There's no particular reason, but today is Adolf Loos day at Towers of Ilium. This is a picture of the Michaelerplatz building in Vienna which he designed in 1911. When I was a young architecture student I remember how one of my colleagues at the office remarked that this was "great looking building." At the time, I wasn't quite sure what defined "great" or "bad" in a work of architecture and it's taken me a few years to appreciate why this building deserves the "great" title. One reason is that it reinforces an urban condition with its open street level facade and helps define the public space in front of it. It has a clear front entrance and the two tone treatment of the facade emphasizes the public levels of the first two floors and the private character of the upper floors. The detailing is resolutely classical, but the details are handled with considerable discretion. The proportions of the openings are human scaled and arranged in a consistent rhythm on the facade--Loos even employs the classical trick of graduating the height of the windows based on their height above the ground.
I wonder what it's like inside?
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