Ornamentation and Crime
An Interpretation of the Design Philosophies of Adolf Loos
Mira Ramakrishnan
Student Architect
Dept. of Architecture
MARG Institute of Design and Architecture Swarnabhoomi
Kanchipuram, India
rmira_93@yahoo.in
Abstract—Adolf Loos has been a major influence on the
architecture of the turn of the 19th century. He played a critical
role in shaping cubic architecture and giving it the refined status
that it enjoys today. He was also the man behind spatial economy,
back in the 1900’s, since when the term has acquired multiple
and polished meanings through the century. However, his
unconventional ideas and avant-garde statements have ensured
that his design genius has been under constant scrutiny and
extreme criticism.
This paper aims to throw light on the ambivalent response that
his renowned essay ‘Ornament and Crime’ has garnered over
time and attempts to clear the apparent discrepancies, within the
limited scope. Also, this is an attempt to bring forth the relevance
of Loos’ design philosophies in the present day’s context.
Keywords- Adolf Loos, Raumplan, ornament, crime
I. INTRODUCTION
The late 1800‘s and the early 1900‘s were a period of
artistic turbulence across the world. It was the era when Neo-
Classicism ruled and each nation was keen to carve out its own
interpretation of the style. However, all these interpretations
seemed to converge on the point that elaborate ornament was
indispensable to architecture. The floral motifs of Baroque and
the monumental order of Greek were the natural starting point
for any further development.
It was under these circumstances that the eloquent essay
‗Ornament and Crime‘, published in 1908, spoke of how
ornament should be gradually curbed as mankind evolved.
Adolf Loos strongly asserted that ―the evolution of culture is
synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian
objects‖. He held that any ornament done without an inherent
purpose was criminal and amoral, besides being wasted capital.
Figure 1: Scheu House by Loos
II. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
“Unless our towns, our houses, …. unless our language and
our feelings express the spirit of our time in a clear, simple and
beautiful manner, we fall incredibly far behind our
predecessors, and no lie will dissimulate these weakness” [6]
- Josef Hoffman, Secessionist
This was the typical approach to art, during the turn of the
century. There was an unmistakable urge to simplify human
living and create a niche style of the era. But the very fact that
the ornament of the previous age had completely penetrated
human perceptions of art restricted creative capabilities. Thus,
the Secession ultimately employed much more complex
ornament than its own philosophy would have validated.
It was at this juncture that Loos, who was initially an active
proponent of the Secession, diverged in opinion with the other
Secessionists and strived to substantiate the idea of simplifying
objects for a better lifestyle. In his essay ‗Architektur‘, he
establishes that ―everything that serves a purpose can be
excluded from the realm of art.‖ He justifies his observation by
bringing out the difference between the purpose of art and the
purpose of a building. He says,
“The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art
which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The
house is not. The work of art shows people new directions and
thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present.
The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative. The
house has to serve comfort. Man loves everything that satisfies
his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of
his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus
he loves the house and hates art.”
Art arises purely out of the passion felt by an individual.
However, a building is built to satisfy the needs of a group of
people (a family, workers, artisans, etc.). While art tries to tear
man apart from his normalcy and stimulates higher thinking, a
building functions as the comfort zone.
 Hence, while art may be subjected to ornamentation to add
value to its existence, architecture must be isolated from
ornamentation solely to avoid unnecessary complications in its
innate purpose. Thus, Loos summed up his philosophy of
irrelevant ornament in buildings.

III. RELATIONSHIP WITH CONTEMPORARIES Figure 2: The Secession Building at Vienna

At a time when the leading architects approved of the Image Courtesy: File photo of Secession
exterior of a building as an expression of the style and wealth
of the occupant, Loos chose to entirely mellow his facade
down. His argument was that, ‗the house should be silent to the
outside; inside it should reveal all its wealth.‘
Loos built distinct cubic forms with white-painted facades and
opulently furnished interiors. This eccentricity resulted in
mutual disdain with most of his fellow architects. He went on
to publicly criticise those who advocated ‗old-fashioned
structures of historicism‘, as his biographer August Sarnitz puts
it. [3] Figure 3: Villa Muller at Prague
Loos' response to Secessionists.
“I tell you that the time will come when the furnishing of a
prison cell by Professor (Henry) Van de Velde will be
considered an aggravation of the sentence.” [2]
IV. ‗ORNAMENT AND CRIME‘
Loos was fiercely critical of the works of Henry Van de Velde
“The ideal I preach is (for) the aristocrat.
and Josef Olbrich who were his co-Secessionists. He did not
....I can accept the African's ornament, the Persian's, the
approve of the distortion of Classicism that they proposed
Slovak peasant woman's, my shoemaker's, for it provides the
under the name of Modernism.
high point of their existence, which they have no other means
of achieving. We have the art that has superseded ornament.
“Changes in the traditional way of building are
After all the toil and tribulations of the day, we can go to hear
only permitted if they are an improvement.
Beethoven or Tristan. My shoemaker cannot. I must not take
Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be
his religion(joy) from him, for I have nothing to put in its
hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than
place. But anyone who goes to the Ninth (Symphony) and then
the lie that walks by our side.”
sits down to design a wallpaper pattern is either a fraud or a
degenerate.”[1]
Despite such clashing opinions with his contemporary
architects, there were a few people whom Loos shared his
In this conclusive remark of the essay, Loos stresses that
views with. One such architect was Otto Wagner, who believed
ornament is indeed acceptable when that is the only source of
that modern life was ‗the foundation of a new aesthetic
joy for a person. He also adds that when one insists on the use
interpretation‘. Wagner says,
of ornament even when it is totally avoidable, it is then that it
becomes a crime.
“Art has the task of adapting the face of the city to
contemporary humanity”[6]
In concurrence with this, yet another excerpt from
‗Ornament and Crime‘ goes as follows:
This was also what Loos believed – art was not expected to
“What makes our period so important is that it is incapable of
shape architecture; however, the converse was true and
producing new ornament. We have out-grown ornament; we
essential.
have struggled through to a state without ornament.”[1]
Loos is also known to have been well regarded by Le
By this, Loos corroborates that the bourgeois should
Corbusier, with the latter describing the impact of ‗Ornament
endeavour to develop its own radical style of architecture and
and Crime‘ as ―...a Homeric cleansing – exact, philosophical
not be carried away by that ornament which does not add any
and logical. With it, Loos influenced our architectural destiny.‖
[4] value to the building itself, nor to the occupant.

In other words, the shedding of ornamentation and the cultural

evolution towards modernism must go hand in hand.
 V. LOOS‘ DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
“At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned
tradition, it's at that point that I intended to renew it
because the present is built on the past just as the past
was built on the times that went before it.”
As stated earlier, Loos‘ facades were glaringly simple and
his interiors, the exact opposite. He made extensive use of
polished marble, Angora fleece and mahogany in his interior
decors. It was obvious that a deliberate attempt was made to
clearly define the boundary between the outside and the
inside. Loos also derived inspiration from the Chicago School
(where, he apprenticed for a while) and Louis Sullivan (Loos‘
mentor at Chicago). He seems to be hugely drawn towards
Sullivan‘s idea that ‗it could only benefit us (humanity) if for a
time we were to abandon ornament and concentrate entirely on
the erection of buildings that were finely shaped and charming
in their sobriety‘.
It is notable that all of Loos‘ works are consciously
moulded, keeping in mind the urban man of the twentieth
century. Loos explores spatial economy, spatial hierarchy in
terms of occupancy and purpose, and the desire of the urban
middle-class to achieve the flamboyancy of the bourgeois.
Amongst all of Loos‘ theories, the one that stands out for
its inimitable success is the Raumplan. The ‗Raumplan‘ or
spatial-plan dealt with allocating heights to each space besides
the usual area. Thus, the private spaces had lower ceilings than
the public spaces. Heinrich Kulka, Loos‘ assistant and
biographer, highlights the advantage of this system by
pointing out that the Raumplan allows more rooms to be
accommodated within the same cube.
Loos‘ principle of doing away with unnecessary elements
is subtly reflected in the implementation of the Raumplan too.
In his designs for Villa Muller and Rufer House (where
Raumplan achieved its zenith of perfection), he eliminated
partition walls where possible and substituted them with level
differences. Thus, it is evident that Loos‘ various theories
were all integrated very efficiently with one another and it is
indisputable that each of his designs exemplified his ideals, at
every level and context.
Figure 4: The Salon at Villa Muller
Use of lush furnishings
Image Courtesy: Website of Villa Muller
VI. THE PERCEIVED DISCREPANCY
Loos‘ bold statements shocked the people of the era, who
were still soaked in the ornament of Baroque. In addition to
this, his practice of lavishly decorating the interiors of a
building, while leaving the exteriors blank, was seen as a
contradiction to his own philosophy. The critics accused him
of being stuck with the Classical ornament, while maintaining
a facade of modernity. This ambiguous nature of his work was
faced with strong opposition and rejection.
A close look at Loos‘ interior decors can elucidate the
remarkable distinction that he held between ornament and
richness of the materials that he used. Every material cladding
is definitive in its purpose of defining either the individuality
of the occupant or adding character to the space itself. Loos
avers,
“Architecture arouses sentiments in man.
The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments
more precise.”
This is exactly what Loos tries to follow strictly -
characterise each space based on its own specific requirements
and demands so that it closely adheres to the preferences of
the occupant. Yet again, it is evident this was carried out with
the urban middle-class in mind.
In a typical urban scenario, where private gardens are a
rarity and houses are crunched for space, the interior of the
home offers the only scope for solitude and privacy. It is then
inevitable that the interior is done up in such a way that it does
not carry over the impersonal hurry of the cityscape onto the
household; it is made to exude the individuality of the
occupant. So, decoration – as an expression of luxury –
evolves as an intrinsic character of the house.
Such quality of intimate interior space can be observed in
the Steiner House at Vienna, where he has made use of
feminine materials like silk, satin and fleece for the women‘s
rooms, and more masculine materials such as mahogany and
granite for the men‘s rooms.
In conjunction with this, Loos says,
“The old love of ornament must be replaced by pleasure in the
material itself... the architects and designers of today have
done away with this feeling for material.”
Thus, it is clear that Loos did not ‗ornament‘ his interiors
but rather, added magnificence to him in order to satiate the
ambitions of the occupant. It is also critical to note that Loos,
in pertinence to the urban middle-class context, rendered the
interior more important than the exterior.
 VII. CONCLUSION
At the very outset, Loos‘ philosophies might seem to be
incongruous chaos. Loos could possibly be someone a post-
modernist would call ‗a misunderstood genius‘. He
proclaimed confidently, in an era of irrational ornamentation,
that if modern man was incapable of naturally producing
ornamentation, then it was because he had outgrown it to
reach the pinnacle of cultural evolution. In the present
architectural context, his statement holds true to a great extent.
In a setting where high-rise buildings have become the
norm owing to spatial scarcity, his Raumplan provides the
appropriate solution. Where the ‗modern‘ architects attempt to
amalgamate the monumentality of the Egyptians, the ornament
of the Greek and the finesse of the Romans, his ideals provide
the perfect backlash to get back on track and come up with
practical solutions to design problems.
Thus, his incongruous chaos may be, after all, a veil over
immense clarity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to profusely thank my director, Prof. Jaffer AA
Khan, for his valuable resources and inputs towards this
research. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my
Professor of History of Architecture, Ms. Tamil Ezhil G, for
her unrelenting and timely help with this research.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Loos, ―Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays‖, Ariadne Press, 1998
[2] K. Frampton, ―Modern Architecture: A Critical History‖, 4 th Edition,
Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2007, pp. 90–95.
[3] A. Sarnitz, ―LOOS‖, Taschen GmBH, 2003.
[4] M.Risselada, ―Raumplan Vs. Plan Libre‖, 010 Publishers, 2008.
[5] F. Bertoni, ―Minimalist Architecture‖, Birkhauser, vol. 1., 2002
[6] I. Ackerl, ―Vienna Modernism: 1890 - 1910‖, Federal Press Service,
1999.