Adolf Loos

This monograph takes a comprehensive look at the life and works of the architect Adolf Loos. A great admirer of Anglo-Saxon culture, Loos firmly believed in an evolutionary progression of historical development, and in the heady days of the Viennese Modern Movement his work represented the search for a truly contemporary architectural expression. The text describes Loos' rejection of popular historicizing tendencies, and how he set out his unique standpoint in his most important works before World War I, such as the Cafe Museum, the Michaelerplatz building, the Karntner Bar, and the Scheu House. It goes on to cover the 1920s, when the focus of Loos' work lay in his involvement with the housing estates schemes in Vienna, and in the development of the concept of a "spatial plan" in modern housing.