Poster for the Lecture My House on Michaelerplatz, 1911

The “House on Michaelerplatz”, better known today as “Looshaus” [Loos House], was Adolf Loos’s (1870–1933) first major building commission. Despite not having participated in a competition tendered by Leopold Goldmann and Emanuel Aufricht, the owners of the exclusive fashion boutique Goldmann & Salatsch decided to award the commission to Loos. The townhouse, built between 1909 and 1911, surprised on account of its plain plaster facade, its lack of structure and almost non-existent decor. With this design, Loos continued his path into radical modernism, which he had embarked upon with his furnishings for the Café Museum in 1898. Only the facade on the shop level is resplendent with marble and pillars. Using a ferro-concrete skeleton structure on the inside of the building, Loos achieved a complex spatial solution. In contemporary caricatures the facade was likened to square street grates. Loos’s modernism caused public outrage which he confronted valiantly: On 11th December 1911 the architect held the lecture A MONSTER OF A HOUSE – My House on Michaelerplatz at the concert venue Sophiensaal.

Text Leopold Museum