Adolf Loos

The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.

— Adolf Loos

The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable.

— Adolf Loos

At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned tradition, it's at that point that I intend to renew it because the…

— Adolf Loos

Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included in the arts?…

— Adolf Loos

Lack of ornamentation is a sign of spiritual strength.

— Adolf Loos

“I will not subscribe to the argument that ornament increases the pleasure of the life of a cultivated person, or the argument…

— Adolf Loos

The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The house satisfies a requirement. The…

— Adolf Loos

“Every period had its style: why was it that our period was the only one to be denied a style? By “style”…

— Adolf Loos

Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for…

— Adolf Loos

Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position…

— Adolf Loos

If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of…

— Adolf Loos

The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for…

— Adolf Loos

The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself.

— Adolf Loos

Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom,…

— Adolf Loos

I have emerged victorious from my thirty years of struggle. I have freed mankind from superfluous ornament.

— Adolf Loos

It does not do to use it with forms whose origin is intimately bound up with a specific material simply because no…

— Adolf Loos

“The unadorned gentleman's suit was the product of the change from rigid status to social structures constantly shifting in response to the…

— Adolf Loos

The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present.

— Adolf Loos

Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

— Adolf Loos

Supply and demand regulate architectural form.

— Adolf Loos

Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.

— Adolf Loos

Be truthful. Nature only sides with truth.

— Adolf Loos

All art is erotic. The first ornament to have been invented, the cross, was of erotic origin. It was the first work…

— Adolf Loos

The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture toward secret vice. The bank must declare: here your money is secure and…

— Adolf Loos