On Architecture

This volume gathers the few essays written by the quirky Austrian architect Loos (d. 1933) as well as student notes of his lectures. The essays respond in part to his best-known essay "Ornament and crime", in which he criticized ornament as a waste of labor. Among other topics the essays celebrate classical architecture, critique certain inefficient habits (including eating goulash at 10 am instead of having a big American-style breakfast), argue that architecture is not one of the arts, and consider the relation of Viennese coffee houses to domestic architecture. The volume is not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR