Page 29 - Studio International - July August 1973

(Left) Tristan Tzara House
complexity had its wit, as did the strangely
Elevation on Avenue Junot, Paris
(Below) Goldman and Salatsch Building
on the Michaelerplatz in Vienna.
1910-11. Old view of the square; but the
showcases between the columns already
constitute a change from the original
design
highly-abstracted anthropomorphism of the
façade, or the use of the commonplace Parisian
industrial detailing in the lower floors, the shape
of the lower niche, again the inversion of his
favourite English bay-window. It is a
configuration not unlike Le Corbusier's exactly
contemporary villa at Garches for Leo Stein: a
blank facade, sparsely pierced to the street, and
an open, glazed frame towards the terraces and
gardens at the back. But Loos's complexity
always remains hard, the spaces are never
moulded, never the plastic, shaped interiors
which Corbusier made them.
Repeatedly Loos asserted that the architect's
business is with the immeuble, the craftsman's
with the meuble. The architect saw to the inert
volume, to the walls and ceilings and floors, to
the fixed details such as chimneys and fireplaces
(beaten copper was one of Loos's favourite
materials). And here his haptic reading of
buildings was most important.
Wherever he could, Loos used semi-precious
materials on walls and ceilings: metal plaques,
leather, veined marbles or highly veneered
woods, even facing built-in pieces of furniture.
But unlike his contemporaries, Loos never used
these materials as pieces to be framed, but
always as integral, continuous surfaces, always
as plain as possible, always displaying their
proper texture: almost as if they were a kind of
ornament, an ornament which showed the
pleasure providence took in making them, as the
more obvious type of ornament would display
the pleasure experienced by his fellow-men.
Curious then, this feeling for the decorative
effect of figuring in the arch-enemy of all
ornament. Even more curious is his persistent
use of the classical columns and mouldings. The
crassest of these was his project for the Chicago
Tribune, an unplaced competition project; it was
an extraordinary scheme which consisted of a
vast Doric column, (the shaft alone 21 storeys
high) on a high parallelepiped base. To
Loos, however, the project seemed wholly
serious. The building was to be a pure classic
form, classic and therefore outside the reach of
fashion, so that it would fulfil the programme of
the competition promoters to 'erect the most
beautiful and distinctive office building in the
world'.
It was to have been faced, column and base, in
black polished granite. There would have been
practical difficulties in this vast circular block,
Loos's enemies suggested. But he was only
interested in the creation of this vast evocative
shape in the urban context of Chicago: 'The
huge Greek Doric Column shall be built. If not
in Chicago, then in another town. If not for the
Chicago Tribune, then for someone else. If not
by me, then by another architect', he wrote at
the end of the competition report. And indeed
on a smaller scale, he had persisently used
classical columns. Perhaps the most important
instance was the Goldman and Salatsch
building on the Michaelerplatz in Vienna. This
building caused a furore. The city building
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