Adolf Loos, past and future

About the Loos' works much have been said. He is known as Rationalism's forerunner, as modern reviewers have said. Of course, one thing is sure, to claim against the decoration at the end of the XIX century was so controversial, at Vienna, then flourishing capital of modernarchitecture, with people like Wagner, Hoffmann or Olbrich.

He was the contrary opinion to that stylistic trend. No decoration is needed for architecture if it's not for a functional goal. Today, his houses, mainly villas for commercial and banking austrian jet-set, appear as nude buildings, just white façades with some windows and even some ivy growing at the lower levels. They could be misunderstood even with a Le Courbusier's early works or some much more modern finnish trends for domestic architecture!

Curiously, this Loos' personal style, could be compared to a much more ancient and geographically far constructions, the typical mediterranean style houses of Greece and Andalusia, with their façades in white. There's no controversy here, just functionalism. Due to the high temperatures reached over summer times, ancient mediterranean workers decided to paint in white their houses to keep interior's temperature steady against a great heat.

Then, Loos' style was no functionalist, just theoretical, against a dominant trend in his society. He maybe studied ancient western architecture, I mean mainly greek and roman, as showing pure white façades, and claim then, against the excesses of his colleagues at a bourgeois society's service. One thing is sure, a economical saving can be done with some known tricks, but maybe, Austria or Czech Republic are not the best place to make the most of.