Quick, Hide the Loos!

Alberti, Sandro; 10 October, 2005 [text44]

On a given day, if I go out and walk around, perhaps in downtown San Diego (currently abuzz with ‘renewal’), I will see the echoes of the Modernist box in all of the new residential architecture. Highrises in urban settings, different from the distant ‘machines for living’, and yet resonating some of the ‘original’ qualities of lightness and transparency. A bit more opaque, though.

Villa Karma, nice and clean, on the outside.

In reference to Le Corbusier’s architecture, it has been said that “the separations between interior and exterior fall.” André Breton, father of Surrealism, captures that spirit in ‘Nadja’ [1964]:

As for me, I continue to inhabit my glass house, where one can see at every hour who is coming to visit me, where everything that is suspended from the ceilings and the walls holds on as if by enchantment, where I rest at night on a bed of glass with glass sheets, where who I am will appear to me…

Contemporary San Diego reflects the evolution of this spirit, in the manner of Dwell magazine, which dispels surreal dreams and anchors Modernism in the human reality (a reality that is here a bit naïve in its expression of ‘health and happiness’, but is nevertheless a bit more private than before, a bit ‘darker’). This is unlike the Modernism of Paris, reflected in ‘grands projets’ that attempt a return to the original lightness and transparency. There the result is untenable, however; “the ideology of the Modern… would have to be a fiction in practice”. Anthony Vidler shows us this in ‘The Architectural Uncanny’ [1992], elaborating on the fact that program and structure conflict fundamentally with ‘transparency’. Faced with such issues, architects tend to resort to “fake transparency or an embracing of opacity.” If anything we should have learned from experience, as architects in the 1850s already had, it is that “the pairing of transparency and obscurity is essential for power to operate.” And this is a dialectic that leads us to more fragmented, ‘schizophrenic’, issues than Le Corbusier would have led us to consider. Vidler recalls that previous appreciations of light and darkness were linked to the disturbance between personality and space. Roger Caillois, back in 1938, considered darkness as a positive trait:

There is something positive about it. While light space is eliminated by the materiality of objects, darkness is ‘filled’, it touches the individual directly, envelops him, penetrates him, and even passes through him: hence the ego is permeable for darkness while it is not so for light.

And he further relates these to the illuminated represented and the dark perceived space, which conflict in the relationship of the horizontal plane to the ‘organism’ (in perceived space, the ‘organism’ carries the coordinates, but is also able to consider itself as a 3rd-person in represented space, where it “is no longer the origin of the coordinates, but one point among others”). The organism “is dispossessed of its privilege and literally no longer knows where to place itself.” Thus panoptical clarity and definition are utopian; the receptor is not only not neutral, but is also subject to a ‘dual perception’. This is also made clear in the experience of mirror reflections, which any Modernist might be tempted to interpret as “faithful copies”. Psychologists have shown that in reflections the proximity of the familiar and the strange causes “a profound modification of the object, which from the familiar is transformed into the strange, and as strange something that provokes disquiet because of its absolute proximity.” [Sigmund Freud] “The mirror stage involves a complex superimposition of the reflected image of the subject conflated with the projected image of the subject’s desire.” [Anthony Vidler] For Vidler, a good Modernism would reflect this, making representation ambiguous while blurring reflection, as Rem Koolhaas does in some of his architecture (something different from the direct reflections of Modernism and the simultaneous reflections of the Post-Modern). And, I would argue, this is a vision that begins not now, but much earlier, at the very root of Modernism, in the work of Adolf Loos. Just as Caillois was already inciting a new reading of things back in the 1930s, it is not unlikely that one of his readers would have been this father of Modernism. Adolf Loos, author of ‘Ornament and Crime’, is celebrated precisely for that, a strong text that served to boost Le Corbusier’s ideas when he re-published it in his Parisian ‘Esprit Nouveau’. Here, the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects, it is a crime to force craftsmen or builders to waste their time on ornamentation, and any man who ornaments (tattoos) himself is either a criminal or a degenerate. Ideas worthy of books so popular that we can nearly find them tossed about in every library and alley of the urban space, in the shadow of the new generation of Modernist boxes.

It is difficult, however, to find images of Loos’ built work in any book, although almost anyone can quote something from ‘Ornament and Crime’. It is almost as if it is understood that his work was not in keeping with Le Corbusier’s Modernism, but little analysis has been done to realize that, although seemingly pre-Modern, this work is actually quite post-Modern. It seems that even since the 1920s the buildings, developing in the over-ornamented Viennese context, would begin to be seen by Modernists in France as a weak interpretation of the new ideals, and not worthy of representation. After all, while Loos’ buildings produced novel, ‘reduced’ spaces, the material selection (particularly intricate and colorful marbles) would have seemed decorative within a doctrine that would neutralize through the use of white. Interestingly, Modernism had arrived at a similar conflict internally, by advocating both elimination of ornamentation and truthful expression (on one hand, anything colorful or rhythmic would have been ‘decorative’, but these characteristics are also natural and ‘truthful’ in various construction materials). Thus ‘whitewashing’ has now led to an architecture that includes browns and grays as well. The marble found in Loos’ architecture, however, is a bit more excessive (neither is it structural, nor is it commonly/ inexpensively attainable). It was certainly dictated by choice rather than necessity, but not because of the decorative reasons typical of 1900s Vienna. For Loos, it was important to define space, and link it to the condition of its occupants (particularly through the use of materials, which could be visually stimulating, as long as they were not ‘false’ in their representation). For him, architectural space is not merely a ‘true’ reflection of an original concept, but addresses dialectics such as urban vs personal, interior vs exterior, and space vs person. Unlike Le Corbusier, he refused to lighten structure to the point that air passes right through. Even when ‘glass architecture’ triumphs in the 20s, Loosian houses will continue to stand opposite along the street, with more and more solid walls. It’s not that Loos was returning to traditional architecture (although perhaps he was returning to the ‘enlightened’ view of architects such as Ledoux; pre-French and post-Modern). He was actively exploring the dialectic of exterior versus interior, considering the first to be the realm of cosmopolitan life (reflecting the very technico-economic tautology of the city), and the latter to shelter (and reflect) the private life of the inhabitant. And in these private interiors his concern was to highlight psychological effects (something that could not be done unless the space was isolated and controlled):

The artist, the architect, first senses the effect that he wishes to create and then sees with his mind’s eye the spaces he wants to make. The effect that he wishes to produce in the observer, be it fear or terror, as in a prison; fear of God, as in a church; respect of the power of the state, as in a government building; piety, as in a tombstone; a sense of home, as in a house; gaiety, as in a bar; this effect will be evoked by means of material and form…

[Adolf Loos; ‘Das Prinzip der Bekleidung’; 4 September, 1898]

It is no accident that marble-surfaced volumes and spaces, apart from any possible decorative value, are also, with all their veining and multiple shading, mechanisms of ambiguity that conceal the edges of spaces or question their true extents. This is exemplified in his Villa Karma (1906), where entire rooms and built-in furnishings, such as the ‘roman bath’, are clad in multi-varied marble surfaces that transform the classical space into an amorphous cloud. “Loos explicitly uses the term ‘spectator’… Through a measured balancing of the qualities [of materials,] one can strengthen the emotion which an environment induces in its user. A setting is perceived, experienced, and remembered more for the qualities of its materials than for the shape of its container… The rationality of Adolf Loos… [is able to make use] of the unpredictability of optical illusions and visual trickery… Rationality, in Loos, is never brought down to the level of a fanatical functionalism… The absence of ornament does not in fact exclude recourse to intellectually complex and refined techniques of composition such as simulation and dissonance.” [Benedetto Gravagnuolo; ‘Adolf Loos’; 1982], In the Looshaus (1911), the true role of an exterior arcade of columns is the staging of urban spectacle, and in his Kärntner Bar (1907) mirrors transform the ceiling grid into an infinite field.

Villa Karma: foyer.

Villa Karma: veranda.

Villa Karma: ‘roman bath’.

Looshaus: ‘false column’, and seclusion screens.

Apart from the use of materials, the arrangement of space itself is also deployed as a tool by Loos. In the same Karntner Bar, space is presented as in a theatre. Leather-lined ‘boxes’ curl protectively around their occupants, breaking the patronage into cozy, conspiring groups, huddled about the gruesome uplighting cast by frosted-glass topped tables. The bar stretches the length of the interior, maintaining a strict control, monitoring the unfolding dramas and administering the alcohol. Access to the street is mediated through thick marble faced columns and light-diffusing ‘veils’. Mirrors afford an opportunity to check makeup and costume before making the grand entrance.

Kärntner Bar.

At Villa Karma, the most private spaces attain their quality through isolation:

On the second floor the bedroom is centrally situated and without direct openings to the outside. It is the most secret place in the whole house... The room is illuminated by artificial light that reflects off the nacreous ceiling and is uniformly diffused as if from a gigantic lampshade. The modern technical conquest of electricity allows perfect control over the quality of the environment… Inside, the bedroom is hermetically sealed.

[Benedetto Gravagnuolo]

Spatial control grows in sophistication in later works, as the interrelationship of adjacent spaces (and their levels of privacy) is addressed. At the Moller House (1928), one suddenly ‘appears’ in the midst of the interior, after twisting about within a narrow entry staircase. And the interior is a personal landscape where concealment and accessibility become key issues:

One enters the large space of the living room that is set on several levels… Here all spaces are linked up, each one communicating with the others. The most intimate room is the alcove set 5 steps above the floor of the living room… the dining room is connected to the music room by a large sliding door, but the dining room is raised 35” above that of the music room, and there is no visible way of getting from one to the other (one must take out folding steps well hidden in the base of the threshold).

[Benedetto Gravagnuolo]

Moller House.

This is enhanced in the Müller House, 2 years later:

The entrance is narrow and leads directly to a short spiral staircase that suddenly reveals a view of the living room… Eight more steps lead even higher to the dining room that is in visual contact with the same living room… The transition between the 2 spaces is a punctured volume of precious green Cipolin marble, which highlights the entire junction of stairs that lead to the various levels of the house… From the landing next to the dining room it is necessary to go up 8 steps to the lady’s reading room and then a further 4 steps to enter the library. The reading room is in turn divided into two by a gradient of 3 steps that cleanly separates a writing area (lower down, illuminated by a large window) from a conversation area (more intimate and lower in height, here a long window embrasure has no other reason for existence than that of allowing one to see into the living room).

[Benedetto Gravagnuolo]

By specifying a very intimate seating area within the ‘public’ zone of the house as the ‘Ladies’ Room’, Loos clearly expresses a traditional image of society and women in particular: Woman as the controller of order, as object of desire, exposed to the dominant male look.

Müller House.

Also from 1928, the renowned House for Josephine Baker. This unbuilt project has been tackled by the likes of theorist Beatriz Colomina (who attributes to Loos’ work “the intersection of agoraphobia and claustrophobia”); it reflects the epitome of Loosian fantasies of observation and control. ). Here, as in the Moller and Müller residences, one would suddenly appear within an upper-floor interior, with a large swimming pool taking center stage.

The pool… would have gathered light from above… Windows made of thick and transparent plates of glass were envisaged along surrounding corridors, that would allow one to watch people swimming and diving in the crystalline water…” [Benedetto Gravagnuolo] “Oblong windows in the walls of its swimming pool allowed a glimpse of the swimmer’s underwater ballet. The rediscovery of the feminine body and a voyeur’s pleasure were indicative of Laos’s eroticism, expressed in a poetic game of desire and confession.

[Tournikiotis; 1994]

The thick windows would ensure distance between the viewer (or the critic) and the subject. Baker would be unable to see out due to the light from the sun. She would be gazing at her own reflection instead of at her observers, as if she was looking in an underwater mirror. In accordance with her character, Josephine would never have gotten tired of looking at herself. These two forms of looking create a unique environment of voyeuristic and narcissistic pleasures. Both the viewer and the subject would gaze upon the same shimmering form.

[Michele Mikkelsen; A Savage House’]

The complex fit of spaces of different heights, contained within rigid stereometric shells, seems to have more to do with the psychologistic intention of creating an Einfühlung (empathy) between object and subject, between living space and the person who lives in it, than with any criterion of spatial economy.

[Benedetto Gravagnuolo]

The ‘illusive’ House for Josephine Baker.

Fundamentally, for Loos, space-making was influenced by ‘logical formalism’, as opposed to ‘architectonic abstractism’ of Le Corbusier (analyzing ‘historical essences’ in every object, and deriving an extreme realism which was just as removed from ‘representation’ as extreme abstraction). Perhaps Loos’ work was affected by the ‘decorative’ ideals of Art Nouveau and the Viennese Secession, including visually-stimulating surfaces that would not have emerged had Loos been practicing architecture away from Vienna. But his reaction to these movements is made obvious in various texts, and we see that his spaces are more closely linked with theatricality, and psychology, than decoration. The emphatic relationship between subject and object is found at the root of all these movements, in the ‘Eifühlung’ physio-psychological theory, and Loos’ interpretation of it brings him closer to the contemporary works advocated by Anthony Vidler, where ‘reflections’ “become the space of a theater… Here, the subject is no longer content to interrogate its face in the mirror, but… desires to stage its self in its social relations… [A paranoiac space] staged through the anxiety instigated at its surface.”