ADOLF LOOS'UN MÜLLER EVİ: YENİDEN BİR BAKIŞ

There is widespread agreement on the status of Villa Müller (Prague, 1930) as both the final and the most complete example of Adolf Loos's Raumpian. However, in the interest of specificity, it is necessary to pause before covering the villa with labels. Loos himself never accorded the Raumpian a theoretical treatment in a dedicated essay. Indeed Loos never actually employed the term. An oblique reference, a footnote in a 1929 eulogy to the carpenter J. Veillich, is typically held to be the defining moment for the Raumpian concept. This is the great revolution in architecture: the solution of the plan in space....Just as mankind will eventually succeed in playing chess in the cube, so too other architects will, in the future, solve the plan in space (Loos, 1929,215). The word itself was coined and circumscribed by H. Kulka in 1931, during an effort to compile the definitive oeuvre complete (Kulka, 1931,43). In Kulka's text, the Raumpian became the efficient, emphatic, three-dimensional articulation of the program, restrained by the discipline of the prismatic shell. Loos echoed this definition in an interview given shortly before his death.I do not design plans, facades, sections, I design space. Actually there is neither a ground floor, an upper floor or a basement, there are merely interconnected spaces, vestibules, terraces. Every room needs a specific height -- the dining room a different one from the pantry — therefore the floors are on varying levels. After this one must connect the spaces with one another so that the transition is unnoticeable and natural, but also the most practical (Lhota, 1933,143).. However, Villa Miiller demonstrates clearly not only the three-dimensional expression of the domestic program at the coreof the Loosian interior, but rather an enormous, and enormously productive, paradox. For the Raumplan houses not one, but two subjects, two competing conceptions of the inhabitant. One subject is stationary, the other subject roves. The subject at rest is housed by the emphatically-materialized, efficiently-sized, well-formed interior. Yet, as if two plays were being performed on the same stage at the same time, the Loosian program fully embraces another character, an equally single-minded but otherwise quite antithetical identity, one that paces incessantly. The first is defined in terms of arrival and statis; the second in terms of trajectory and displacement. The crafted enclosures which nestle around the figure at rest are continually compromised by the presence of the agitated figure. Inversely, the restless figure is continually ensnared by the well-crafted enclosure. The interior occillates between two contrary conditions. The fundamental incompatibility of the dual subjects and the ensuing tension between their respective architectures is arguably the defining quality of the villa's interior. The domain of the stationary subject is the discrete room. To create a sense of enclosure for each room in the villa, Loos unabashedly employed traditional techniques of the discipline: simple geometric footprints, distinct cladding materials, room-specific local symmetries, proportions approaching simple whole number ratios, distinct sectional properties, individualized fenestration, bounded ceiling planes, and thresholds marking the points of entry. Together these technologies render each volumetric unit of the villa as a discernable interior. Thus, it is not surprising that Loos would employ hollow pilasters in the marble hall, or contrive symmetrical arrangements in the anteroom and dining room. The dwelling subject demands an intact interior, room by room. The room enticed dwelling by offering conventional lodging. The arrangement of the furniture contributed significantly to envelopment of the subject. Although Loos argued for the dispersal of furniture to the periphery of the room in what he called the 'Japanese style', the effect was not so much the expansion of the space as it was the creation of multiple enclaves. The arrangement of the furniture in the Villa Miiller did not exploit the perforated edges of rooms. On the contrary, the gaze of the resting body was always centripetally disciplined. This is evident in the boudoir alcove, where the built-in seating conspicuously turns its back to the 'exterior* view of the marble hall, and in the dining room where the subject seated at the granite table is divorced from the drama that surrounds him. The miscellaneous chairs and tables that originally gathered around the built-in features were invitations for bodies to come, to fill out the circle, and to complete the final boundary of the interior. But the dweller is not alone. Cutting across all the carefully-crafted conditions of enclosure, or more often along their sides, is the path of the roving subject. To rove is to be upright, and this uprightedness has its benefits. Only the roving subject is offered exterior views; the dweller never sits at the window. It is also the singular privilege of the elevated eye to gaze through rooms, lo peer over penetrated boundaries, and to scan diagonally across space as the body navigates the sinuous channels of circulation. It is therefore quite ironic that precisely this landscape is the favored material for the most static of all viewers: the photographer. Virtually all images of the enclosure privilege the diagonal view. But behind each such image lies a clogged artery and an impatient pedestrian. In Villa Muller, to rove is also to be displaced. There is a consistent distinction between the architecture of the room and the architecture of the path. Whereas Loos's rooms are constituted by symmetrical arrangements, the lines of movement are never aligned with the axes of these symmetries. Loos consistently displaces circulation to the edge. This condition begins at the front door, where the travertine bench occupies the center and the entry is shifted to the side. The circulation system is not entirely without its physical markers; the edge sponsors its own set of structured landmarks that imply the continuity of the path. But the implication is always a ruse; the trajectory of movement loses its singularity in the vicinity of the rooms. The roving subject is misled. Left illegitimately hovering at the periphery of the anteroom, or at the threshold of the marble hall, or at the edge of the dining room, (s)he must either move on or join the interior. The roving subject appears determined to undermine the sanctity of the dwelling subject with its offsides presence and its diagonal gaze. The dwelling subject responds with a kind of spatial amnesia, forgetting its exposed flank. Both positions are summoned by the Loosian Raumpltm. The architecture rallies equally to the support of each case, and thus the possibility of either condition is eliminated. The interior will eventually trap the rover, and the dweller will always sense a slight breeze.