Adolf Loos was an architect and architectural theorist, born in Brno as the son of a stonemason and sculptor, who according to Palacký University Olomouc ranks among the most important architects and architectural theorists of the 20th century.
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Adolf Loos was born in Brno as the son of a stonemason and sculptor [1]. According to Palacký University Olomouc, he is regarded as one of the most important architects and architectural theorists of the 20th century, who made his name through a series of essays, analyses and satirical polemics and whose work influenced the history of art, culture and thought [1]. For this reason Palacký University Olomouc ascribes to him an important place in Moravian literature [1].
Youth in Brno
According to the same source, Brno at the end of the 19th century had a predominantly German-speaking population and lay within the sphere of influence of Vienna, and with its historicising architecture and Makart taste it became a typical city of the Habsburg monarchy [1]. The writer Robert Musil described Brno in the novel The Man Without Qualities as a typical community of the so-called Kakania [1]. In Brno Loos came to know the life of a multilingual culture, and his early years were shaped by the technical, progress-minded spirit of the Moravian metropolis and by the middle class of the Gründerzeit, whose need for representation was expressed in historicising buildings [1].
Studies
After completing grammar school, where he gained the foundations of classical and modern languages (German, Czech, French and English) and a bourgeois-classical education, Loos studied in 1887 and 1888 at the building and technical section of the state industrial school in Liberec [1]. From 1890 to 1893 he continued at the technical university in Dresden, but did not complete his studies with a diploma [1].
Journey to the United States
After a sharp quarrel with his mother, Loos left in 1893–1896 for the World's Fair in Chicago [1]. He visited an uncle in the United States and temporarily lived in St. Louis, Philadelphia and New York, where he earned his living in various occupations [1]. He returned to Europe via London and Paris back to Vienna [1]. According to Palacký University Olomouc, the impressions and experiences of the New World influenced his thinking and work in a similar way to classical humanism [1]. From America he brought back impulses for modern functional architecture, particularly under the influence of the steel skeleton construction used in Chicago, and he was fascinated by the purposeful, unornamented design of utility objects, appropriate to their material, and by the economy of production [1]. Palacký University Olomouc connects this turn to American culture with the fragment of Franz Kafka's novel Amerika (first 1912, published 1927) and with Ernst Krenek's opera Jonny spielt auf from 1927 [1].
Architectural work and publications
From 1896 Loos worked as an architect, at first in the firm of the builder Carl Mayreder [1]. Alongside his architectural practice he published a series of essays, above all in the daily Neue Freie Presse, which later appeared in book form under the titles Ins Leere gesprochen (1921) and Trotzdem (1931) [1].