Adolf Loos
Austrian and Czech architect and art collector (1870-1933) · Austria · Architects · Died at 62
Adolf Loos is read about 361 times a day, in 48 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 5 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 73 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He argued that ornament was crime, that buildings should shed decoration like a lie. The manifesto made him a pioneer of modern architecture - and the plainness of his Vienna facades still provokes a century later.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 6
_(vor_1920%3B_Franz_L%C3%B6wy).jpg?width=1200)
In their orbit 4
About this person
Born in Brno in 1870 to stonemasons, Loos inherited his father's deafness and solitary nature after the elder man's death when the boy was nine. He drifted through colleges, then crossed to America, where Chicago's "form follows function" ethos rewired his thinking. Back in Vienna he wrote: The Story of a Poor Rich Man, a satire, then Ornament and Crime, the manifesto that declared decoration degeneracy and made his name. Looshaus rose in 1910, a stark face against the city's gilt, and his Raumplan method - a way of stacking interior volumes by use rather than symmetry - found fullest form in Prague's Villa Müller. Three marriages collapsed; in 1928 he was convicted of pedophilia. He died near Vienna in 1933, aged 62, the plainness he preached now a cornerstone of the century that followed.
Fame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.