Adolf Loos in Central European culture (Austria, Czech Republic, Franz Kafka)

Adolf Loos, a Viennese architect and cultural critic of the Modern period, eliminated ornament and separated art from architecture. Redefining architecture in terms of social function, his techne was a language of mute, smooth exteriors that gave primacy to interior space. An early challenger to the centralized architectural culture of Austria-Hungary, he inspired a whole generation and left behind a legacy of brilliance; however, little has been published that considers his work within the regional context. Themes explored in the first part of the dissertation provide background on the local cultural landscape, including the contributions of vernacular literature to the rise of Czech urban culture, problems concerning cultural identity in nineteenth-century architecture, and an in-depth investigation of Prague as an urban form.; Part II develops themes in the critical history of Viennese modernism, such as the question of "cladding," Otto Wagner's program for modern architecture, and the theory of Spielraum, or spatial form. Part III moves to Loos's writings and architecture. The question of "minor language" is treated in an extended reading of the theoretical relations between Loos and Kafka. The legacy of Neoclassicism in Loos's architecture is investigated and then related to the minor language theme in a discussion of his urban classicism. The relations between nature, culture and the propriety of ornament are studied, and Loos's antipathy to the idea of "style" as well as his responses to the questions of function, beauty and the discourse on cladding are seen as stimuli for his understanding of architecture. The idea of discursive space provides a means of understanding Loos's notion of cultural space, which was influenced by the theory of Spielraum from German art history and aesthetics, and is crucial for his Raumplan theory. Spielraum is explored in architecture and music, particularly in the friendship between Loos and Arnold Schonberg. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of four Loos houses, showing how his engagement with culture provided a vehicle for identifying the space that exists in the duality between subject and object, which he recognized as a consequence of limits of art in Central European culture.