Customer Reviews

Adolf Loos, 1870-1933: Architect, Cultural Critic, Dandy (Taschen Basic Architecture)

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This little monograph is a nice little introduction / reference on Loos's work -- brief, an inane and badly translated introduction, good for pulling off a shelf when you need to refresh your memory about a certain Loos project. Just what we expect from these Taschen books.

But what makes it really special is a series of photographs of the recently restored Villa Muller in Prague (project built c.1930). These are credited to Pavel Stecha, according to the list in the back. They are simply phenomenal. They give a vivid, spatial sense of the house and are worth the price of the book by far. Very dramatic.

By no means is Adolf Loos as well known as his younger contemporaries, Le Corbusier, Gropius or Van de Rohe. Very few of his buildings rise to the level of iconic. Nevertheless, Loos through his buildings and writings was one of the founders of architectural Modernism.

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, he was the principle advocate for removing adornments from building fascades. He was also one of the first architects to design homes with flat roofs and descending terraces. Loos also broke away from symetrical floor plans. He made the building shell conform to his use of shape and volume. These are all innovations that helped reshape architecture during the Twentieth Century.

The German Publishing Company Taschen is producing a whole series of brief high quality monographs on the most important architects of the Twentieth Century. Priced at under ten dollars a volume, you will not be able to find a better introduction to Adolf Loos' work. Although many of his buildings are hard to relate to, Loos nevertheless was a very important figure in shaping the world around us. Highly recommended.