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A THEORY OF MAKING:
ARCHITECTURE AND ART IN THE PRACTICE OF ADOLF LOOS
WILLIAM RICHARD ERIC TOZER
PhD Dissertation
University College London
2011
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I, William Richard Eric Tozer, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where
information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the
thesis.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Penelope Haralambidou and Jonathan Hill, of The Bartlett School of
Architecture, for their supervision of my doctoral research.
I am very grateful to the Muzeum hlavního města Prahy, for access to the Müller House and
The Adolf Loos Study Centre.
Also greatly appreciated are the clients and staff of my practice.
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ABSTRACT
Adolf Loos repeatedly discusses the role of art in relation to architecture in his essays, but many
of his statements appear either repetitive or inconsistent with one another, and are difficult to
reconcile with his buildings. Considering Loos’s writing and built work together, rather than
separately, suggests that instead of being fully formulated as a methodology and then
implemented in practice, Loos’s argument emerges serially and in a piecemeal fashion with the
progressive development of his buildings through practice—a theory of making. The line of
enquiry into the historical and theoretical material is informed by the division of my own design
work in practice into sculptural components and furnishings. The research proceeds on the
hypothesis that Loos similarly divided each of his buildings into discrete elements that he either
understood as art, or considered functional—and that he deployed ornament to signal the latter,
rather than the former. This hypothesis is investigated by tracing the origin and development in
his built projects of a number of particular components of the Müller House, in relation to the
emergence and revision of specific aspects of Loos’s written argument on art and architecture in
the essays contemporaneous with these buildings. The investigations are structured by
reference to the distinct qualities of each component as identified through the design research,
focusing on Composite House. While the research method is specific to my own design work in
practice, the investigation is structured so as to produce autonomous outcomes in relation to
Loos and modernism, which are meaningful when decoupled from this field data. Loos has to
date been predominantly examined through conceptions of modernism as the expression of
function, structure, technology or society; however, it is argued here that modern architecture
could conversely be understood, through Loos, as a form of art practice.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CONTEXT
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MOTIVATIONS, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
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METHODOLOGY
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CHAPTER SUMMARIES
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PART ONE:
LOOS AND DESIGN RESEARCH
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Chapter One
ART AND FUNCTION: Loos
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1.1
Writing on Loos
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1.2
Writing by Loos
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Chapter Two ARCHITECTURE AND ART: Composite House 47
2.1
Walls, Ceilings and Floors
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2.2
Staircases, Joinery and Fixtures
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2.3
Windows and Doors
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2.4
External Form
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2.5
Space
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PART TWO:
THE MÜLLER HOUSE AND ADOLF LOOS
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Chapter Three ART AND ORNAMENT
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3.1
Walls, Ceilings and Floors
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3.2
‘The Poor Little Rich Man’
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Chapter Four
ORNAMENT AND CULTURE
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4.1
Staircases, Joinery and Fixtures
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4.2
‘Ornament and Crime’
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Chapter Five
ART AND CRIME
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5.1
Windows and Doors
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5.2
‘Architecture’
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Chapter Six
FUNCTION AND ART
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6.1
External Form
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6.2
‘Art and Architecture’
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Chapter Seven ART AND EDUCATION
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7.1
Space
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7.2
‘Ornament and Education’
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CONCLUSION
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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION LIST
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APPENDICES
PROJECTS
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ESSAYS
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