Now, in its year as European Capital of Culture, the city of Pilsen has restored and opened to the public three of the 56 apartment interiors Loos completed in his lifetime.Previously depicted in dingy black-and-white photos, then abandoned and occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, the apartments have been brought back to their former rich and colourful glory for all to see.
Yet, describing architecture as no more important than washing dishes and unwilling to even categorise his designs as architecture, Loos was unusually nonplussed to see them photographed in magazines. The black and white photos of the time just didnt do them justice; for Loos, it was the occupation and sensation of being in a space that was important. The Brummel House I am against photographing interiors, he wrote in an essay, On Thrift, in 1924. The results are always different from the original.. My interiors cannot be judged from photographs or reproductions. I am sure that in photographs they will look awful, make no impression at all. Photographs dematerialise reality, but precisely what I want is for people in my rooms to feel the materials around them. I want them to be aware of the enclosing room, to feel the material, the wood, to see it, touch it, to perceive it sensually, to sit comfortably and feel the contact between the chair and a large area of their peripheral sense of touch, and say: this is sitting as it should be. Dr Josef Vogls apartment Since April, visitors to the Czech city of Pilsen have an opportunity to do just that: immerse themselves in these private worlds. Coinciding with its year as one of the European Capitals of Culture, Pilsen has painstakingly restored three of its eight Loos interiors - the apartments of Josef Vogl, Vilem and Gertruda Kraus, and Jan Brummel (known as the Brummel House) - and opened them to the public. Inspired by the restoration (1997-2000) of one of Loos most famous projects, Villa Mller in Prague, work started on the Brummel House in 2001. From 2003, Pilsen city government and its historic preservation division assumed care of Vogl, Semler, Weiner and Kraus apartments too. Vilem Gertruda Kraus family apartment Previous attention has been focused on star Loos projects in Vienna and Prague, but now the spotlight is firmly on Pilsen. Commissioned by affluent Jewish families between 1928 and 1933, these luxurious homes, many abandoned and commandeered by the Nazis during the Second World War, have survived both fascism and then communism, as well as demolition and decay. Vilem Gertruda Kraus family apartment Now they emerge triumphant - strictly private and off limits earlier - to be seen just as they were meant to be seen. Forget the white-box architecture of modernism: these are impressive, vibrant, theatrical stage sets; a mashing together of colours and textures - rich, highly veined marble against shiny dark mahogany, mirrored surfaces and smatterings of bright primary colours. Vilem Gertruda Kraus family apartment Loos began designing interiors for existing apartments and shops in 1898. His own apartment in Vienna, renovated in 1903 when he was 32, is where he tested out many of the ideas that went on to shape his later designs. There, he positioned a built-in seating nook with a fireplace in an adjoining space to the living room, today preserved in Viennas Museum Karlsplatz. In the softer, more feminine bedroom for his wife Lina, he draped the walls in white fabric, hiding laquered white cabinets, and covered the floor in a huge, sumptuous rug of white angora fur. Hugo Semler House Later, such as at the Steiner House in Vienna (1910), Loos developed his concept of the Raumplan, or plan of volumes that placed an emphasis on separate rooms with unique functions, as opposed to the open-plan house of Le Corbusiers Plan Libre. Rooms, each treated differently, were connected in a sequence by generous openings or doors screened by curtains, while steps and varying ceiling heights were used to frame views and pause the journey through the house. This manifested itself in its strongest form in his split-level projects, Moller House in Vienna (1928) and the Villa Mller in Prague (1930).
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