Two Sides of the Same (Modernist Housing) Coin

Adolf Loos

As we have elaborated on these pages before, modernist architecture did not arise in a vacuum. The passing of time from the 19th to the 20th Centuries did not imbue designers with mystical insight that lead to what we call modernism overnight. The process of establishing a modern form of architecture was wrought with fits and starts. Often, designers were working in parallel directions, but with perpendicular intents. Such is the situation we find ourselves in when we begin to examine the similarities and differences between the residential architectural ethos of Adolf Loos and that of the architects involved in the Werkbund and the Weissenhofsiedlung exhibition.

We begin with Adolf Loos, the "unclassifiable" giant of early modernism. Loos, an Austrian, possessed a fundamentally different outlook on architecture than many of his contemporaries. Though he vehemently eschewed ornament and held the industrial zeitgeist as an ideal, he did not seek to create a style of architecture. He felt that to be cognizant of creating a style was to make architecture artificial and to end up with the same sort of historical hodge-podge that the other modernists so detested of their predecessors. No, Loos was not interested in style per se, but in the deliberate evolution of architecture toward its true ends.

“The present constructs itself on the past just as the past constructed itself on the preceding past. It has never been another way – nor will it ever be any other way.” - Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos' buildings thus follow the above formulation. They are built upon the past as a type of evolutionary object, leading organically to the architecture of the future. For Loos, it was inconceivable to "jump" to a new style that exists only as some philosophical ideal. His intent was to build his way from the past, thus creating the new style by the very act of building.

These baseline ideas are key to understanding Loos' philosophy in residential architecture. Another layer we must consider, however, is how Loos reacted to other architects of his day whom he felt were not following a similar trajectory of building the future based on the past. He was diametrically opposed to the architects of the Viennese Secession (an Austrian variant of the Jugendstil), whom he felt relied entirely on ornament and not enough on true, simple materials. Thus, we find in Loos' houses a minimalistic treatment of the surfaces - the material selection is what gives character to the spaces.

Villa Müller, Prague

Let us now examine the Villa Müller, a house Adolf Loos designed in Prague. On the exterior, the home is quite plain - the whitewashed concrete cube is punctured only in a few places to allow fenestration. The austere facade was in keeping with Loos' philosophy of keeping the public (Gesellschaft) and the private (Gemeinschaft) separate and distinct entities. Thus, the interior of the Villa is lavishly and comfortably decorated in rich material. The private spaces were not for exhibit to the public.

The plan of the Villa Müller exhibits one of Loos' novel inventions, the Raumplan. The Raumplan is a system of spatial organization that Loos used in many of his homes. Its execution relied on spaces that stepped up and down into other spaces, allowing for an implied hierarchy to be evident in each space within the house. Loos said of the Raumplan:

"My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces (cubes). I do not design floor plans, facades, sections. I design spaces. For me, there is no ground floor, first floor etc.... For me, there are only contiguous, continual spaces, rooms, anterooms, terraces etc. Storeys merge and spaces relate to each other. Every space requires a different height: the dining room is surely higher than the pantry, thus the ceilings are set at different levels. To join these spaces in such a way that the rise and fall are not only unobservable but also practical, in this I see what is for others the great secret, although it is for me a great matter of course. Coming back to your question, it is just this spatial interaction and spatial austerity that thus far I have best been able to realise in Dr Müller's house"

Plan of the Villa Müller: notice the half-levels present

When looking at a plan of the Villa Müller, it is difficult to sense the Raumplan since it is such a three-dimensional concept. However, one can get the feel of its impact on the plan by noticing the various stairways that are present in each level.

On a similar mental trajectory as Loos were the architects involved in the exhibition of the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. Present were many of the great personalities of mid-century modernism: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Peter Behrens. The Weissenhofsiedlung was planned as a display for utopian modernist residential design. Each architect invited to the exhibition was given a site to design a house. Contrary to Loos' methodology, the architects present at the Weissenhofsiedlung (many were members of the German Werkbund) were indeed interested in attempting to manufacture a new, international, industrially-inspired style.

House 10 by Victor Bourgeois, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart

The house that we will look at in-depth is House 10 by Victor Bourgeois. Interestingly, the site of House 10 was originally to have gone to Adolf Loos, but due to his considerable differences of opinion with the Werkbund, the site was given to Bourgeois. Victor Bourgeois was a Belgian architect who was at one time under the tutelage of Henry van de Velde, the most "unadorned" proponent of the Art Nouveau and a founder of what would become the Bauhaus.

Van de Velde's influence can be felt in much of Bourgeois' aesthetic. The design of House 10 is a simple, unadorned rectangle, with a few curvilinear projections (perhaps vestiges of the Art Nouveau?). This is a house that is trying really hard to be modern. It is minimalist in its use of diverse materials, unlike Loos' more nuanced position of greater diversity of material palette in the private realm. The plan is straightforward and quite open (at least on the third floor). The building is divided rationally and completely among the three floors, precluding any imaginative spatial configurations a la the Raumplan. 

Plan of House 10

Bourgeois' design for House 10 was actually criticized for being too traditional. Just looking at the plan, one can easily imagine any number of stylistic skins that could be slapped on the outside. If one were to just look at the first floor, there is nothing decidedly modern about the spatial organization. So, it was ironically through the ornamental scheme (or lack thereof) that this building achieved its modernist aesthetic.

This is not to say that Loos' methodology and work are superior to that of Bourgeois, but simply to show that they arrived at similar places by taking different paths. Bourgeois focused on the simple geometries of square and circle, and let them stand for themselves as gestures. Loos manipulated three dimensional space and then enclosed it in an austere box. The methods mutually enriched one another and eventually bore fruit in the pure simplicity of later modernist architecture (SOM, Philip Johnson, etc.). But, in any event, after the construction of Villa Müller and the exhibition at Weissenhofsiedlung, we were well on the way to the manifestation of the house as the ultimate industrial machine - the machine for living.

It is my opinion that Loos had the more valid methodology, though I disagree with his theories on the inherent evils of ornament. His idea that architecture should naturally evolve and not seek to be a "newness" unto itself seems quite valid to me. On the other hand, what the Werkbund did at Weissenhofsiedlung seems forced and artificial. It was exhibition after all. They were attempting to create something new and exciting and idealistic. Meanwhile, Loos was still trudging down the road of real life, real history and real change.

References and Further Reading

Discussion of the Raumplan in the Villa Müller
The Deutscher Werkbund, Adolf Loos, and the Problems of Ornament and Style in the 20th Century
Weissenhofsiedlung
Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos