Birth of modernity Adolf Loos

ADOLF LOOS
LESSON 3
MODULE: 20TH CENTURY DESIGN AND CULTURE
RAFFLES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE MONGOLIA
LECTURER: SANDRA DRASKOVIC

The story begins in 1896. Adolf Loos returns to Vienna after three years in
America familiarising himself with the theoretical writings of Louis Sullivan
and pioneering achievements of the Chicago school.
Vienna in contrast was confined and conservative in its days of the
declining Austro-Hungarian empire, no doubt an atmosphere that was
terribly suffocating for Loos.
Against this backdrop of Austrian geo-political turmoil enters the Viennese
Secessionists, a group formed in 1897 by artists Gustav Klimt, Koloman
Moser, Max Kurzweil and architects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria
Olbrich who objected to the prevailing conservatism of the Vienna
Künstlerhaud resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists.
The Secessionists were heavily influenced by Charles Mackintosh‟s work
and his radical break from the traditional vernacular to introduce new
comprehensive designs as total works of art.
ADOLF LOOS

Fresh from his American travels, Adolf Loos found what the Secessionists
were offering completely ludicrous and responded with harsh criticisms in
the form of an anti-Gesamtkunstwerk fable, „The Story of a Poor Rich
Man‟, in which Loos portrayed the story of a wealthy businessman who
had a Secessionist architect design a „total‟ house for him, including the
furnishings and the clothes, only to be reprimanded by the architect on his
birthday for disrupting the mood of the living room by wearing slippers
meant for the bedroom.
It was a sardonic response to the special clothes designed for the
occupant's wife to harmonize with the lines of the house Olbrich built at
Uccle in 1895. In 1908, Adolf Loos followed up his attack on the
Secessionists by publishing his most seminal work, ‘Ornament and Crime’
to elaborate on what he saw as the Viennese Secession‟s arbitrary or
superfluous use of ornamentation that had no relevance to society.
ADOLF LOOS

Thus he accused his contemporaries use of ornament on
their furniture, buildings and clothes in the Secession fashion
as a way of masking the mediocrity of their culture and social
condition, and even cites Olbrich by name as a progenitor of
illegitimate ornament.
"Where will Olbrich‟s work be in ten years‟ time? Modern
ornament has no forebears and no descendants, no past and
no future. It is joyfully welcomed by uncultivated people to
whom the true greatness of our time is a closed book, and
after a short time is rejected."
ADOLF LOOS

The crucial argument against such redundant ornament was
not only that it was wasteful in labour and material, but that it
invariably implied a form of craft slavery for the modern man
who sees no value in creating such ornaments.
"Today, mankind is healthier than ever before; only a few are
ill. These few, however, tyrannise the worker, who is so
healthy he is incapable of inventing ornament. They force him
to execute ornament which they have designed, in the most
diverse materials.“
Bourgeois culture can only find their aesthetic fulfilment in the
creation of ornament.
ADOLF LOOS

purist manifesto
Loos only called for suppression in ornaments from articles of daily use, or
functional objects, and not in all forms of ornament. He did not criticize the
grammar of classical ornament as he did with the superfluous
ornamentation of the Secessionists, nor did he do so with geometric
decoration inherent in materials – both of which he practiced to a large
degree.
Thus it is important to remember that Loos did not challenge historical
references in architectural ornamentation, but merely the false usage that
was common to that age.
In this respect, Adolf Loos shares a similar stand point with Charles
Rennie Mackintosh. Mackintosh too discarded the heavy ornamentation
and inherited styles of Victorian England that had no relevance to his
Scottish heritage.
ADOLF LOOS

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE
Architectural styles vary to a great extent along this
circular boulevard, even though many of the buildings
were constructed at the same time.
The curved length of the Ringstraße, and many of the
buildings along its edge, was constructed where the city
wall once stood. In the mid 19th century, Emperor Franz
Joseph I decreed that the wall should be taken down,
and a ring of important public structures should take its
place. This monumental boulevard was built to display
the Hapsburg’s power and wealth. The Burgtheater,
Parliament, Staatsoper and the Rathaus building are just
some of the grand edifices you’ll spy jumbled along this
road, representing a variety of architectural movements.

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE – HOUSE OF PARLAMENTS

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE – STAATSOPERA

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE - KARLSKIRCHE

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE - Votive Church

RINGSTRASSE – Academy of Fine arts

RINGSTRASSE – UNIVERSITY BUILDING

RINGSTRASSE – URANIA BUILDING

Vienna Secession,
Joseph Maria Olbrich: 1898-99

Vienna Secession, Joseph Maria Olbrich: 1898-99

VIENNA RINGSTRASSE
NEO CLASSICISM – CITY OF ARISTOCRACY
NEO STYLES ADOPTED FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS
“BORROWED” STYLES FROM ITALY, GREECE,
RENAISSANCE, GOTHIC,ROMANESQUE, LUXURY
PALACES AND VILLAS
“How to join non-formal Anglo-Saxon interiors (Arts &
Crafts, Glasgow school) with rigid, strict interiors of
eclectic classical interiors and shapes (against
grotesque fantastic creatures of secession)”

FIRST INTERIORS
•1910 – ADAPTATION OF INTERIORS IN Vienna.
Influences form Japan, USA, romantism
1. Luxurious retail stores in Vienna
2. Café Museum, 1899
3. Goldman & Salatsch interiors 1896.
4. Knize boutique, 1909
5. Kartner (American bar) 1907.

Café Museum
• The first example of Loos’ work is the Café
Museum(1899). Designed at the peak of the Art Nouveau
period.
• The building affirms his aesthetic equation of beauty and
utility. The walls are painted a cool green, whilst the Loos-
designed chairs are of a dark red timber. These contrasting
colours are synonymous with many of Loos’ interiors.
• They are balanced in the Café Museumby a vaulted
ceiling that is painted plainly in white whilst a pattern is
created by brass strips that, in line with their utilitarian
function, also served as electrical conduit to chain-
suspended lighting.

Goldman & Salatsch
• Loos had used ornament where he felt appropriate to preserve
the cultural integrity of the building, but where there was no
perceived purpose, he was not compelled to provide decoration.
• Loos observed that "on the ground floor and mezzanine, where
the shop has established itself, that is where modern commercial
life demands a modern solution" yet at the same time "modern
man, who hurries through the streets, sees only that which is that
his eye-level.
• Thus the residential suites in the upper portion of the Goldman &
Salatsch building was deliberately left unadorned, with only three-
pane windows piercing the smooth stucco walls, making the
building a combination of these two different zones, residential
and commercial, as two materially autonomous halves. Loos was
being highly specific in his treatment of each space and
demonstrating an honesty.

Knize boutique
Founded in 1858 by the
bespoke tailor Josef Kniže,
the house specialized in
sportswear, riding attire
and liveries.
From 1910 – 1913 star
architect Adolf Loos
designed Knize’s second
floor and later also the
store front at Graben 13,
which is still the home of
the haberdasher today.

Knize boutique
Pentagondodekaeder a ball made from 12 flat pentagons, made for
the famous taylor-shop Knize in Vienna, Paris and Berlin"

Kartner American bar
The facade features a forepart shaped glass prism located on
the three glass doors and the same size of the input. These
doors are finished in brass coated separated by four red
marble pillars of Skyros and originally functioned as only the
central entrance.
The glass prism consists of two parts, the bottom facing the
visitor, is composed of crystals that make up the American flag
and lyrics composed by stained glass mosaics with the name
of the bar. The top of the prism is flat. This prism is topped by
a sign leaning against the wall of the facade Earl reads
"American Bar", noting that the architect's admiration acquired
by Anglo-American culture, very different from his previous so
typically Viennese Café Museum (1899), also reminiscent of
an English pub.

This small bar, just off the Kärntner Strasse in central
Vienna, show Loos' combination of simple, unadorned forms
with opulent materials and fine, simple detailing to give a
modern, rich impression.
Mirrors covering the whole width of the wall above the bar,
and the parallel wall opposite, multiplies the apparent size of
the small room, giving the image of an array of seemingly
freestanding columns. The simple geometry of the columns
and joists in this image matches that in Loos's House on
Michaelerplatz of the same period.
Seating is in small booths around three backlit tables, which
glow white in the dark, yellowish brown atmosphere of the
bar.

• 27.72 meters square and consists of a single room of 4.5 meters wide
and 6.16 background of its surface
• Loos uses an optical illusion inside, through the mirrors arranged
parallel and vertically above the eye, thus multiplying the composition of
the coffered ceiling with pieces yellow and brown marble.
• The decor of the bar we used a wide variety of materials: marble, onyx,
mahogany, brass, glass mirrors and silk wall lamps.
• The bottom of the bar is lined with mahogany paneling and mirrors
interspersed with one-piece, floor combines black and white marble as a
chessboard, the bar is mahogany, covered by a solid wood armrests and
clamps bronze. Originally the seats were upholstered with a flowery
English cloth and all the lamps were covered with silks to mitigate the
effect of light.
• The only three tables in the bar, are octagonal in shape, with one foot
and opaque glass top is illuminated from below

•Between 1910 and 1920 – RESIDENTIAL VILLAS IN
Vienna. RAUMPLAN
1. Villa Steiner, 1910
2. Villa Muller, Vienna
3. Villa Mueler, Prague
4. Villa Rufer, 1912, Vienna
5. Scheu House, Vienna, at Austria, 1912 to 1913.
RESIDENTIAL INTERIORS

•MATERIALS: high qulity materials should replace
ornamentation, higher form of intelligent luxury.
•CEILING:
• public and social rooms: white without ornamentations
• private and family rooms: wooden or iron “modular” ceilings
• dining room: grotesque Richard’s wooden beams of big
dimensions
•FLOORS: stone, wooden parquet, oriental carpets, fireplace
frame, brick, raugh materials
•FURNITURE: glare, glorious, polished, laquered wood and
glass mirrors, lighting, metal objects and brass details, build-in
furniture, ready-made furniture of own choice.
DESIGN OF VILLAS

• Built in the same year as the essay Architecktur was
published (1910), Hugo Steiner's house is one of Loos's
most significant and well-known works. Because of its
severe and advanced modernity of form it has been
adopted in the histories of contemporary architecture as an
example of the phase of transition and an anticipation of
the language of Rationalism.
• Architect is owner of walls and build-in furniture. The
remaining furniture to be manufactured by craftsman in the
spirit of modern period – everyone has right to buy them
alone, based on own demands and preferences. (different
from art neavou)
Villa Steiner

•Between 1920 - 1922– MAIN ARCHITECT IN CHAMBER
FOR URBANISM IN Vienna. RAUMPLAN used for
massive housing projects as urban strategy
• Hauber village, houses in raws and glass garden
• Horner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1921.
• Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
• Villa Stross, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
• Landhaus Spanner, at
Gumpoldskirchen, Austria, 1923.
URBAN PLANNER

•1922– MOVING TO PARIS TO BUILD HOUSE
OF DADA POET TRISTAN TSAR.
• House of Tristan Tsar, Paris, 1928
• Moller House, Vienna, at Austria, 1927 to 1928.
• Wohnung Hans Brummel, at Vienna, Austria, 1929.
• Wohnung Willy Hirsch, at Pilsen, Czech Republic,
1929.
• Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria,
1930.
• Villa Muller, Prague, Czech Republic, 1930.
PARIS PERIOD

• The Prague villa for František Müller and his wife Milada
built between 1928 and 1930 was created according to the
design of one of the greatest architects of that time, Adolf
Loos.
•The Villa Muller is located in Prague, Czech
Republic, 1930,and its considered one of Adolf’s most
significant architectural works.
• It’s facade has a minimalist cubist style with linear and
geometric forms while the interior features rich
marble, woods and textures in deep colors.
VILLA MULLER

• Loos to bring his original spatial concept, the so-called
Raumplan based on spatial and height differentiation of
incorporated rooms, to culmination.
• This concept that was together with the absence of
ornament the basic idea characteristic of his other famous
buildings (the Goldmann & Salatsch department store in
Vienna, the house of the poet Tristan Tzara in Paris and
the unrealized project of a house for Josephine Baker) led
to new modern architecture.
VILLA MULLER

• exterior is austere, a white cube structure interrupted by
yellow-framed windows.
• The interior, however, is in stark contrast to the simplicity
of the façade. Loos has used luxurious materials to
decorate the interior. Slabs of green Greek marble encase
some of the walls; parts of the house are panelled with
mahogany and laquered wood, Delfttiles, silk prints, floral
wallpaper and travertine.
• Each floor is a classic example of Loos’ Raumplan with
split-levels, short staircases and multiple landings
• These, together with a definitive use of contrasting
colours, especially terracotta and green contribute to the
house’s aesthetic appeal.
VILLA MULLER

Villa Muller
CUBISTIC MINIMALISTIC EXTERIOR

Villa Muller
Levels and surface area, voids through walls.

Birth of modernity Adolf Loos

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