Adolf Loos

Biography

If it met forever Louis Sullivan, Adolf Loos is deeply influenced by the École of Chicago at the beginning of the century, after a voyage to the the United States. Of return in Austria, he is opposed to the current Sécession Viennese (architectural current Austrian near to the Art nouveau) and to other movements, of which the Deutsche Werkbund . He will never make party of a well defined movement, being rather the precursor of a new movement of thought launched by Otto Wagner, which preaches the use right of the elements of architecture without pretense. He goes against the Sezession, considered to be declining because “decorative”. Loos regards the ornament as an artifice complete, which generates the ugliness: decoration owes sourdre of material and not to be “plated” top.

Its social and humanistic vision of architecture will mark all the Architecture 20th century, in particular thanks to its most famous writing: Ornament and crime (1908), which will be published by Le Corbusier in her review the spirit Nouveau . He is for this reason regarded as one of the large precursors of the modern architecture.

Adolf Loos is regarded as a man out of his time, in particular at the time of the project conceived on Michaelerplatz in Vienna: the Looshaus was the source of a polemic because the clashing sobriety of its frontage in the historical center of Vienna, opposite the imperial palace, shocked the middle-class traditionalist of the time, conditioned by a decorative eclecticism which is in particular that of the Boxing ring Viennese.

Adolf Loos designed many villas in Vienna and elsewhere:

villa Steiner
Villa Müller with Prague
villa Mildewed

In 1920, it is named director of the Department of town planning in Vienna. He proposes several projects of working cities then. The building with Gradin is one of the recurrent themes of its work. It is also at the origin of the Raumplan , plan in three dimensions with variable parts heights according to the needs. It takes into account with attention separations day/night, public places/deprived, which it articulates by staircases. Loos develops a monumentality which is not academic.

It influenced Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler and discovered Oskar Kokoschka.

Major projects

Coffee Natural history museum, Vienna, 1889
Looshaus, building of Michaelerplatz, Vienna, 1909-1911
Steiner House, Vienna, 1910
Rufer House, Vienna, 1922
“The Chicago Column Platform” ( the Column of Chicago Platform ), project of contest, Chicago, 1922
House Tzara, Paris, 1925-1926
Moller Villa, Vienna, 1927-1928
Villa Müller, Prague, 1928-1930
House Mildewed (project) 1923, in the Lido of Venice

Writings of Adolf Loos

Ornament and crime , ( Ornament und Verbrechen ).
Words in the vacuum , ( Die Potemkin' sche Stadt. Verschollene Schriften. 1897 - 1933 ).
Das Andere , 1903.
Despite everything , ( Trotzdem ).

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