Background

Adolf Loos was born in Brünn (Brno), now in the Czech Republic but then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on December 10, 1870.

He was the son of a stone mason and sculptor. His father, a German stonemason, died when Loos was nine years old. His mother continued to carry on the stonemason business after her husband's death.

Education

Loos attended several Gymnasium schools, a technical school in Liberec and graduated 1889 from a technical school in Brno. He later studied at Dresden University of Technology. He left one year later without completing his study.

Career

Between 1893 and 1896 he lived in the United States, mostly in Philadelphia with some relatives, but also visited New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. In 1896 Loos returned to Vienna and devoted himself to architecture. In 1898 he was associated briefly with the Vienna Secession. In 1917 he participated in World War I. Between 1920 and 1922 Loos worked as chief architect of the Department of Housing of Vienna in the newly established Austrian Republic. He resigned, disillusioned, in 1922 and emigrated to France. Between 1922 and 1927 Loos lived mostly in Paris and the French Riviera; he returned to Austria in 1928 and lived there intermittently until his death on August 23, 1933.

Although he began practicing in the late 1890s when Art Nouveau was at its peak, Loos was not affected by it at all. The fact that he had lived in the United States and thus had become aware of the advances in the commercial and domestic architecture of that country may account for this. Loos' earliest commissions were interior remodellings of stores and cafes. His first shop interior was done in 1898 for the Goldman and Salatsch haberdashery shop in Vienna. This interior, entirely straightlined and without any ornament, already showed his design principles and especially his mastery in the creation of articulate space effects.

His Museum Café of the next year, dubbed "Café Nihillsmus" for its plainness, was simple and unadorned, although effective architecturally. His Kärtner Bar in Vienna (1907) was a masterpiece in the exploitation of a tiny space and in the use of sumptuous materials.

Loos did many remodellings of flats, in which he used fine materials with polished surfaces uninterrupted by moldings; these would prove a potent inspiration to the architects of the next generation. In his free-standing houses Loos introduced the compact, block-like mass, although he did not subject it to the geometric rigor characteristic of the work of the Internationalists. But it was in the design of interiors that Loos revealed himself as a first-class architect; the dignity and coziness of his interiors and their deliberate suitability to modern living conditions have rarely been surpassed. In this Loos was inspired by English domestic architecture, which he frequently singled out for praise. Distinctly his, however, was the emphasis on precious materials and the creation of flowing spaces—very similar to those of Frank Lloyd Wright—and also the notion of Raumplan—that is, architectural composition with volumes of space as opposed to two-dimensional planning.

Loos' Karma Villa near Montreux in Switzerland from 1904 to 1906 may have influenced Le Corbusier. The Steiner House of 1910 and the Scheu House of 1912, both in Vienna, belong to his finest works. The simplicity of their facades, their flat roofs, white walls, and horizontal windows without any moldings, together with the openness of their planning, provided a great impetus toward the emergence of the International Style. Loos' larger urban work, the Goldman and Salatsch Building on the Michaelerplatz in Vienna of 1910-1911, aroused a storm of protest because it presented a plain unadorned facade opposite the Hofburg (Imperial Palace). Yet the ground story had marble-clad columns externally and contained internally Loos' articulate spaces increased to a monumental scale.

As chief architect of the city of Vienna in 1920-1922 Loos designed an experimental district in Heuberg which was only partly built and which included many types of buildings which were never realized but constituted the most advanced experiments in low-cost housing at the time anywhere in Europe.

At least as effective as his buildings were his writings, in which he advocated a functional simplicity of form. Loos was the author of numerous articles; those from 1897-1900 were collected in 1921 and published under the title Ins Leere Gesprochen (Spoken into the Void). Those from 1900-1930 were collected in 1931 under the title Trotzdem (Nevertheless). Loos published the article "Ornament und Verbrechen" ("Ornament and Crime"); in it he claimed that architecture and the applied arts could do without any ornament, which in itself should be regarded as a survival of barbaric custom. Indeed, Loos saw the progress of his era precisely in the abolition of ornament for economic and aesthetic reasons. Therefore he was a sworn enemy not only of the ponderous historicism of Vienna, but also of the style of the Vienna Secession, which he felt was nothing more than a search for a new ornamental vocabulary.

Loos instead proposed a strict functionalism, which in turn derived from the theories of the great German architect Gottfred Semper and from the rationalism of Otto Wagner, whom Loos regarded most highly. At the same time Loos maintained the deepest respect for ancient architecture; this found expression in the frequent use of classical architectural elements in his architectural designs. He even went so far as to propose a tower in the form of a Doric column in his competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower of 1922. It is important to note, however, that Loos' respect for antiquity was of a functionalistic nature: he always considered the question, what would the ancients have accomplished under the present conditions? In any event Loos' writings and architectural works provided great inspiration to the architects of the following generation who brought about the International Style of 1925-1950.

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.

Achievements

• The Viennese architect Adolf Loos was one of the pioneers of modern architecture at the turn of the century.
  
  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 contributed a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture and design.
  
  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.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Adolf Loos: Why A Man Should Be Well-dressed

    (Throughout his life Adolf Loos raised his eloquent voice ...)

  • Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought. Translation Series)

    (Ornament and Crime contains thirty-six original essays by...)

  • On Architecture (STUDIES IN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE, CULTURE, AND THOUGHT)

    (Essays on Architecture & Design)

  • Adolf Loos (German Edition)

    (Hard to find book)

  • Die Potemkin'sche Stadt: Verschollene Schriften, 1897-1933 (German Edition)

    (Hard to find book)

  • Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (German Edition)
  • The Architecture of Adolf Loos: An Arts Council Exhibition

Personality

Loos was deaf until the age of 12 and was hearing-impaired until the end of his life; this physical disability influenced his character, and he remained a loner as an individual and as an artist.

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.

Connections

Loos was married three times.

In July 1902, he married drama student Lina Loos (de). The marriage ended three years later in 1905.

In 1919, he married 20-year-old Austrian-born Elsie Altmann (de), 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.

Father:

Adolf Loos

Mother:

Marie Loos

Spouse:

Claire Beck Loos

(4 November 1904 – 19 January 1942)

Spouse:

Elsie Altmann

She was a dancer and operetta star and daughter of Adolf Altmann and Jeannette Gruenblatt.

Spouse:

Lina Loos

References

• History of Modern Architecture, Vol. 1: The Tradition of Modern Architecture
• History of Modern Architecture - Vol. 2, The Modern Movement
• Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art)
• Adolf Loos: Das Werk des Architekten Neues Bauen in der Welt, Band IV