Resumen de Architecture and crime: Adolf Loos and the culture of the "Case"

Frederic Schwartz

• Adolf Loos, author of the modernist polemic “Ornament and Crime,” was involved in two widely publicized criminal trials during his career. An investigation of his encounters with criminality suggests that his experiences with the press and the courts had implications for both his architectural practice and theory. The publicity surrounding scandals and criminal cases in early twentieth-century Vienna provided opportunities for the debate of matters of general importance at a time when few others existed. It is illuminating to view Loos’s architecture, scandals, and controversies in light of the changing nature of public discourse.