Domestic Space in Crisis

Loos revolutionised Viennese architecture around the year 1900 with the Café Museum, popularly referred to as the Café Nihilismus. The architect premiered a luminous venue where all decoration was done away with. He designed the chairs by adapting a Thonet model, with an elliptical curve making them even lighter, setting them around circular marble-top tables, which were separated just enough to create a rhythmic feel in the café’s interior. In the Turnowsky Apartment, Loos designed new pieces of white furniture with a minimalist feel, with classically-inspired striated edgings and cornices, applied to wardrobes as well as to mirror frames.

“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.”
Adolf Loos