The Steiner House by Adolf Loos

The Steiner House by Adolph Loos

Loos was still starting his career in 1910 when he designed and constructed the Steiner house in Vienna, Austria. This design was much better accepted than Loos' earlier works and quickly became a worldwide example of rationalist architecture. In his buildings, Loos normally starts with one main volume in which the space, configuration, and elements follows the rules and composition of classical architecture. He organizes the interior of that volume with smaller cubes, rectangles boxes, and cylinders arranged in a volumetric puzzle of sorts. This determines the internal organization of his buildings and Loos regularly uses protrusions from the main block to create other areas of the building such as terraces. In the Steiner house, Loos uses his volumes to create a classical tripartite facade. He does this by creating a recess between the two wings of the house that continues straight to the roof. In general, Loos lets his fenestration be subdivided into squares and rectangles that all obey a modular system, which correspond perfectly with the geometry of the facade. This system sets up order on the interior such as the living room being connected to a terrace that has access to the garden. Even in this early design, Loos uses interior organization that would remain with him throughout his career.

The Steiner house features a living area that is raised slightly above the ground level and separated from more private areas of the house such as bedrooms and painting studio, which was located on the first floor. The served space in this house is neatly separated from the serving space by placing the serving space in the basement and attic. This was the style for which Loos strove: a refined and intricate interior with a simple and nonthreatening exterior.[

The Steiner house has a stucco facade like most of his other buildings but not without reason. Loos built his buildings with roughcast walls and used the stucco to form a protective skin over the bricks. Loos did not want to use the stucco as a cheap imitation rock and condemned that practice; in general he used stucco for its functionality. The stucco facades have another benefit: they create a smooth, un-ornamented, and white surface. This surface represents the nature of the material and also does not hint to what is inside the building.

Most of Loos' works were located in open lots and did not need any party walls and yet they faced other constraints that he had to work around. In the case of the Steiner house, Loos was only able build one floor above the street level.[3]:39 This led him to create a one quarter round roof that is facing the street. This roof flattens out the apex and makes the two additional floors that look out onto the garden impossible to see from the street. The curved roof was an interesting choice because it was not a straight break from gabled roofs or a brand new innovative idea. Instead it was meant to demonstrate certainty of form and economy of space, proving that traditions can be manipulated or rid of completely, for a functional and non-aesthetic purpose.

The Steiner house is one of Loos’s most significant and well known works. This house features straight lines, clean curves and each room is on a different level, with floors and ceilings set at different heights. Which is known as a Raumplan. The Steiner house is 32.8×32.8 ft. The house is divided in four levels that space according to function, revealing Loos interest towards different levels of privacy within the domestic living space. The ground floor contains the huge comfortable space of the living room connected to the garden as well as the dining room, the music room and the library, all considered very important functions. On the other floors are the dormitories, studios, kitchen, sewing room, servants’s area and pantry. Loos wraps these spaces with an oak wooden covering, the same material is used for the roof beams, which alternate with white plastered surfaces and face-work. The window openings are placed according to their functions within the interior Raumplan and their relations with the exterior. Loos house played an important role in establishing the reputation of Loos as a bold modern architect.

Loos on the Raumplan

My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces (cubes). I do not design floor plans, facades, sections. I design spaces. For me, there is no ground floor, first floor etc…. For me, there are only contiguous, continual spaces, rooms, anterooms, terraces etc. Stories merge and spaces relate to each other. Every space requires a different height: the dining room is surely higher than the pantry, thus the ceilings are set at different levels. To join these spaces in such a way that the rise and fall are not only un-observable but also practical, in this I see what is for others the great secret, although it is for me a great matter of course.

Adolf