Adolf Loos World Citizen - Exhibition at NTM

On Thursday, December 10, 2020, as part of the initiative "Year of Adolf Loos 2020," the exhibition ADOLF LOOS SVĚTOOBČAN will be opened at the National Technical Museum with a live-streamed vernissage. The purpose of the exhibition, prepared by the Museum of the Capital City of Prague in cooperation with NTM, is to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Loos, one of the founders of modern European architecture and now a world-famous architect. The exhibition presents the key works of the architect focusing on his realizations in the Czech lands. Loos's work and its principles will be showcased through three-dimensional models, photographs, and audiovisual elements. Thanks to the spatial diagram of Loos's life, visitors will easily recognize when and where individual projects were created.
“I have a personal connection to the work of architect Adolf Loos because over 20 years ago I had the opportunity to oversee the restoration of the Müller Villa. Thanks to it, this unique landmark of world modernism was opened to the public. I greatly appreciate that at the National Technical Museum, together with the Museum of the Capital City of Prague, we are opening an exhibition that will allow visitors to familiarize themselves more thoroughly with the projects of this significant architect. I would also like to invite all interested parties to the streamed vernissage, which we are inaugurating on the 150th anniversary of the architect's birth,” says Karel Ksandr, General Director of NTM.
“This year is the Year of Adolf Loos, which we declared together with the National Heritage Institute to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of this world-renowned architect. At the same time, we also commemorate the 90th anniversary of the realization of his most famous and beautiful house, the Müller Villa. It has been 20 years since the completion of its demanding heritage restoration, supervised by the Museum of the Capital City of Prague, which entrusted the villa to manage in 1995. With the opening of this national cultural monument to the public, the Study and Documentation Center of Adolf Loos, led by Marie Szadkowská, began its intensive activities. The exhibition ADOLF LOOS SVĚTOOBČAN is one of the significant results of this center's work, which collaborates with leading experts and institutions engaged in modern architecture both in our country and abroad,” said Zuzana Strnadová, director of the Museum of the Capital City of Prague.
The purpose of the exhibition, prepared by the Museum of the Capital City of Prague in collaboration with the National Technical Museum, is to respectfully and inspiringly remind the public of the 150 years since the birth of Adolf Loos, one of the founders of modern European architecture and a now world-renowned architect (*December 10, 1870, in Brno). At the same time, we wish to draw attention to the beauty and complexity of the preserved Loos buildings and interiors in Bohemia and Moravia and to support the growing interest of both professionals and the general public in his endangered, overlooked, or still unknown buildings as well as unrealized projects. Last but not least, the exhibition presents the intellectual background from which Loos's work arises.
In the front part of the exhibition hall, the first Czech edition of “Řečí do prázdna” is installed, featuring Loos's most quoted texts, alongside an original block of Cipollino marble from a Swiss quarry that Loos did not use in the construction of the Müller Villa, with two surfaces specially polished for the exhibition due to the unique structure of the drawing of this legendary marble. This introductory part of the exhibition is complemented by excerpts from Loos's most famous published articles, presented through audio recordings, supplemented by an independent visual element, projected onto a white wall of the exhibition hall – a video projection on the theme of “About Construction and Clothing.”
An important element of the exhibition is a rectangular diagram of Loos's life with a schematic golden line representing his life path, placed in the center of the floor of the exhibition hall, where intersections of temporal and spatial coordinates commemorate the most important Loos projects in the Czech lands and around the world, most clearly through a series of new architectural models of built and unrealized projects in Bohemia and Moravia. The model of the world-famous Müller Villa from Prague – Střešovice, a national cultural monument managed by the Museum of the Capital City of Prague, is complemented by models of Brummel's house in Plzeň, rows of administrative houses in Nové Město – Babi, the unrealized design for Jordan's apartment building in Brno, and three sugar factory buildings in Hrušovany near Brno – sugar refinery, director's villa with garden, and accommodation inn near the station, not yet known to professionals.
On the walls of the exhibition hall, a set of professional color photographs of the current state of the preserved exteriors and interiors of buildings in the Czech lands are installed alongside the models, categorized according to the most important – and constant – categories of Loos's work: the relationship between interior and exterior, enfilade, Raumplan, symmetry, and the sophistication of interior furnishings. Loos's excellent knowledge of the properties of noble building materials is presented in the last series of photographs. The exhibition is complemented by three original seating furniture pieces from private and public collections that Adolf Loos personally designed or selected for his interiors.

The streamed vernissage will take place on Thursday, December 10, 2020, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
The first part from 5:00 PM Müller Villa: introductory speech, “Home Concert” by the Bennewitz Quartet, documentary “My Most Beautiful House.”
The second part NTM: vernissage of the exhibition with musical accompaniment by Karolína Cingrošová Žmolíková, guided tour of the exhibition with the authors.

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