loos-apalooza

 

"There is it!" I yelped as I yanked the rented Tourag to the side of the road and jumped out of the car. I rushed to the center of the street, hand-leveled my camera, and pressed click.

"Hey!" a uniformed officer yelled. He came running out of the bushes to my right. "What are you doing!"

"I'm taking a photo of this house," I replied. 

"Where are you from?" he asked. 

We pulled out our passports and driver licenses and explained that we were from Texas.

"Then why does your car have German plates?"

I could have been a smart ass at this point ("'cause I left my trusty steed in Muleshoe..."), but just simply answered, "It's a rental."

After several more questions, he asked why I wanted a photo of the building.

I cleared my throat. I explained that the building was architecturally important, one of the key works by Austrian-architect Adolf Loos. I explained how Loos was an architectural radical who wrote "Ornament and Crime" and was nearly tarred and feathered for the design of the Looshaus in downtown Vienna. I explained how he played a critical role in Modernism in architecture and how he radicalized Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra.

"We're touring a bunch of his buildings. We're calling it Loos-apalooza!"

He wasn't impressed.

"We call it the Monkeyhaus," he deadpanned.

"Monkeyhaus?" I replied.

"Yes," he said. "It looks like a monkey."

We both turned and contemplated the facade. "It does look like a monkey," I conceded.

As it turns out, Villa Moller (1929-30) now serves as Israel's embassy in Austria (I can only imagine the security these days...). I had forgotten that and the stories from other Loosheads that had stopped to gawk and take photos and then been accosted by armed guards, some demanding the photos be deleted. Fortunately, he didn't ask to see my phone (there's an embarrassing number of cat photos on there) or ask me to delete the photo I took. And thank goodness that the single shot I was able to get off was magnificent.

ooo! ooo!

aah! aah!

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One of Loos' most famous designs is for what is now named the Looshaus in downtown Vienna on the Michaelerplatz. There's a lot to see on the Michaelerplatz in addition to the Looshaus: the historic St. Michael's Church, Roman ruins exposed in the street, the Hofburg Palace, and the Sisi Museum. The busloads of international tourists gawked in all directions except the Looshaus, the most important building on the plaza, at least architecturally.

The Looshaus looks, to today's eyes, rather pedestrian, like a sexxed up Hampton Inn. But when it was completed in 1912, it was consider off-the-hook radical due to its lack of ornamentation. Yes, Loos employed columns (a nod to the cathedral next door) and cornices and, in places, medallions, but the decoration on the bottom half of the building came almost entirely from the richness of Cipollino marble. On the upper half, the windows are naked except for occasional flower boxes.

About those windows... When it became clear during construction that the windows on the upper half had no ornamentation, the press attacked, describing the building as inappropriately naked. Loos gave a public speech at the construction site to defend his design, but the city pulled the building permit until Loos changed the design. Begrudgingly, he agreed to add a fig leaf of flower boxes, and construction continued. The Emperor disliked the Looshaus so much that he ordered curtains for that side of the palace to be permanently closed so he didn't have to look at it.

Loos was inspired by Louis Sullivan in Chicago and advanced his work. Arguably, Loos' windows were inspired by Chicago-style windows, which are triptychs of glass.

 

 

 

 

In a theme that followed us until the last Loos-er, we were not able to enjoy interiors due to arriving minutes late for tours (all those tropes about Germans are true...) or buildings closed for various reasons. This was the case for Villa Müller (1930) in Prague.   :-(   Regardless, we experienced the regality of these villas, which are enormous, and enjoyed Loos' famous lack of ornamentation, an important step toward the International Style.

 

By my eye, Loos sucked at massing (his villas are giant cubes) and fenestration (see Monkeyhaus). Regardless, this is history, and we don't get apex Modernism without Loos. 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing I love about Europe is how they not only retain their old buildings, but their interiors as well. They are like hoarders, never throwing anything away. For example, it's bonkers that several interiors that Loos designed are still extant. For example, one of Loos' earliest designs is of the interior of the Cafe Museum (1899) in Vienna. Again, you might be thinking "nice, standard, modern cafe," but the lack of ornamentation, the light, and the simple furniture foreshadows Loos' radical minimalism. 

 

 

 

Perhaps Loos' most famous interior is the American Bar (1908) in Vienna. Slinging up American drinks in its postage stamp space, Loos drank beer here with architectural students in his own "university" inspiring the likes of R.M. Schindler and Richard Neutra. It was here that Loos convinced Schindler to go to the United States. The interior design is minimal but, with the use of onyx, brass, dark wood, and mirrors, the place feels rich and sophisticated. Perhaps this is where Neutra was inspired to use mirrors to extend his own spaces when he later came to the states.

We stopped in for a drink (and a few clandestine photos) one afternoon on the back wall, which is where I imagined Loos held court. We enjoyed two “Adolf Loos” Feingespritzts (champagne, soda, mint, strawberries), purported to be Adolf Loos’ favorite drink.

 

 

The Scheu House (1912-13). The names on the side are of the three young girls Loos was accused of molesting later in his life. He was acquitted of having "sexually abused [the girls] to satisfy his lusts" but was convicted of "seduction to indecency" for their nude poses for his paintings.

 

Another famous house, the Steiner House (1910), was an early example of a Modernist twisting local building requirements to meet the aesthetic needs of the New Architecture. The front is below:

 

and here's the back:

 

 

Haus Wittgenstein (1929) in Vienna is a Loos-esque house designed by Paul Engelmann. Wittenstein gets co-credit due to his designs of various fixtures in the house and being a general pain-in-the-ass during construction, once demanding a ceiling be raised 30 mm to meet plans. The building also serves as part of the Bulgarian embassy, but we were able to tour much of the interior along with a retired materials engineer (The Bride's profession). The house has the classic Loos massing, but the interiors are bright and airy, unlike the heavier touch of Loos.

Loos was born and raised in Brno, Czechia, so we stopped in to visit a sculpture placed in his honor by the city whilst checking out Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat nearby.

 

 

This was an accidental find after a purposeful visit to a demonstration village of early Modernist designs. The village is called Werkbundsiedlung Wien, and the duplex is dubbed Houses Adolf Loos (nos. 49-52) (1932).   

 

The coup de grâce of the palooza was the "discovery" during planning that Loos had designed a "cabin" in the Austrian Alps. The Khuner Villa was built in 1928 and was the mountain home of Paul Khuner in Kreuzberg, Austria. Perched on a hillside, the house takes in stunning views of the Alps. Converted into a hotel and restaurant in 1959, we spent one blissful night there!

Our room looked almost exactly like it was when Loos finished it nearly 100 years ago. The interiors have a Schindleresque vibe to them, which makes me wonder if his designs were, in part, inspiration (Schindler stayed in communication with Loos, sending him photos and whatnot of his work; Schindler's own designs between 1920 and 1930 were influenced by Japanese interiors). The the cabin's great room invokes Schindler's Lovell Beach House.

The cabin didn't get much attention in the architectural world, probably because of its rustic materials and gabled roofline, but the completed structure is clean-lined and sleek despite its use of logs and local stone. This house could be considered an early example of regional Modernism, responding to local conditions and materials. 

 

 

 

And that concludes our Loos-apalooza! We missed one house (we had too much to see...) south of Brno (House for a Sugar Mill Owner) and, in the process of writing this post, see that we missed some others. We do need to go back to Vienna and spend a couple weeks to savor the town (and tour some of the classic interiors), so perhaps we'll see them in the future. Loos was famous for his raumplans, complex interiors with many different levels (something Schindler employed in many of his designs). We'd love to romp around one of those!