history of contemporary architecture - 09.Secession الشكر للدكتورة مجد الحمود

1. Secession
Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz 1

2. • Secession (Austrian Free Style):
– The Vienna Secession is another movement resulting from a rebellion
or separation from the traditional and historical styles of art.
– The point was to create a completely new style unlike anything anyone
had seen or done before with no ties to historical art.
– In this style geometric forms, linear lines and an abstract look was
preferred.
– Adolf Loos: The Light Pulp Poster for Deutcher Workbund: A symbol of
social equality, affordability of use to all people, and mass production
(The Essence of Modernity).
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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
Modernism and the Heroic Period of Architecture – Sources of Modernism
Secession (Austrian Free Style)

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
Modernism and the Heroic Period of Architecture – Sources of Modernism
Secession (Austrian Free Style)
Goldman and Salatsch
Store, Vienna, 1910-11
Adolf Loos

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

10. Adolf Loss Was affected by Louis Sullivan Concrete Work in America in Tall
Buildings
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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
Modernism and the Heroic Period of Architecture – Sources of Modernism
Secession (Austrian Free Style)
Loos’ entry
for Chicago
Tribune
competition,
1920
The winning
design, by
Raymond Hood
and John Mead
Howells

11. • Louis Sullivan designs:
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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
Wianwright Building,
St. Louis, 1890-1
Guaranty Building,
Buffalo, 1894-5
Modernism and the Heroic Period of Architecture – Sources of Modernism
Secession (Austrian Free Style)

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Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
The Secession Exhibition Hall,
by Gustav Klimt 1907
Modernism and the Heroic Period of Architecture – Sources of Modernism
Secession (Austrian Free Style)

13. Pre-Modern Intervention
Adolf Loos
Adolf Loos
ORNAMENT IS
CRIME.

14. Pre-Modern Intervention
Adolf Loos
WRITER - ARCHITECT
• Born 1870 – Brno, Moravia, Austria-Hungary.
• Opposed to Contemporary Architectural Interventionists
of his time period around 1910.
• Fashion and the Visual Arts interested him.
• Architecture was like dressing to Loos, and one should be
well dressed to reflect their surroundings in a civilized culture.
• Viewed architecture as intimate rather than professional.
• Consider modern life as the foundation of a
new aesthetic interpretation.
• Ornament is a symbol of primitive culture
and a need to abolish it.
• Travelled to United States (1893-1897 )and returned to
Vienna and include himself to the intellectual café society .
• Did not embrace contemporary architecture
and sought to create a Pre-Modern movement.
• Maintained analysis of what architecture was
and what it could do; which was not much.
• valued ethics and importance to the moral role
that architecture has on aesthetics.
Adolf Loos

15. Intervention Adolf Loos
Pre-Modern
WRITER - ARCHITECT
VIENNA – AUSTRIA, TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE
• Experienced the last decades of the imperial
royal monarchy, multicultural and multilingual
state conglomerate.
• Loos began practicing in the late 1890s when
Art Nouveau was at its peak.
• Did not rely to historicism around 1900 as
an
architectural intervention.
• Looked up to functionalism as essential and
the practical in contrast to historicism.
• Embrace Industrialism and the new type of
emerging social middle class. • Understood that historicism is not
compatible
with the new emerging social class and
sought to create a new intervention.
Adolf Loos

16. Intervention
Adolf Loos Pre-Modern
LITERARY – ARCHITECTURAL
VIENNA – AUSTRIA, TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE
ARCHITECT WRITER
• Viewed ornament as superficial and as the
enemy of the truth in his magazine Das
Andere.”
His statements shocked Viennese
population.
• Rejected ornamentation with an economic
argument that it equated to wasted manpower.
• Viewed architects as a specialist in their craft like
master builders, carpenters, tailors, shoemaker
who properly deals with material and form.
• Against ornamentation
in being utilized as
copied
forms in architecture.
• Viewed architects who
utilized ornamentation as
degenerates.
• Viewed architecture to
go forward not backwards.
Adolf Loos

17. Adolf Loos
Pre-Modern
To come up with an intervention solution
Adolf Loos turned to analyzing the existing conditions of Vienna in 1910,
as a way to figure out an intervention best suited for the time.
Adolf Loos

18. Adolf Loos - Data & Influence Conclusion
Johann
Hildebrandt
Karl
von
Hasenauer
Semper
Gottfried
Adolf
Loos
Pre-Modern
Otto
Wagner
0%
Art Nouveau
Neo-
Renaissance
Neo-Baroque
Baroque Pre-Modern
Vienna 1700 - 1900
Vienna 1910
Reduction of
Ornamentation
Utilization
Utility
Functional
Cost-Efficient
Governance
Labor-Efficient
Emerging Society
Production Efficient
Learn from
Past
interventions
Artistic Moment

19. Adolf Loos
0% Ornamentation
Production
Cost
Government
Population
Social Status
Data Influence
Art Nouveau
Neo-Renaissance
Neo-Baroque
Baroque
Not Compatible
for Pre-Modern
society
Viewed that “Every age had its style…by style, people meant
ornament. Then I said: See, therein lies the greatness of our
age, that it’s incapable of producing a new ornament. We have
outgrown ornament; we have fought our way through to
freedom from ornament. soon the streets of our city will glisten
like white walls.”
Adolf Loos: “The evolution of culture is synonymous
with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.”
What he really sought was truthful design, pure architecture
that served and expressed function, nothing more, nothing
less. He admired old fashioned objects that were sensible and
workable
Became a radical thinker and an outspoken critic of Austrian
society of how it embraced ornamentation.
Developed a Radical-pragmatic attitude towards architecture
as service in the sense of the tradition towards craftsmanship.
Labeled ‘ornament’ as a disease whose symptoms plagued
historicist architecture is in the past.
Loos infantilized, orientalized, feminized and criminalized
specific Austrian and German architects and designers who
employed ornament. While he considered himself to be a
thoroughly modern man, these ornament-makers he viewed
belonged to a different era

20. Pre-Modern
0% Ornamentation
Production
Cost
Government
Population
Social Status
Machine
Low
Constitutional
monarch
Working Class
Multi-National
Very low
Art Nouveau
Neo-Renaissance
Neo-Baroque
Baroque
Pre-Modern
Interventions Trend
Too Costly
Too Labor
Intensive
Too Construction
Intensive
Too Organic
Pre-Modern
Solves emerging
societal needs
Adolf Loos: “Every age had its style…by style, people meant ornament. Then I
said: …See, therein lies the greatness of our age, that it is incapable of
producing a new ornament.
We have outgrown ornament; we have fought our way through to freedom
from ornament… soon the streets of our city will glisten like white walls.”
It was affected by the backwards orientated governance of the emperor Franz Joseph I.
That society looked back to the previous era and was not able to deal with the problems
and possibilities of the new civil society.
Viennese architectural mainstream was the use of historism.
Its use imitated the design mediums of the ancient eras.
It was not possible for Loos to establish himself immediately as an architect in Vienna.
Due to this, he started to write essays for Viennese newspapers like the Neue Freie
Presse, Die Zeit and Die Waage. In this process he was able to develop his writing and
thinking towards Pre-Modernism.
By 1900 Vienna had evolved into the cultural focus of Central Europe, not least thanks to
its rapid urban development compared to other great European cities – London, Paris and
Berlin. With the arrival of new immigrants and two major development projects,

21. Adolf Loos Pre-Modern
Analyzing the existing conditions
contemporary interventionists,
and current social state of Vienna
led to the creation of a Literary Intervention.
Pre-Modern
0%
Pre-Modern
Literary Intervention

22. Literary Intervention
Contemporary
Ornamentation
Reduction of
Ornamentation
VS.
Craftsmanship Mechanization
Steady Production Fast Production
Cost-Significant Cost-Conscious
Collective Universal
Specialization Automatization
Resourceful Fast Pace
Independent Dependent
Individualism Programmatic
Plural Singular
Adolf Loos: “If there were no ornament at all… man
would only have to work four hours instead of eight,
because half the work done today is devoted to
ornament. Ornament is wasted labor power and
hence wasted health.”
Found much inspiration in his luxurious use of materials, and
non-commercial ones wonder at his ingenious use of space,
and in both cases Loos can become far more practically useful.
Adolf Loos’s famous essay, ‘Ornament and Crime’, decisively
linked unornamented architecture with the culture of modernity
and, in so doing, became one of the key formulations of modern
architecture.
Thinking in this wide spectrum he developed his theory of an
unornamented way of design. His theoretical work culminated in
his main work “Ornament and Crime” (1908)
Loos harshly criticised the decorative works of the Art Nouveau
movement in Vienna and what he considered the cultural
backwardness of his native Austria for its adherence to past
styles of architecture (particularly the lavish Baroque style with
its superfluous ornament) which he believed had no relation to
modern life.
In his publications Loos wanted to awaken his fellow Austrians
and shake them out of their cultural backwardness. Upon his
return to Austria from America in 1898 he started a magazine
entitled The Other. A journal for the introduction of Western
Culture into Austria.

23. Adolf Loos Pre-Modern
Once a Literary Intervention was formulated
Adolf Loos translated his thinking and writings into
physical form as an Architectural Intervention.
Pre-Modern
0%
Literary
Intervention
Architectural
Intervention

24. A 1911 cartoonist's comment on the
facade.
Built
building.
Architectural Intervention
Public
Opinion
Emerging
Social Working Class
Upper
Class
Monarch-Constitutionalist
Disagre
e
Disagree &Prefer
Neo-Renaissance
Style
Agree
Adolf Loos: “I don’t accept the objection that ornament heightens a cultivated
person’s joy in life, I don’t accept the objection contained in the words “But if the
ornament is beautiful!” Ornament does not heighten my joy in life or the joy in life
of any cultivated person…”
Loos was one of the most significant prophets of modernism. His buildings are stark, abstract
and rational in appearance and his ‘raumplan’ concept revolutionized the spatial design of
buildings. His buildings and ideas had a significant influence on the emerging International
Style architects in Europe and America.
Loos designed an apartment and business building whose façade was free from any
ornamentation
and which was more oriented towards historicism.
Loos' respect for antiquity was of a functionalistic nature: he always considered the question,
what would the ancients have accomplished under the present conditions? In any event Loos'
writings and architectural works provided great inspiration to the architects of the following
generation who brought about the International Style of 1925-1950.

25. Thank you 
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