The American Bar: interior

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.