The Last House Designed by Adolf Loos Will Be Built in Prague
-Professor-Burkhardt-Rukschcio,-Natascha-Drabbe,-Maria-Szadkowská-and-Karel-Ksandr.jpg "Pictured is a model of Adolf Loos's house. (From left) Professor Burkhardt Rukschcio, Natascha Drabbe, Maria Szadkowská and Karel Ksandr.")
- Symbolic tapping with a carpenter's ax on the beam of the last house of the architect Adolf Loos. Director of the National Technical Museum, Karel Ksandr and the three Conference Chairs Iveta Černá, Maria Szadkowska and Natascha Drabbe.
- Director of the National Technical Museum, Karel Ksandr.
- Pictured is a model of Adolf Loos's house. (From left) Professor Burkhardt Rukschcio, Natascha Drabbe, Maria Szadkowská and Karel Ksandr.
- Director of the National Technical Museum, Karel Ksandr.
- Model of Adolf Loos's house.
- A pair of young architects who completed the Adolf Loos project.
- Organizer of the International Iconic Houses Conference Natascha Drabbe, Professor Burkhardt Rukschcio and Conference Co-Organizer Iveta Černá.
- The house will be located on the grounds of the National Technical Museum. On the projection image, a model of Adolf Loos's Last House.
Text by Katerina Farná for Czech daily newspaper Právo, published 19.5.2023. Photos: Milan Malíček
Genius architect, salon lion, visionary and provocateur Adolf Loos has been dead for almost 90 years. Nevertheless, the house he designed at the end of his life will be built in Prague. It will be unique, because there is not a single all-wooden Loos building, which is also tuned for a contemporary low- to middle-class family.
The last Loos house looks like a cute smaller cube wooden building in pea green colour. The only daughter of industrialist František Müller and his wife Milady was to receive it as a gift for her eighteenth birthday. She was born to them in 1926. The idea to build the last house of Adolf Loos, which has not yet been realized, arose more than 25 years ago during the reconstruction of Müller's villa. “We found the remains of the house plans for Eva Müller. We didn't give up on the idea and managed to get it to the point where it will be built,” says Karel Ksandr, director of the National Technical Museum in Prague.
The house should be completed next year. The museum has released a plot of land for it on Letná, the foundations are already ready. Next week, Ksandr will "knock on the rafters" with many distinguished guests, as part of the Iconic Houses Conference. It will focus on the Czech architectural avant-garde and modernity, which also includes the work of Adolf Loos.
The original plans and drawings from the interwar period were prepared by students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University. At the end of his career, Adolf Loos (1870 to 1933) was commissioned by the industrialist František Müller to build an economical and inexpensive house that would be suitable for both a working-class family and management.
The house was to be used for employees of Müller & Kapsa. The visionary, who rejected ornamental elements where they did not belong, was already ill by then. He was lying in a Prague hotel room and dictating propositions to his assistant.
"Loos and Müller were ahead of their time. They wanted to push the level of the lower class. At the beginning of the 1930s, there was an urgent need for social housing. In many European cities, so-called workers' colonies of small houses were created. Loos responded to this trend with a series of economically designed wooden buildings with a practical kitchen unit and universal living space," explains art historian Maria Szadkowská, curator of the luxurious Müller villa designed by Loos.
A revolutionary among architects, he maintained the closest possible relationship with his clients, which sometimes resulted in him living directly with the family. He met Müller in Pilsen when he was working on the interiors of today's much-visited apartments.
However, the financial crisis began to weigh on Müller's company, and the workers' houses project had to be shelved. "The problem was with the price, which rose to about 320,000 crowns of the First Republic, today three million crowns. Müller could no longer afford the construction, but Loos was interested in carrying out part of it," emphasizes Szadkowská.
And so, they agreed on a compromise. Loos, who rejected the classic layout on floors, had to fit into a smaller scale, although he was used to applying his elaborate Raumplan (space plan) to more generous areas. He used every place. The house promises an accessible interior equipped with light fixtures.
"This is a model that should stand for at least ten years. It will become a one-to-one museum exhibit, without installed water and waste, but with functional electrical distribution. So far, we are at the amount of one and a half million. Loos left various plans, instructions and records, the students of the Faculty of Architecture did an amazing job," said Ksandr.
Specific construction
The construction has several specifics. The students first dealt with the exterior appearance, then reconstructed the interior arrangement of the space. "When Karel Ksandr approached me, I thought that it would be ideal to assign it as a school project. Selected students thus delved deeper into the character of Adolf Loos. It was often detective work," clarifies Václav Girsa, head of the Institute of Historic Preservation at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University.
Loos stuck to a subtle combination of white, red, and green, which, together with the wallpaper and wood, played on the human senses. The architect Petr Krajči helped the students complete the more specific outlines, who developed a 1:25 model. So, they had to take over some elements from other Loos realizations, e.g., the railing on the terrace.
The director of the National Technical Museum, Karel Ksandr, sees the meaning of the whole event in one more aspect: "The house could also be used for today's young family. Perhaps one of the current architects will take it as inspiration on how to work economically with space and energy-sustainable housing. It could help solve the situation with expensive apartments.”
See also Katerina Farná’s report in Právo of 24 May 2023, on how the foundation beam of the Last House of Adolf Loos was attacked with an axe.
(Translated with Google Translate)
Posted June 8, 2023