Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the Road to Modern Architecture

Contemporary architectural theory emphasizes the importance of tectonics, the term used to articulate the relationship between construction, structure and architectural expression. Despite the term’s currency, little consideration has been given to its origins or historical significance. In this study, Werner Oechslin examines the attempts by early modern theoreticians of architecture to grapple with the relationship between appearance and essence, which is crucial to the discourse of tectonics. Referring to the writings of Joseph Lux, Karl Bötticher, and Adolf Loos, Oechslin follows this development from theories of a classical architecture without columnar orders to a Modern architecture upholding the ‘truth’of its own architectural expression. Oechslin locates the culmination of this discourse in the work of Adolf Loos and in Le Corbusier’s frequent references to Ancient Greece as the precedent of Modern architecture’s honesty. This volume includes an anthology of primary texts by several theorists published in English for the first time.

• Offers an in-depth examination of the work of early modernist architects, Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos • Illuminates the historical origins of ‘tectonics’, a term and concept commonly used in contemporary architectural theory • Includes an anthology of primary texts by several theorists published in English for the first time

Preface; Introduction; 1. The opposite of the issue of style: necessity, unity, immanent coherence, the naked, simple and true; 2. ‘Tectonics’ and the ‘theory of raiment’; 3. Disenchantment with ‘Bötticher’s overly intellectual work’ and the postulation of a way to overcome the ‘Semperian mechanistic conception of the essence of art’; 4. ‘Stilhülse und Kern’: from theory to metaphor - and its deployment by Otto Wagner; 5. Adolf Loos - against the Zeitgeist; 6. ‘… ad usum Delphini’ - The ‘element event’ of the Raiment Dissolved, and the ineluctable return - or recognized tenacity - of the Hull; Anthology of primary sources.