Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos (1870–1933) studied in Brno and Dresden from 1887 to 1893, before spending three years in the USA. Having returned to Vienna, he worked in the atelier of Karl Mayreder until 1896–97, and was then active as an independent architect and publicist from 1898. He founded his Bauschule (‘building school’) in 1912. After the First World War, he devoted himself to small-scale housing, and was made architectural director of the municipal Siedlungsamt (Settlement Office) in Vienna in 1921. Loos, who was one of the founders of Viennese modernism, gave much thought to the organisation of groundplans and the manner in which rooms should be arranged and used. The system he developed, which saw room height varied according to function, became well known under the term Raumplan (‘room plan’).