:: loos - the books ::

To conclude my Loos research - after reading from and about Loos for the last three weeks I've decided on my two favourites:

"Raumplan versus Plan Libre" by Max Risselada, 2008
The Book is a collection of essays that compare the two architects Loos and Corbusier in their design philosophies and processes. Categories like structure, section, form, typology, colors and of course the plan are analysed and compared. The book ends with 2 texts by Loos ("The Principle of Cladding" and "Regarding the Economy") and Corbu ("The Decorative Art of Today" and "20th Century Building and 20th Century Living").
A brilliant read, it was especially helpfull to me to understand the techniques behind the Raumplan.

"Das Schöne, das Wahre, und das Richtige. Adolf Loos und das Haus Müller in Prag" by Christian Kühn, 2001
Where Risselada analysed the design strategies, Kühn focuses on the theoretical placement of Loos in the modern movement. First he analyses the Haus Müller in terms of interior sequencing, exterior-interior and room-material and mood relationships. He concludes with defining Loos as modern architect, who created moods and atmospheres, focused always on the human needs primary to construction and technology and understood architecture as the stage for life, using terms as play (Spiel), interpretation, orchestration (Inszenierung) and statement (Aussage) in his design theories.
Second he compares Loos' theoretical work and his philosophical standpoints to Corbu, Mies, the Bauhaus and de Stijl. He analyses their understanding of the architect, form, aesthetics, architecture as art versus industry, their understanding of truthfulness in architecture and construction and their ideas of collectivity versus individuality. Kühn argues that because art historians in the 60s and 70s reduced the modern movement to functionalism, the international style and industrial aesthetics - Loos tended to be misunderstood and reduced to a reading of "Ornament and Crime" as a radical text against historsism. Whereas he was a much more complex thinker, having almost contemporary standpoints in terms of taste, pop culture, city planing and unlike Corbu, Mies or Gropius he didn't ask for a break with tradition, but on the contrary always accepted it as a strong part of cultural evolution.
Kühn concludes in the book that Loos was an architect that had "the paradox as a principle", on the one hand he didn't want to be a moralist as the other modernists and try to drill humans with architecture to live modern, on the other hand he was constantly fighting for a modern lifestyle and even founded his own architecture school in Vienna. Nevertheless - Kühn argues - Loos was consistent in his contradictions in his architecture as well as his theory and even his biography always keeping his ideas on the individual, ethics and modernity self-evident.
A great read, not just about Loos but about architecture in general.