A Study on Adolf Loos's thought about Modernity and his Works of Houses

근대성과 관련한 Adolf Loos의 사상과 주거건축에 관한 연구

  • 김경호 (대진대학교 건축공학과)
  • Published : 2006.10.31

Abstract

Architecture is the product of a way of thinking. If the problems of architecture are to be traced to their roots, then attention needs to be focused on the thinking and considerations that inform its production. Adolf Loos occupies a truly exceptional place in the history of architecture. Adolf Loos's ideas and attitudes disagree with the notion that modernity is possible to develop a harmonious culture within the bounds of a modernizing society. Loos chronologically precedes the modern movement, but his ideas contain the seeds of what will be worked out later as a complex critique of the movement's notions about architecture and modernity. Loos holds the view that modernity provokes an inevitable rupture with tradition that has as a consequence the disintegration of one's experience of life. This evolution, he think, obliges architecture to display a number of languages corresponding to a multitude of different experiences. Through the discussion of Loos's opinions on dwelling and architecture, it explores the true features of position of Loos in modern architecture. Loos thinks that the rejection of the deliberate creation of a new style was a correct response to the diagnosis of life as being rootless and fragmented. Ornament is that which people use to attempt to relate different aspects of life and to join inner and outer worlds in a coherent whole. By getting rid of ornament the illusion is destroyed that a harmonious unity of this sort is still possible. One can only remain true to tradition if one acknowledges that its continuity is not an unbroken one. Dwelling can only be saved by separating it from other aspects of life.

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References

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