Learning to Dwell: Adolf Loos at the RIBA in London

In this week’s Arts I talk to Irena Murray-Žantovská of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London about a successful new show there examining work in the Czech lands by famous Functionalist architect Adolf Loos. The show picks up from a similar exhibition held in the Czech capital in 2008 and presents to British audiences some of Loos’ best known buildings in the Czech Republic and Prague, most notably the Müller Villa.

Adolf Loos

When I spoke to Mrs Murray-Žantovská on a line to London, I asked her first whether Loos’ name was familiar to British museum-goers.

“I don’t think that his name is ‘widely known’ but his name is certainly known among people interested in architecture and in 20th century culture. There were earlier exhibitions in the UK of Loos’ work that people might still remember, especially one in 1984 organised by the British Council. The very first was in 1934 a year after the architect’s death.”

Loos was Austrian but was born in what is today the Czech Republic: do we know what kind of impact the Czech milieu had on him and whether it influenced him later in his career?

“I think he couldn’t have not been influenced by the milieu of Brno where he lived: after all, our childhood years are our formative years and even though the immediate milieu which he lived in Brno might have been German-speaking, he would have had a lot of contact with Czech-speakers and I believe that experience must have left an imprint on him, as did his parent’s past, the fact that his father was a stonemason and so on. Those are all things that would have influenced him in the formative years.”

I’m curious about the title of the show: why ‘Learning to Dwell’?

“Blame me! I chose that pre-title to because I think in the Czech version of the show it was just called Adolf Loos’ work in the Czech lands’ because in the UK we concentrated almost solely on residential projects. The phrase comes from Loos’ own essays where he talks about the importance of his clients learning to dwell. In Vienna on weekends he used to organise tours of interiors that he had designed and it was not only to attract new potential clients (which it was also) but because he felt that he an educational mission to teach people something about domestic space and ‘home’ as being more than just a place where you go to sleep.”

If we talk about the Functionalist movement, I understand Loos reviled ornament and highly-decorative styles including the Art Nouveau; even today the departure taken by Functionalism seems radical and daring: I can only guess at how ‘shocking’ it must have appeared to be then...

“Well, it was. As you may know the house in Vienna on Michaelerplatz encountered an unprecedented expression of scandal almost because of its bare facade, even though the bottom part of it was quite ornamental in its own way. You can not say that Loos reviled ornament, what he reviled was a certain type of ornament that is added to material that should speak for itself.

Müller Villa

“But if you look at the marble and wood used in his projects and built work you see very clearly that the marble was cut and polished in such a way as to reveal veins within the stone and that in itself could be seen as ornamental. But his desire to identify the function of spaces, rather than a prescriptive idea of what building should look like, led him to avoid and certainly to oppose styles where the ornament is forever added in order to appeal to the public taste. His ornament was within, it was within the substance of the material and the way that he articulated it in space. It was never added.”

In that light let’s discuss one of his most important residential buildings in the Czech Republic... I guess it would be impossible not to mention the Müller Villa?

“Yes, the villa really is a culmination of his thinking about spatial arrangement together with function, and transgressed traditional arrangements such as equal-height stories in a building. It has been restored and is a remarkably preserved building and shows almost everything about elements and idea which were important to him: his use of materials, his citing of his projects in the landscape or the city, the views, in this case ‘framing’ Prague Castle perfectly by the upper terrace. I think that it is one of the two or three most mature works of his life and we are just so fortunate that we have it.”

Müller Villa

How would you describe the building’s appearance?

“The basis shape is a cube, with the main entrance found in the back. You enter into a series of small spaces, a small foyer or wardrobe room and then you immediately step up into a remarkable, infinitely generous living room which is surmounted by a dining room. Those spaces are mutually and visibly linked, so again through the use of a small flight of stairs you can sit in the dining room, overlook the living room, and look out into the garden, so that’s the kind of determining factor in opening up the interior.

“Then really two flights of stairs, sometimes two or three together are used to enter another nook where there is a built-in sofa, then a bedroom, a guest room, until you eventually reach the children’s rooms and the mater of the house’s study. As you go up you sort of discover – because of the way the house is put together almost like Lego – you discover these hidden spaces and then again come across more traditional articulate spaces... it’s a wonderful surprise of a house. Even though I have been there a number of times it still delights me and surprises me from the moment I enter, right to the every top.”

From what I’ve read the reaction in the UK has been very positive: do you think that some of the visitors who see the exhibition in London will mark it down as one of those things that they definitely have to see if they come over to the Czech Republic?

Müller Villa

“Definitely! In the first three weeks we sold out the catalogue completely, even though we made sure to have a very large supply. They are not available currently and are waiting for more copies from Prague. In addition to the exhibition we have what have called the Adolf Loos season, a series of talks, lectures and workshops, student activities and organised children’s activities all related to the exhibition. So there is a parallel programme that reinforces the importance of the exhibition and the ideas that are expressed through it.”

For more information on the London show please visit www.architecture.com