Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos (1870-1933), Austrian architect of the early 1900s, was one of the first protagonists of the radical renewal of the concept of architecture that crossed Western culture in those years. His essay "Ornaments and Crime" (1908) paved the way for Modernism, pugnaciously advocating the abandonment of any decorative ambitions to favor above all the practical and utilitarian function of buildings. An idea of architecture that Loos consistently carried forward also in his design practice, strongly influenced by his youthful trips to the United States during which he had come into contact with the dry and chaste style of the Calvinist communities of the Shakers. Back in Vienna he launched into a bitter controversy with the architects of the Secession group, such as Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffamann, to whom he had initially adhered but from which he had soon detached himself in opposition to their style which he considered an expression of past. Instead, he was in friendly relations with the circles of the European artistic avant-garde, so much so that in the 1920s he designed the Parisian home of the surrealist Tristan Tzara. Other well-known projects of his are the Café Museum in Vienna (1899), Villa Kramer in Montreux (1903-06) and the Looshaus (1909-11), also in Vienna, a city for which he briefly held the role of chief architect in the difficult period following the First World War. A chair designed by him is now re-proposed in the Gebrüder Thonet Vienna catalog, while many of his lamps are reissued by the Austrian lighting brand Woka.