Simplicity, plainness are the real expressions of a modern occidental culture.
- Anti ornamental design
Loos returned back to Austria, to it`s capital Vienna, in 1896.
There was also another architectural movement in Vienna – the so called Viennese Secession. This movement
was part of the European Art Nouveau. Their ambition was to improve the basic commodity by art.
He sentenced the simulation of material and the nailing on of renaissance façades as amoral, because
through this simulation, the Viennese try to turn simple living houses into palaces. So they feign that only aristocrats live in Vienna and not simple civil.
His critic of the reawakening of the ornament is not only aesthetic. He also criticized the ornament from the
economical point of view. He predicated the ornament as an economical damage, because the fabrication of ornamental basic commodities needs more manpower and material than for an unornamental one. The working time which should not be wasted for the ornament, should be used to produce more products or for the free time of the worker. Due to that, Loos thought, the general social wealth could be increased. Wasting material and working time for the ornament – that is what Loos called a crime.
1910 - LoosHouse
- First house in Michaelerplatz
- Lower part of the house is made out of Cipolini marble
- Ornamentless built. The house lives from the rich texture from the marble and over it is just the plain part of the house.
- Simple facade with no ornaments with out-cut square holes for windows
- High rampant roof and the interesting part of the house is the connection of the rooms (beginning of the 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. "
He also comes to the conclusion, that “one can save space through connecting a higher main room to a lower annexe. Basically it can be said, that for Loos two things were important within his Raumplan - firstly a differentiation of the height of the ceiling in differently used rooms, with a strong link to the
privacy which the room should provide, secondly the creation of room sequences with the different rooms, with a special importance on the visual connections of the rooms.
Villa Muller (1928)
Villa Muller is heavily influenced by Rufer House and Moller House.
As well he adopted the main aspects of the Rufer House as there are the overall arrangement of utilisation of rooms, the roof-terrace and the central representative stair.
The building itself is more extroverted to the North and more introverted to the South because of it’s exposure on the north-facing slope.One can enter the site from the South as well as from the North however the main entrance with the access to the garage is located to the south because of better accessibility and the
less used street. From North a narrow stair over the whole length of the western side of the site provides access to the house.The building is moved as far as possible to the western end of the site to create a small, more private area in the garden in the East. Due to the sloping terrain this area is terraced and to secure it from unwanted insights surrounded by trees.
Loos always used window shapes determined by the overall shape of the façade (rectangle or shape) and its
sections to fit the windows harmonically into the overall image of the façade.
The size assignment of the windows follows a hierarchy in almost all cases, in which the size of the windows correlates with the level of importance of the function of the room. The common rooms, the big saloon, the eating room and the bedroom have the biggest windows. Prepositioned rooms
and individual rooms of retreat (e.g. boudoir, library, guest room) receive medium windows size, adjoining rooms, such as storerooms, toilets and bathrooms, have the smallest windows. The two dressing
rooms and the kitchen with the obvious and, in comparison, too big windows for its function are the only exceptions. The reason for the kitchen window size seems to be purely formal, to obey the (almost) symmetrical south façade.
The dominant room of the house is the hall and assigned to her are the other rooms.
Loos situated in the second level only the private rooms, like the sleeping room and the child`s playroom. Rooms which have the same or similar functions. Based on his idea of the spatial plan Loos gave every room a height according to the function, so the height difference between the rooms (which leads to the interesting room sequences of the spatial plan) arise only between rooms of different functions.
At last it is to say that the spatial plan in the house Müller is not recognisable at the facade of
the house. Only the differences in the size of the windows indicate the different rooms with their various functions but not their height movement or their different heights.
According to Julius Posener it is typical for Loos that the outside of the house and the internal
structure differ, because Loos did not develope his houses from inside to outside. He always wanted that the cubatore of the house is an intergrated whole or a sign.
