Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos
Born	Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (1870-12-10)10 December 1870 Brünn (Brno), Austria-Hungary
Died	23 August 1933(1933-08-23) (aged 62) Vienna, Austria
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Steiner House, Goldman & Salatsch Building (Looshaus)

Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect and influential European theorist of Modern architecture. His essay Ornament and Crime advocated smooth and clear surfaces in contrast to the lavish decorations of the Fin de siècle and also to the more modern aesthetic principles of the Vienna Secession. Loos became a pioneer of modern architecture and contributed a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture and design.

Loos had three tumultuous marriages that all ended in divorce. He suffered from poor health, including an inherited hearing affliction, and was involved in a pedophilia scandal. He died aged 62 on 23 August 1933 in Kalksburg near Vienna.

Early life

Loos was born on 10 December 1870 in Brno, then called Brünn, in the Moravia (Mähren) region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, a German stonemason, died when Loos was nine years old. Young Adolf Loos had inherited his father's hearing impairment and was significantly handicapped by it throughout his life. His mother continued to carry on the stonemason business after her husband's death. Loos attended several Gymnasium schools, a technical school in Liberec and graduated 1889 from a technical school in Brünn. He later studied at Dresden University of Technology. He left one year later without completing his study.

Career

At age 23, Loos traveled to the United States and stayed there for three years from 1893–96. While in the United States, he mainly lived with relatives in the Philadelphia area, supported himself with odd jobs and also visited other cities such as the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, St. Louis and New York. Loos returned to Vienna in 1896 and made it his permanent residence. He was a prominent figure in the city and a friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arnold Schönberg, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus.

Inspired by his years in the New World he devoted himself to architecture. After briefly associating himself with the Vienna Secession in 1896, he rejected the style and advocated a new, plain, unadorned architecture. A utilitarian approach to use the entire floor plan completed his concept. Loos's early commissions consisted of interior designs for shops and cafés in Vienna.

Architectural theory

Loos authored several polemical works. In Spoken into the Void, published in 1900, he attacked the Vienna Secession, at a time when the movement was at its height.

In his essays, Loos used provocative catchphrases and is noted for the essay/manifesto entitled Ornament and Crime, given in a lecture in 1910 and first published in 1913. He explored the idea that the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects, and that it was therefore a crime to force craftsmen or builders to waste their time on ornamentation that served to hasten the time when an object would become obsolete (designtheory). Loos' stripped-down buildings influenced the minimal massing of modern architecture, and stirred controversy. Although noted for the lack of ornamentation on their exteriors, the interiors of many of Loos’s buildings are finished with rich and expensive materials, notably stone, marble and wood, displaying natural patterns and textures in flat planes, executed in first rate craftsmanship. The distinction is not between complicated and simple, but between "organic" and superfluous decoration.

Loos was also interested in the decorative arts, collecting sterling silver and high quality leather goods, which he noted for their plain yet luxurious appeal. He also enjoyed fashion and men's clothing, designing the famed Kníže of Vienna, a haberdashery. His admiration for the fashion and culture of England and America can be seen in his short-lived publication Das Andere, which ran for just two issues in 1903 and included advertisements for 'English' clothing. In 1920, he had a brief collaboration with Frederick John Kiesler - architect, theater and art-exhibition designer.

Loos House and other projects

From 1904 on, he was able to carry out big projects; the most notable the so-called "Loos House" (built from 1910–12), originally the Viennese tailor Goldman and Salatsch, for whom Loos had designed a store interior in 1898, and situated right across from the Habsburg city residence Hofburg Palace. The house, today Michaelerplatz 3, Vienna, and under monument preservation, was criticized by its contemporaries. The facade was dominated by rectilinear window patterns and a lack of stucco decoration and awnings, which earned it the nickname "House without Eyebrows"; Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria was said to have despised the modern building so much that he avoided leaving the Hofburg Palace through a main gate in its vicinity. His work also includes the store of the men's fashion house Knize (built 1909–13), Am Graben 13, Café Museum (built 1899), Operngasse 7, Vienna, and the "American Bar" (built 1907–08), Kärntnerstrasse 10, Vienna.

Loos visited the island of Skyros in 1904 and was influenced by the cubic architecture of the Greek islands. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I Loos was awarded Czechoslovakian citizenship by President Masaryk. His main place of residence remained in Vienna. During the First Austrian Republic Loos became interested in public projects. He designed several housing projects for the City of Vienna (Red Vienna). From 1924–28 Loos lived in Paris. He taught at the Sorbonne and was contracted to build a house for Tristan Tzara, which was completed 1925 in Avenue Junot 15, Paris. In 1928 he returned to Vienna

Loos had an admiration for classical architecture, which is reflected in his writings and his entry to the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition. Loos' submission was a massive doric column.

Private life

Marriages

Loos was married three times. In July 1902, he married drama student Lina Loos. The marriage ended three years later in 1905. In 1919, he married 20-year-old Austrian-born Elsie Altmann, a dancer and operetta star and daughter of Adolf Altmann and Jeannette Gruenblatt. They divorced seven years later in 1926. In 1929 he married writer and photographer Claire Beck. She was the daughter of his clients Otto and Olga Beck, and 35 years his junior. They were divorced on 30 April 1932. Following their divorce, Claire Loos wrote Adolf Loos Privat, a literary work of snapshot-like vignettes about Loos's character, habits and sayings, published by the Johannes-Presse in Vienna in 1936. The book was intended to raise funds for Loos's tomb.

Poor health

All his life, Loos suffered from a hearing impairment. When he was a child, he was deaf. He only acquired partial hearing at the age of 12. In 1918 Loos was diagnosed with cancer. His stomach, appendix and part of his intestine were removed. By the time he was 50 he was nearly deaf.

Child abuse

In 1928 Loos was disgraced by a pedophilia scandal in Vienna. He had commissioned young girls aged 8 to 10, from poor families to act as models in his studio. The indictment stated that Loos had exposed himself and forced his young models to participate in sexual acts. He was found partially guilty in a court decision of 1928. In 2008 the original case record was rediscovered and confirmed the accusation.

Death and legacy

Adolf Loos exhibited early signs of dementia around the time of his court proceedings. A few months before his death he suffered a stroke. He died aged 62 on 23 August 1933 in Kalksburg near Vienna. Loos's body was taken to Vienna's Zentralfriedhof to rest among the great artists and musicians of the city, including Schoenberg, Altenberg and Kraus, some of his closest friends and associates.

Through his writings and his groundbreaking projects in Vienna, Loos was able to influence other architects and designers, and the early development of Modernism. His careful selection of materials, passion for craftsmanship and use of 'Raumplan'-the considered ordering and size of interior spaces based on function—are still admired.

Major works

Looshaus in Michaelerplatz, Vienna.

• 1899 Café Museum, Vienna
• 1904 Villa Karma, Montreux, Switzerland
• 1907 Field Christian Cross, Radesinska Svratka, Czech Republic
• 1908 American Bar (formerly the Kärntner Bar), Vienna
• 1910 Steiner House, Vienna
• 1910 Goldman & Salatsch Building, overlooking Michaelerplatz, Vienna (a mixed-use building known colloquially as the "Looshaus")
• 1913 Scheu House, Vienna
• 1915 Sugar mill, Hrušovany u Brna, Czech Republic
• 1915-16 Villa Duschnitz (re-model), Vienna
• 1917 House for sugar mill owner, Hrušovany u Brna, Czech Republic
• 1921 Mausoleum for Max Dvořák (unbuilt)
• 1922 Rufer House, Vienna
• 1925 Maison Tzara, house and studio, Montmartre, Paris, for Tristan Tzara, one of the founders of Dadaism
• 1926 Villa Moller, Vienna
• 1927 House (not built), Paris, for the American entertainer Josephine Baker
• 1928 Villa Müller, Prague, Czech Republic
• 1929 Khuner Villa, Kreuzberg, Austria
• 1932 Villa Winternitz, Na Cihlářce 10, Praha 5, Czech Republic
• 1928–1933 many residential interiors in Pilsen, Czech Republic

Bibliography

• Loos, Adolf (2 May 2007). On Architecture. Ariadne Press. p. 216. ISBN 1-57241-098-1. 
• Loos, Adolf; Adolf Opel (15 November 1997). Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Ariadne Press (CA). p. 204. ISBN 1-57241-046-9. 
• Loos, Adolf (1982). Trotzdem, 1900–1930 (in German). G. Prachner. p. 218. ISBN 3-85367-037-7. 
• Loos, Adolf; Heinrich Kulka (1931). Adolf Loos: Das Werk des Architekten (in German). Anton Schroll & Co, Neues Bauen in Der Welt, IV. 
• Loos, Adolf (1983). Die Potemkin'sche Stadt: Verschollene Schriften, 1897–1933 (in German). Prachner. p. 231. ISBN 3-85367-038-5. 

Further reading

• Bock, Ralf (2007). Adolf Loos. Geneve: Skira. ISBN 88-7624-643-6. 
• Coppa, Alessandra (2013). Adolf Loos. Milan, Italy: 24 ore cultura. ISBN 9788866481485. 
• Foster, Hal (2003). Design and Crime (And other diatribes). London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-453-3. 
• Gravagnuolo, Benedetto (1995). Adolf Loos, Theory and Works. London: Art Data. ISBN 0-948835-16-8. 
• Masheck, Joseph (2013). Adolf Loos - The Art of Architecture. New York: I. B. Tauris. p. 263. ISBN 978-1-78076-423-8. 
• Oechslin, Werner, "Stilhülse und Kern : Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos und der evolutionäre Weg zur modernen Architektur", Zuerich 1994.
• Ottillinger, Eva (1994). Adolf Loos Wohnkonzepte und Möbelentwürfe. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7017-0850-5. 
• Rukschcio, Burkhardt; Schachel, Roland (1982). Adolf Loos-Leben Und Werk. Salzburg: Residenz. ISBN 3-7017-0288-8. 
• Adolf Loos: Our Contemporary (New York, Columbia GSAPP, 2013), eds. Y. Safran and Cristobal Amunategui.Published on the occasion of the traveling exhibition "Adolf Loos: Our Contemporary," a cooperation between Columbia University GSAPP in New York, the MAK in Vienna, and the CAAA in Guimaraes. Essays by Beatriz Colomina, Hermann Czech, Rainald Franz, Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Christopher Long, Can Onaner, Daniel Sherer, Philip Ursprung.
• Tournikiotis, Panayiotis (1996). Adolf Loos. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-878271-80-6. 

External links

• Works by or about Adolf Loos at Internet Archive
• Adolf Loos online exhibition images, podcasts and video about Loos' life and work. Royal Institute of British Architects
• Adolf Loos, Vienna 1900 & Austrian Modern Architecture TourMyCountry.com
• Adolf Loos biography 1870–1933 WOKA Lamps Vienna
• Muirhead, Thomas. "Adolf Loos seen through the keyhole". Building Design. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-19.