The devil in the details: The life and times of Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos (1870 1933) was a flamboyant character, whose presence in the cultural hotbed of early 1900s Vienna galvanized the country s architectural landscape. An early, impassioned advocate of modernism, he all-out rejected the grand Secessionist aesthetic prevalent in contemporary Viennese architecture, as well as any hallmarks of the European fin de siecle.

Instead, in lectures and essays, such as the milestone Ornament and Crime of 1913,...