| Title |
A Study on the Adolf Loos's renunciation of ornament |
| Abstract |
Adolf Loos studied at the Dresden Institute of Technology. He lived in America from 1893 to 1896. On his return to Vienna, he worked for a year with the architect, Carl Mayreder. From 1897, he wrote extensively on design and architectural matters. In 1908, his famous article "Ornament and Crime"(Ornament und Verbrechen) was published, in which he linked the use of excessive decoration to a debasement of society.
For Adolf Loos, it was a question not of renunciation of every ornament, but of the liberation from superfluous ornament. Where ornament was pastes on only, without connection with the subject or the building, and where ornament was not honest with the hand put on, the ornament is supposed to be removed. Onto the place of the ornament the joy of the material and the shaping should step. That the opinion of Adolf Loss is not correctly understood is due on the one hand to the concentration on the ‘ornament and crime’ too very much. On the other hand his extreme Position is supposed to be understood more as thinking-impulse, more as provocation. |