Adolf Loos Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) was an Austrian architect and critic, born in Brno, whose polemical writings and austere buildings made him one of the pioneers of modern architecture. In his lecture Ornament and Crime he attacked decoration as a waste of labour, and in buildings such as the Looshaus on Vienna’s Michaelerplatz, the Steiner House and the Villa Müller in Prague he developed the Raumplan, an interlocking arrangement of rooms at different levels.

Brno, Dresden and America

Loos was born in Brno, Moravia, in 1870, the son of a stonemason. He studied at the Technical University of Dresden and in 1893 travelled to the United States, where he spent three years in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, admiring American engineering and the practical culture of English and American tailoring and design.

Vienna and Ornament and Crime

Settling in Vienna in 1896, Loos wrote sharp essays on design, fashion and culture and designed interiors such as the Café Museum (1899) and the tiny American Bar (1908), lined with marble and mirrors. In his 1910 lecture Ornament and Crime he argued that modern culture no longer needed ornament, a provocative position that later inspired the modern movement.

The Looshaus and the Raumplan

The Looshaus on the Michaelerplatz (1911), a commercial building for the tailors Goldman & Salatsch opposite the Hofburg, caused a scandal because its plain upper facade lacked window decoration. In houses such as the Steiner House (1910) and the Rufer House (1922), Loos developed the Raumplan, in which rooms of different heights interlock in three dimensions, behind plain exterior walls.

Paris, Prague and the late villas

From 1924 to 1928 Loos lived in Paris, where he built a house for the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara (1926). His late masterpieces, the Villa Moller in Vienna (1928) and the Villa Müller in Prague (1930), bring the Raumplan to its fullest expression. He died in Kalksburg, near Vienna, in 1933.