised their true nature. His bar, which he completed in 1908, embodies his unsparing vision. The coffered ceiling, as purely quadrangular as the green-and-white chessboard of the floor, along with the stark, clean lines of the bar counter, barstools, tables, booths, and walls—all form a pared-down geometry exquisitely orchestrated.

In 1908, Loos designed the famous interior of the American Bar with its coloured glass, marble floor and panelled ceiling.

To Loos, Vienna was a Potemkin village. He saw its splendiferous circular boulevard, the Ringstrasse, as a deluge of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque embellishments, drowning every smidgen of authenticity. He loathed those arabesques of charm with which the Viennese disguised their true nature. His bar, which he completed in 1908, embodies his unsparing vision. The coffered ceiling, as purely quadrangular as the green-and-white chessboard of the floor, along with the stark, clean lines of the bar counter, barstools, tables, booths, and walls—all form a pared-down geometry exquisitely orchestrated.

In 1822, Loos decided to move to Paris at the invitation of the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara. After several unexecuted designs in France, he built a house for Tristan Tzara on the Avenue Junot, Montmartre. It was the only substantial commission he executed in Paris and regarded as a canonical example of what has been called Classical Modernism.

The house has a simple and uncluttered fa�ade according to the style developed by Loos, who advocated the absence of superfluous ornaments. The architect took advantage of the unevenness of the land by installing the garage on the ground floor at avenue Junot.

The first house designed by Loos was the Villa Karma for the Swiss neurologist Theodor Beer in Clarens, Montreux. Here an existing dwelling was entirely enclosed in a new one, consisting of a four-storey stuccoed house of classical simplicity, with a flat roof and recessed attic storey (completed by Hugo Ehrlich).

Even Adolf Loos, the most audacious spirit in architecture, was a child of his time. Under the art that was to be rejected, he understood the art of ornament. Beauty and harmony nevertheless remained law. He deprived the ornament of its rights and replaced it with costly materials. At the end of the day, the concept of the Raumplan (the plan of volumes), which he developed, was also interior design.

The first house designed by Loos was the Villa Karma (1904–6), Clarens, Montreux. Here an existing dwelling was entirely enclosed in a new one, consisting of a four-storey stuccoed house of classical simplicity, with a flat roof and recessed attic storey (completed by Hugo Ehrlich).