Steiner House is a building in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. It is considered one of the major works of architect Adolf Loos.

Background

Loos was still starting his career in 1910 when he designed and constructed the Steiner house in Vienna, Austria. This design was much better accepted than Loos' earlier works and quickly became a worldwide example of rationalist architecture. In his buildings, Loos normally starts with one main volume in which the space, configuration, and elements follows the rules and composition of classical architecture. He organizes the interior of that volume with smaller cubes, rectangles boxes, and cylinders arranged in a volumetric puzzle of sorts. This determines the internal organization of his buildings and Loos regularly uses protrusions from the main block to create other areas of the building such as terraces. In the Steiner house, Loos uses his volumes to create a classical tripartite façade. He does this by creating a recess between the two wings of the house that continues straight to the roof. In general, Loos lets his fenestration be subdivided into squares and rectangles that all obey a modular system, which correspond perfectly with the geometry of the façade. This system sets up order on the interior such as the living room being connected to a terrace that has access to the garden. Even in this early design, Loos uses interior organization that would remain with him throughout his career. The Steiner house features a living area that is raised slightly above the ground level and separated from more private areas of the house such as bedrooms and painting studio, which was located on the first floor.In parts of Europe, the "first floor" of a building is the first floor ''above ground level''. Thus, the first floor is distinguished from the ground floor. In the United States, the first floor and the ground floor are generally synonymous. See

storey A storey (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or story (American English), is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the wor ...

. The served space in this house is neatly separated from the serving space by placing the serving space in the basement and attic. This was the style for which Loos strove: a refined and intricate interior with a simple and nonthreatening exterior. The Steiner house has a

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

façade like most of his other buildings but not without reason. Loos built his buildings with

roughcast Roughcast and pebbledash are durable coarse plaster surfaces used on outside walls. They consists of lime and sometimes cement mixed with sand, small gravel and often pebbles or shells. The materials are mixed into a slurry and are then throw ...

walls and used the stucco to form a protective skin over the bricks. Loos did not want to use the stucco as a cheap imitation rock and condemned that practice; in general he used stucco for its functionality. The stucco façades have another benefit: they create a smooth, unornamented, and white surface. This surface represents the nature of the material and also does not hint to what is inside the building. Most of Loos' works were located in open lots and did not need any party walls and yet they faced other constraints that he had to work around. In the case of the Steiner house, Loos was only able build one floor above the street level. This led him to create a one quarter round roof that is facing the street. This roof flattens out the apex and makes the two additional floors that look out onto the garden impossible to see from the street. The curved roof was an interesting choice because it was not a straight break from gabled roofs or a brand new innovative idea. Instead it was meant to demonstrate certainty of form and economy of space, proving that traditions can be manipulated or rid of completely, for a functional and non-aesthetic purpose.

Notes

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Hietzing Houses completed in 1910 Modernist architecture Adolf Loos buildings Houses in Austria