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In Prague, one of Loos' seminal buildings has been rescued from neglect and obscurity and faithfully restored.
While many twentieth-century buildings evoke a strong emotional response, only a handful of small-scale works have the same effect. Within this category belongs Adolf Loos' Villa Muller in Prague.
Loos (1870-1933) was born in a province of the Czech Republic, in the Moravian capital of Brno, but lived most of his life in Vienna. He advocated architecture devoid of decoration. His houses were cubic designs with carved interiors, like intricate delicate sculptures, revealing complex three-dimensional relationships between inner volumes. They flowed one into another yet were self-contained enough to seem intimate and were finished in both natural and manmade materials. Loos insisted that `rich materials and good workmanship should not only be considered as making up for lack of decoration, but as far surpassing it in sumptuousness. Noble materials are a gift from God'.
The villa was designed within a few weeks in 1928 and built in Prague 1929-30 for Frantisek Muller, an engineer and partner of a large construction firm, Kapsa & Muller. It stands on a steep slope overlooking surrounding villas and close to a main avenue to the city centre. At...