Steiner House Change this

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Steiner's house was designed for the painter Lilly Steiner and her husband Hugo. It is located in a suburb of Vienna, where planning adjustments were strong enough to have a direct impact on the final design.

Loos' design

It was the architect’s Adolf Loos’ goal to maximize the space at his disposal without violating the building regulations of suburban Vienna. At the time, only one floor above street level was allowed. Loos’ solution was an arched tin roof which contains two additional floors giving the structure its somewhat austere and futuristic look.

This house is a manifestation of Ornament and Crime written in 1908, in which he repudiated the florid style of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian version of Art Nouveau. The house shows the architectural principes of Loos, a design to exclude all tools of arts to emphasize function.

Not only the house became a highly influential example of modern architecture, but it also played an important role in establishing the reputation of Loos as a bold modern architect inside and outside Vienna.

The front garden has been an indisputable space of radical rationalism in the modern architecture.

Concept

The facades are the public part of the house, Loos designed them smooth and unadorned. The interior is the private side and reflects the personal taste of the owners.

Each volume has the size according to its own role, until all the internal spaces were under a single roof plane. Carried out in this way a remarkable spatial economy.

Symmetry, the total lack of ornamentation defined the building. An architecture based on the economy and the rigour of the function.

Raumplan

Loos used the pricipe of "raumplan", a considered ordering and size of interior spaces based on function. The concept was applied in many of his works.

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