Loos, Adolf
NAME: Loos, Adolf (or Adolphe)
ACHIEVEMENTS: Famous for his designs and his design philosophy.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 10th Dec. 1870, Brno (also known as Brunn), Moravia, formerly Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 23rd, Aug. 1933, Kalksburg, near Vienna, Austria. Age 62.
DISCIPLINE: Architecture.
FIELD: Architecture.
LANGUAGE: German, Czechoslovakian.
PARENTS: Father was a stonemason and sculptor.
SIBLINGS: Unknown.
SPOUSE: Married Lina Loos in 1902. Subsequently remarried three more times.
CHILDREN: Unknown.
EDUCATION: Royal and Imperial Grammar School run by the Benedictines at Melk in Lower Austria, 1884-85; Royal and Imperial State Technical College (Department of Building Science) at Liberec in Reichenberg, Bohemia, 1887-88; military service, 1889-90; Dresden Gewerbeschule (College of Technology), 1890-93.
MAJOR WORK:
Authored numerous articles, most of which originally published in the ‘Neue Freie Presse’ in Vienna, 1897-1929, and republished in two volumes, ‘Ins Leere Gesprochen’ (‘Spoken into the Void’, 1921) and ‘Trotzdem’ (‘Nonetheless’, 1931).
Published the article ‘Die Potemkinsche Stadt’, in the July 1898 issue of ‘Ver sacrum’, journal of the Vienna Secession, in which he protested against current trends in architecture.
‘Café Museum’ in Vienna, 1899.
Published two issues of the journal ‘Das Andere – Ein Blatt zur Einführung abendländischer Kultur in Österreich’ (‘The Other – a Journal for the Introduction into Austria of Western Civilization’) in 1903, the first of was reprinted in the journal ‘Kunst’, edited by Peter Altenberg, in 1903.
First building, the Villa Karma at Clarens, near Montreux, Switzerland, 1904-6.
In 1908, publication of the article ‘Ornament und Verbrechen’ (‘Ornament and Crime’), which established his reputation as an opponent of decoration.
Built Steiner House, Vienna, 1910.
Built the ‘House on the Michaelerplatz’ (the infamous Goldman and Salatsch building) in Vienna, for which he faced tremendous public criticism, in 1910-11. Gave a lecture about it in Vienna, 1911.
Founded his own School of Architecture in 1912, which suspended regular courses due to WWI in 1914.
Along with friends Max Ermers, Karl Kraus, Ludwig Münz, Arnold Schönberg, and others, published ‘Richtlinien für ein Kunstamt’ (‘Guiding Principles for a Ministry of Art’) in ‘Der Friede’, No. 62, in 1919. Only the contribution by Arnold Schönberg is signed.
Exhibition in the Salon d’Automne in Paris, 1923.
Lectureship at the Sorbonne, 1926.
Lecture on ‘The Modern Housing estate’ in Stuttgart in 1926.
Built a house for Tristan Tzara, co-founder of Dadaism, in 1926-7.
Lecture on ‘Social Man and His Architecture’ in Graz, November 1927.
Built the Babí workers’ housing estate near Nachod, in Northern Bohemia in 1931.
LIFE AND TIMES:
Adolf Loos was born in Brno, Moravia, on the border of the Czech and German-speaking Habsburg lands of former Austria-Hungary, now known as the Czech Republic. His family background was a strong influence on his design ideology. His father was a prosperous stonemason and sculptor who died when Loos was just ten years old, and his mother wanted him to continue the family business.
Loos studied architecture at the College of Technology in Dresden for three years and visited the United States in 1893-6, where he worked as a mason, a floor-layer, and a dishwasher.
He also gained an appreciation of American architecture, especially the work of Louis Sullivan. In 1896, he returned to Vienna and took a job with the architect Carl Mayreder. In 1897 he established his own practise.
Among twentieth-century architects, Loos was probably the only one to be a major writer. An architect of the International Style, Loos was a functionalist who believed that reason should determine design.
As early as 1898, he announced his intention to avoid the use of unnecessary ornament. He saw contemporary decoration as mass-produced, mass-consumed trash and opposed both Beaux-Arts historicism and the decorative Art Nouveau movement, especially the Secession, a group of anti-academic Viennese artists who were the Austrian branch of Art Nouveau.
Loos had a life-long admiration of all things American or English, both of which he saw as standards of reference for modern culture. Through his magazine, ‘Das Andere’, Loos introduced Western culture to Austria in essays on matters varying from clothes and manners to the over-decoration of Wagner's Tristan in the Vienna Opera, and street decorations for state visits. His interest in human behavior and how occupants would live in his buildings had a direct impact on his designs.
While Loos was strictly opposed to modern decoration, his early background as a mason led him to appreciate hand-crafted objects. In his buildings, whether private or commercial, he never furnished the interiors with modern furniture, preferring English style Chippendale chairs and the occasional Chesterfield. His floors were usually covered with Oriental rugs.
On his structures, Loos liked to cover the walls and ceilings with semi-precious materials, such as metal plaques, leather, veined marbles or veneered woods, but unlike his contemporaries, Loos always integrated them as plainly as possible, never as pieces to be framed.
His first building, the Villa Karma, built in 1904-6, was notable for its geometric simplicity. It was followed in 1908 by the publication of his famous article ‘Ornament and Crime,’ and in 1910 by the Steiner House, which some architectural historians have called the first completely-modern dwelling. In 1909-10, Loos’s best-known commercial structure, the Goldman and Salatsch Building, on the same square as the Imperial Palace, caused a scandal in Vienna.
Emperor Franz Josef was outraged. The creation of the vast Imperial Palace, also known as the Hofburg, spans over seven centuries. Its entrance is guarded by huge statues of Hercules and other mythical heros. Next to it work began on Loos’s creation, where a little classical exterior detail was offset by large areas of blank, polished marble.
Public outcry and an official order stopped work on the site, and Loos fell ill from stress. Once construction resumed, however, the building was completed without compromise due to Loos’ inflexibility and the confidence placed in him by the building’s owner, Leopold Goldman.
In 1912, Loos started a School of Architecture that had to suspend its courses two years later due to the outbreak of World War I, but his influence was already established. Two of his students, Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler, went on to great careers in the United States, and American architect <a fan was> Lloyd Wright* lauded Loos for his influence on European Modernist architects after World War I.
In 1920, Loos was appointed chief architect in the Department of Housing in Vienna. During this time the egalitarian and moralist in him became consumed by low-income housing projects. However, only one of his designs was ever built, and only partly followed his plans. The failure of his appointment was primarily political, and in 1922 he resigned in disillusion and emigrated to France where he lived for much of 1924-28. He taught in various European countries, and in 1926 he built a house in Paris for writer <built house for> Tzara*, co-founder of Dadaism. In 1928, he returned to practice in Vienna.
Not much is known about Loos’s personal life, except that he was a good friend of the Expressionist artist <a pal of> Kokoschka*, for whom he got portrait commissions. During World War I, Loos got Kokoschka appointed Lieutenant in an exclusive regiment with a particularly glamorous uniform, and had a postcard made of Kokoschka, which was then sold in shops alongside postcards of well known actresses.
Thirty years after Loos’s death in 1933, Kokoschka was honored with the award of Praemium Erasmianum in Copenhagen, and he dedicated part of his award to producing the German-language edition of Ludwig Munz and Gustav Kunstler’s ‘Adolf Loos: Pioneer of Modern Architecture’ (1966).
ASSESSMENT: Adolf Loos is remembered for his influence on European Modern architecture
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He was a friend of composer <a pal of> Schoenberg*
ONELINER: Adolf Loos, influential Early Modern architect
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Biography.com: Adolf Loos, http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=9583#
Craven, J., ‘Master Architects: Adolf Loos’, About.com, http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-loos.htm
Craven, J., ‘Scandal In Vienna: Adolf Loos and the Shocking Goldman and Salatsch Building’, About.com, 1999, http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aa030199.htm
Münz, L. & Künstler, G., ‘Adolf Loos: Pioneer of Modern Architecture’, Thames and Hudson, London, 1966.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Rykwert, J., ‘Adolf Loos: The New Vision’, Studio International Archive, vol. 186, no. 957, 1973, http://www.studio-international.co.uk/archive/loos_1973_186_957.htm