Adolf Loos

10 December 1870, Brno – 23 August 1933, Kalksburg near Vienna, Austria

Adolf Loos came from a Czech-German family and he learnt about stonemasonry in his father’s workshop at an early age. He studied in an industrial school in Liberec and Brno, later at the polytechnic in Dresden. In the late 19^th century, he went to the USA, where he was inspired by modernist tendencies in architecture. After his return to Europe in 1896, he settled in Vienna, where he worked on city planning of the growing city. Loos was also a prolific essayist, who wrote many texts about the purist idea of architecture for foreign and Czech magazines (Náš směr, Stavitel, etc.). His collected works were published as Speech into Emptiness (Řeči do prázdna, 1929). From 1924 to 1928, he lived in Paris, where he was highly praised. At the beginning, his purist designs were not understood by the public and some of the experts, but in spite of this he built many such projects. The architect’s work became relevant again, sought-after and admired late in the 20^th century.

Loos was close to the avant-garde circles and he often met with the most important representatives of modern art. As an advocate of purism and functionalism, he opposed all decorative styles (especially Art Nouveau). He also applied this principle in his designs, as well as in numerous publications, e.g. Ornament and Crime (Ornament a zločin, 1908). Loos’s buildings thus lacked ornaments, they are square, simple, although functional and carefully designed. He worked with quality and luxurious materials. His projects were built in Plzeň for the entrepreneur František Müller and other customers, in Brno for Viktor Bauer (sugar factory and villa in Hrušovany, interiors). His most important works include the Looshaus (or Goldman & Salatsch) in Vienna. He also experimented with floors of different heights in some rooms and he applied the principle of raumplan in his works. During his Paris period, he designed Tristan Tzara’s villa in Montmartre and in Vienna he designed the Moller villa. The most successful applications of the raumplan principle are the Müllero villa in Prague-Střešovice and the Winternitz villa the Smíchov district of Prague (both with Karel Lhota).