Architectural Movements of Yesteryear 5: Modernism Part 1: Adolf Loos and Crime
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos, who I so affectionately refer to as “architecture’s biggest jackass”, was a “man about town” in Vienna upon his return from the United States in 1896. He had connections to the Vienna Secession in his early career designing “Cafe Museum” in 1899.
It became the meeting place for artists, authors, actors, musicians, architects, etc. to meet and exchange ideas. Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner, and many others from the Vienna Secession frequented the cafe, so it’s easy to see why he found himself swept up in the movement. However, his appreciation for the Vienna Secession did not last long; by 1910 he gave the lecture Ornament and Crime, for which his book of the same name would later be based.
Ornament and Crime
Ornament and Crime is the manifesto that triggered the entire Modernist movement. If you see a building in stucco painted white with perpendicular lines, you can thank this manifesto. It’s presented in history classes as one of the most important theories in the history of architecture. Surely, this must be filled to the brim with incredibly potent arguments to have influenced the likes of Corbusier and Gropius. Let’s take a look at a few of these arguments:
“The tattooed who are not in prison are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies at liberty, it means he has died a few years before committing a murder”
Okay, rough start. Not sure how you could possibly prove that a dead tattooed person wouldn’t have murdered someone.
“Are we alone, the people of the nineteenth century, supposed to be unable to do do what any Negro, all the races and periods before us have been able to do?”
I know it’s 1910, but come on.
“The first ornament that was born, the cross, was erotic in origin”
Something is wrong with this man.
“Ornament does not heighten my joy in life or the joy in life of any cultivated person. If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I choose one that is quite smooth and not a piece representing a heart or a baby or a rider, which is covered all over with ornaments. The man of the 15th century won’t understand me, but all modern people will.”
The old “only the cool people agree with me” argument.
“I am horrified when I go through a cookery exhibition and think that I am meant to eat these stuffed carcasses. I eat roast beef.”
He’s talking about lobster, this man prefers roast beef to lobster. If there is any greater condemnation of this man’s taste, I’d like to see it.
“The vegetable he [twentieth-century man] enjoys is simply boiled in water and has a little butter put on it. The other man likes it equally well only when honey and nuts have been added to it and someone has spent hours cooking it. Ornamented plates are very expensive, whereas the white crockery from which the modern man likes to eat is cheap.”
Ope, never mind. He hit us with the “cheaper is better” argument I’ve had with so many Taco Bell Acolytes over the years.
“Beethoven’s symphonies would never have been written by a man who had to walk about in silk, satin, and lace. Anyone who goes around in a velvet coat today is not an artist but a buffoon or a house painter.”
Being forced to Bing (open to selling this ad space in the future) “did Beethoven wear silk?” was not something I ever wanted. He did. Also, nothing wrong with house painting. Also, also all the best artists today wear velvet coats and random expensive materials, it’s like 99% of fashion.
“The peasant isn’t a Christian, he is still a pagan”
Let’s round it out with crapping on the poor.
This is only six pages long by the way and these are far and away from the only hilariously stupid arguments. He does make some correct points about economics and ornament, but there is a reason that we don’t pay economists to design buildings, and there’s a reason that architecture has gone down the tubes in years since. Yes, there are exceptions that perform beautifully, but the majority of the soulless Modernism that followed has had consequences far worse than wasting a bit of money on something that looks nice.
This lecture is littered with disdain for the rich, the poor, the tattooed, black people, Chinese people, basically any non-white people, and most of all Art Nouveau painters and architects. He asks “Where are Otto Eckmann’s works today?” after he derided Henry van de Velde’s as the work of a “straggler or a pathological phenomenon”. Let me ask you, if I hadn’t written an post on this guy, would you have even known who he was? If you aren’t an architect, probably not. The arguments are terrible, and the fact that they inspired many of my favorite architects makes me question their intelligence and morality.
Let’s take a look at his architecture to see if it’s worth ignoring his manifesto.
The American Bar
Built 2 years before Ornament and Crime was developed, the American Bar is probably my favorite work by Adolf Loos. The exterior uses raw granite, which is carried inside to the coffered ceilings. The glass sign projecting over the sidewalk is inviting, but how does he partition that from his argument that ornament is crime? It’s clearly ornament. The light fixture design is beautiful, the wood is deeply comforting, and the mirrors do an excellent job of making an incredibly small space feel much larger. The space houses two booths and maybe a 8-12 stools. Overall, I think the American Bar is very successful in the same way that I feel that Cafe Museum is successful, but I would also argue that neither of these fits his manifesto. This is the only Loos design I have been inside.
Villa Steiner
In my opinion, this is the first work of the official Modernist style that would later become known as the “International Style.” Heavily inspired by historical proportions (a common technique used by Modernists to come), the building has two symmetrical facades and two facades that look like they were cobbled together with leftover windows. The interiors have exposed wood beam ceilings with painted stucco between, plain wood paneling and countertop supported by brick. The dark stained wood kills any light that enters and smothers it’s radiance with a fire blanket.
Looshaus
A beautiful exterior with intricate detailing on the lower level windows. The columns are incredibly beautiful with impressive movement. The roof is of oxidized copper, a beautiful hat (he would have hated me calling it a hat). The bit in between looks naked, tattooed with the name of the building. It’s an elegant design that, again, doesn’t seem to fit with his manifesto particularly well. The interior is a bit dated, but I think it tried something unique at the time. Different wood stains, square brass handrails, herringbone floor pattern, stairs that flow outward, a beautiful glass ceiling near the staircase.
Villa Muller
Villa Muller is my other favorite Loos design. It is the only design of his that perfectly capitalizes on the reduction of ornament in a way that doesn’t give the building all the character of a saltine cracker. The accent in yellow around the windows is subtly exciting. The interior flaunts natural woods and marbles that flow through the building like a flowing river. This is in large part thanks to Adolf Loos’ use of his second, less talked about, much more useful innovation; the Raumplan.
Raumplan
Later in his career, Loos developed a concept called the Raumplan. The innovation should be his legacy instead of Ornament and Crime. Alas people glom onto stupid ideas at an alarming rate if they are controversial and tend to forget good ideas if they can’t be explained in 280 characters or less (or 6 pages back in the 1920s). Raumplan is a simple concept with complex results. Organize the rooms starting from least private (the foyer/entrance) to the most private (bedrooms) and then essentially spiral them up through the building using steps between each room. This allows rooms to flow from one to the next easily, giving views of each room attached through vertical and horizontal sight lines. I imagine this is one of the most thoroughly thrilling experiences possible in architecture, but unfortunately most architects did not adopt the Raumplan (with the exception of Corbusier and a handful of members of the Bauhaus). There is a second utility stairway that would allow quick travel between programmatic elements, so you aren’t stuck running through 10 rooms every time you wanted to leave the house (this is probably the real reason this wasn’t adopted, rarely do homes have 2 stairwells let alone this technical).
Lastly, I i wanted to mention how much I hate his meme designs. His design for Josephine Baker’s house is filled with racist iconography (obvious from the picture of the model of the design) and toxic male ideology (he put an underwater pool window for spying on swimmers and assumedly Josephine Baker).
He also mocked the American skyscraper and it’s vernacular borrowed from ancient columns (as mentioned in my article about Louis Sullivan).
It hurts to write an article that holds disdain for this much architectural history, but Loos is not someone I think anyone should hold in esteem. Loos goes, the Raumplan stays.