Scheme graphic for projects of famous architect ADOLF LOOS
Adolf Loos (1870-1933) was born in Brno, Moravia to a stone mason who taught his son the importance of the utility of design and helped Adolf appreciate the time and energy that was taken in design. Loos attended college in Austria and served in the Austrian army in 1889. He briefly moved to the US in 1893, where he studied American industry and architecture for three years while forming his philosophy of design. After moving back to Austria in 1896, Loos worked for the architectural firm of Carl Mayreder and published articles about social life in the newspapers.
After reestablishing himself in Austria, Loos railed against the trend of Art Nouveau which was popular in Austria. Loos saw the use of intricate designs in Art Nouveau as childish and immature and claimed that the march of progress in history was toward a time when ornament was no longer a part of design. Loos believed that humans would evolve to be able to appreciate architecture and utensils for their intrinsic beauty as functional objects. Remembering the work and value of his father's time as a stone mason, Loos argued to Austria and the world that the inclusion of needless decoration was a waste of money by the designers, and a waste of time by the builders (and therefore criminal). Instead, he proposed that society should embrace forms which existed to serve a function, as was the case with the industrial buildings Loos saw during his time in America.
In 1908, Loos published his landmark essay 'Ornament and Crime' where he made a moral case for architecture to abandon ornamentation. Loos argued that it was not just preferences or taste that drove people to prefer style in their structures, but that this preference also imposed harsh social costs on those in other classes who were occupied with the work to make a design which served only to entertain, which Loos found childish. From his writings, we can see the origin and justification for the mantra of modern architecture that 'form follows function'.
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