ART AND FUNCTION
27
site, and remarked that, ‘Good architecture can be described, it does not have to be drawn’.
25
Continuing from Frampton’s introduction, Schezen himself observes a ‘dichotomy between the
interior and exterior aesthetics of Loos’s residential work’,
26
inferring a recognition that a
functional explanation of the exterior cannot be applied to the interior.
Aldo Rossi’s introduction to Benedetto Gravagnuolo’s 1982
Adolf Loos, Theory and Works,
posits Loos with Heinrich Tessenow and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as ‘a trio of masters’, but
describes Loos’s work as a critique of the ‘redeeming attitude towards doing’ in Modern
movement, and claims that while ‘Tessenow and Mies … seem to continue architecture …
without separating knowing and doing’, Loos is ‘the keenest supporter of this division’.
27
However, Rossi relays Loos’s claim that ‘all the traffic of associations, schools, professorships,
periodicals and exhibitions has furnished nothing new’,
28
and speculates that Loos believed
that, ‘The division between Polytechnic School and Beaux Arts … robbed him of his profession’
in the late eighteenth century.
29
Rossi seems to intend to distance Loos somewhat from a
functional understanding of modernism, and his comments on ‘doing’ do not stop him from
concluding that: 'There is no doubt that the most interesting thing about Adolf Loos is his
architecture; or rather it is the dominant aspect of his work. The way in which he carries out this
work is less certain; he loves to write, to draw, to travel, to argue, to build. He claims that, like all
thinkers and writers, at least
ever since the Greeks, he is pursuing the truth; but as is well-
known the search for truth does not necessarily follow a straight path and, above all, cannot be
made into a profession’.
30
Rossi instead seems to acknowledge that Loos’s architecture could
be understood as a form of art practice, remarking that Loos ‘understands, through his
experience of America, that the great work of art is becoming collective once again’,
31
and
describing commissioned practice as ‘the artist’s means of subsistence’. However, Rossi does
not seem to believe that Loos conceived of his own work in this way, concluding that ‘Loos
seems to accept his limits as a program; architecture is not an art, it is necessary to do one’s
job well, the problems are the same and only small variations are a technological progression
that the artist accepts but that has little effect on his work’.
32
The selection of the Müller House (1930) as the focus for this research project, and the process
of tracing the development of its building components through Loos’s earlier designs, is an
acknowledgment of established scholarship recognizing the importance of the Müller House and
its relationship to his earlier work. Gravagnuolo remarks that ‘the Müller House may be seen as
25
Frampton, introduction to
Adolf Loos,
by Safran, Wang, and Budny, 24.
26
Schezen,
Architecture 1903–1932, 142
27
Aldo Rossi, introduction to
Adolf Loos: Theory and Works, by Benedetto Gravagnuolo (Milan:
Idea Books, 1982), 12.
28
Rossi, introduction to
Adolf Loos, by Gravagnuolo, 14.
29
Rossi, introduction to
Adolf Loos, by Gravagnuolo, 14.
30
Rossi, preface to
Adolf Loos, by Gravagnuolo, 11.
31
Rossi, introduction to
Adolf Loos, by Gravagnuolo, 14.
32
Rossi, introduction to
Adolf Loos, by Gravagnuolo, 13.
27
ART AND FUNCTION
28
the conclusion of a program of architecture that had been clearly expressed many years before’,
and concludes that ‘this is why one may concur with Heinrich Kulka in his assessment of this
work as the most complete expression of his conception of architecture’.
33
One facet of this
research project is locating and quantifying specific evidence of the development of the Müller
House from the preceding projects and essays that Gravagnuolo observes in general terms.
While Gravagnuolo acknowledges that the Müller House shares the ‘spatial interpenetration’ of
the Moller House,
he argues that, ‘The conceptual abstraction of the Moller House gives way to
… material realism’. Attempting to illustrate this point, he then proceeds to only describe the
lavish use of materials in the house to define the character and ‘artistic diversity of the rooms’,
34
as if this attention to visual appearance somehow dilutes the abstract quality that is more
apparent in the Moller House due to the more restrained palette of white walls and timber
paneling. This seems to be all Gravagnuolo means by ‘conceptual abstraction’ and ‘material
realism’ and he seems motivated by the desire to make his observations consistent with the
notion of Loos as part of the functionalist modernist canon. Gravagnuolo notes the consistency
of Loos’s body of work when he comments that, ‘Time has refined, but not changed, the
essence of an architectural idea’, and while generally only comparing the Müller House to the
Moller House, he makes passing reference to Loos’s first deployment of top-light in the Villa
Karma, and the use of many individual elements in Loos’s early interiors—exposed beams,
fireplaces, and large walls of mirror divided into squares and reflecting light from a single
window to the side.
35
Gravagnuolo notes that ‘there can be no doubt that [the Müller House] is a
work that synthesizes many of the ideas of design that had emerged in previous works’, but
comments that ‘his long intellectual journey through the maze of experimental architecture
draws to a close in the Müller House, the last significant construction built by Loos’.
36
The latter
qualification seems to subscribe to the widespread bias in both practice and academia for scale,
in that it discounts the apartments that were designed and constructed subsequently. However,
it also excludes the Khuner House and his Werkbund housing, perhaps because they do not sit
comfortably with the understanding of Loos’s external building forms as precursors of
functionalist modernism.
In his
Adolf Loos book of 1991, Panayotis Tournikiotis notes Loos is regarded by Joseph
Rykwert as the most important writer among architects of the twentieth century with the possible
exception of Le Corbusier, but remarks that Loos espoused a polemical and fleeting position,
rather than a systematic theory, and so it could be claimed that any coherent reading is
biased.
37
This observation frames one of the stated objectives of this research project, to
33
Gravagnuolo,
Adolf Loos, 203.
34
Gravagnuolo,
Adolf Loos, 203.
35
Gravagnuolo,
Adolf Loos, 203.
36
Gravagnuolo,
Adolf Loos, 201.
37
Panayotis Tournikiotis,
Adolf Loos, trans. Marguerite McGoldrick, 2
nd
ed. (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 22.
28