Otto Wagner retired from the Academy of Fine Arts after his honorary year of 1911/12, but no decision had yet been made regarding his successor. Several of Wagner’s students approached Adolf Loos to persuade him to apply for the vacant professorship. Aware of the futility of such an application, Loos did not follow this suggestion, but the students’ trust in him led him to decide to found his own school of architecture. On July 12, 1912, the Pester Lloyd newspaper published a report about the upcoming opening of the Adolf Loos Bauschule (Adolf Loos School of Architecture).
The school, which naturally did not have public accreditation, was designed to be a three-year program, the first of which began on October 1, 1912. Three subjects were taught; the classes were to be held three times a week for one hour each time. The Schwarzwald School in Vienna’s 1st district, at Wallnerstraße 2/Kohlmarkt, provided the premises. Tuition was set at 25 crowns per semester. The official location of the school was Adolf Loos’s architectural office at Beatrixgasse 25 in Vienna’s 3rd district.
Loos published the Verzeichnis der Vorlesungen an der Bauschule Adolf Loos (List of Lectures at the Adolf Loos School of Architecture).
The program included:
1st School Year 1912/1913
Art History: In the first year, the art of antiquity was presented.
Interior Design: “The culture of the home, heating and ventilation, central heating, hygiene, plumbing and electrical work, layout of apartments in tenement buildings and private homes. The hall, the anteroom, the dining room, bedrooms, etc., kitchen and bathroom. Tasks for furnishing apartments. – Excursions to furnished apartments and villas.”
Materials Science: “General information on geology and mineralogy. Useful stones (sandstone, limestone, granite, etc.). Gemstones and luxury stones (marble, syenite, porphyry, etc.). Semiprecious stones, agates, precious stones. – Materials from the animal kingdom: pearl, mother-of-pearl, tortoise shell, horn. – Artificial materials: lime, gypsum, cement, concrete, reinforced concrete. – Excursions.”
From April 1st to May 15th, a study trip was planned to “supplement the lessons in art history and materials science at ancient art sites and marble quarries.” Departure by Danube steamer to Budapest. Sightseeing. Danube steamer to Belgrade. Danube steamer to Ruse, train to Bucharest, visit to the Royal Palace. Train to Constanța. Chartered steamer to Constantinople, Skyros (marble quarries), Tinos (marble quarries), Crete, Knossos, Delos, Aegina, Epidaurus, Nafplio. Train journey to Athens. En route, visits to Tiryns, Mycenae, Corinth, and Eleusis. Extended stay in Athens. Visit to the Pentelic marble quarries. From Athens by steamer through the Corinth Canal to Delphi, the next day in Patras. Olympia. From Patras by the Austro-Americana’s American steamer to Palermo. Excursion to Girgenti, Taormina, Syracuse, and Messina. By steamer to Naples. Pompeii. By steamer to Livorno, Pisa, Massa Carrara, Parma, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, Castelfranco, Vienna (extra train).
The trip should be made possible for all students, including external students who had only taken one course. “Ladies may also participate in both the courses and the study trips.”
2nd School Year 1913/1914
Art History: “Art of the Middle Ages and the Oriental Peoples”
Interior Design: “Hotel construction, café, bar, restaurant, assembly hall and spa building construction, shelter and lookout tower, bank and exchange office, department store and general store. – Excursions.”
Materials Science: “Bricks, earthenware, faience and stoneware, porcelain. Glass and glass fluxes. Metallurgy (iron, copper, tin, zinc, brass, bronze, etc.). – Excursions.”
Study trip April 1914: “Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, Pistoia, Florence, Rome, Orvieto, Perugia, Siena, Ancona, Fiume.”
3rd School Year 1914/1915
Art History: “Modern Era”
Interior Design: “Church, school, theater, circus, entertainment palaces, bathhouses, hospitals, sanatoriums – Excursions.”
Study trip April 1915: “Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Brussels, Ostend, London, Rouen, Paris, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, and Munich.”
On September 27, 1912, the entrance examinations for the School of Architecture took place, but only for those students who, in addition to attending lectures, also wanted to carry out designs under Loos’s tutelage. These were graduates of a higher state trade school or those who had studied engineering for three semesters. The assignment was: “Villa according to a given program, detailed drawing of a classical column.” The plan also included enabling graduates of grammar schools and secondary modern schools to attend through a one-year preparatory course.
In the first year, Loos had three regular students: Wilhelm Ebert, Paul Engelmann, and Helmut Wagner-Freynsheim. The work on the designs took place in Loos’s architectural office. The excursion did not take place that year.
In the October 1913 issue of the journal Der Architekt 19 (1913): 70–71, an article by Adolf Loos about the successful first year of his architecture school was published. In it, he also announced innovations for the second year: Building mechanics and construction would be taught, so that graduates of grammar schools and secondary modern schools could be admitted. Furthermore, a Viennese building from the Classical period would be studied in its entirety each year. The Palais Pallavicini was chosen for the 1913/1914 academic year. The design process was to proceed from the inside out; the façade was secondary. Loos wanted to encourage his students to think three-dimensionally in this way. He took students on city walks to give presentations on the buildings. The planned study trip in 1914 did not take place.
The war interrupted the teaching activities of the Adolf Loos School of Architecture.
1919/1920 School Year
In the autumn of 1919, Adolf Loos reopened his School of Architecture. Information about the curriculum of this class is lacking. Several of the students from that time are known by name: Otto Breuer, the Czechoslovakians Norbert Krieger and Heinrich Kulka, who later became one of Loos’s closest collaborators, and Zlatko Neumann. These students were partly employed in Loos’s studio, some served as site managers, and others worked largely independently. Loos seemed to have taught them in a kind of private seminar. Where regular classes were held is unknown.
1920/1921 School Year
The students were integrated by Loos into his work at the housing office and taught in his office. The curriculum of regular classes is unknown, but the housing issue seems to have dominated, as Loos held an internal housing competition. Whether Loos again had access to the premises of the Schwarzwald School for the School of Architecture, or whether lecture series were held in the concert hall in connection with the school, is unknown.
No further classes were held.
1930
In December 1930, Karl Kraus, Arnold Schoenberg, Heinrich Mann, Valery Larbaud, and James Joyce issued a joint appeal for the establishment of an Adolf Loos School, which meant reviving the architecture school. However, the initiative was unsuccessful.
Literature
Judith Bakacsy, Paul Engelmann: Eine Lebensdokumentation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Ludwig Wittgenstein (PhD. diss., University of Innsbruck, 2003), 189–196.
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Der Architekt 19 (1913): 70–71.
Burkhardt Rukschcio and Roland Schachel, Adolf Loos. Leben und Werk, 2nd ed. (Salzburg and Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 1987).
Dieter Worbs, “Die Loosschule,” in Bauwelt 72/2 (Special Issue), November 1981.
Author: Jutta Brandstetter