"When we come across a mound in the wood, six feet long and three feet wide, raised in a pyramidal form by means of a spade, we become serious and something in us says: somebody lies buried here. This is architecture."
-Adolf Loos
I remain mute to the world. I have nothing to speak of to society. Ornament shall not speak to worldiness. Historically, ornament spoke of God; of worship. False idols will not be glorified. The world, the public, is out there, and you are in here. The two are to remain neglectful of each other, not embraced.
"As ornament is no longer organically related to our culture, it is also no longer the expression of our culture. The ornament that is produced today bears no relation to us, or to any other human or the world at large. It has no potential for development."
Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime
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Intermediate Design 201
Professor: Ran Oron
Intermediate Design 201
Professor: Ran Oron
Establishing the use of ornament on the existing building as the subject of site analysis, I was encouraged to begin exploring the theories by Adolf Loos, particularly in relation to ornament. Expounding on this exploration, I stumbled onto numerous readings and texts by, and about, Loos.
Due to the lack of historical documents on Adolf Loos, the library's content is not abundant. A large portion of the "knowledge" contained by the Looslibrary lies in the design of the library. If the research I did gave me any sort of impression on a Loos building, simply reading and looking at photographs of his work does not suffice as a full experience. Experience is knowledge.
Extracting the strongest and most applicable ideas of establishing theater boxes, provoking comfort through control, and devising a raumplan organization of programmatic spaces, the essence of the Looslibrary began to come together through numerous study models and architectural process drawings.
For the majority of the project, the library was worked on it two dimensional formats. Plans and elevations weren't interpreted into a 3-dimensional model until late in the project.
Above: Rendering of the view from the group study space looking out across the first level of book stacks. In totality, the framing of separate views begin to appear, and comfort and control begin being exercised through what spaces are seen by the occupant here.
Below: Perspective street view of the Looslibrary in context with adjacent buildings.
The period of which the project was done was rather quickly paced, forcing studies to be done rapidly, and occasionally not to the extent necessary for full comprehension and interpretation. All in all, the end result was exceptional conceptually.
