Ornament and Crime

Revolutionary essays on design, aesthetics and materialism - from one of the great masters of modern architecture

Adolf Loos, the great Viennese pioneer of modern architecture, was a hater of the fake, the fussy and the lavishly decorated, and a lover of stripped down, clean simplicity. He was also a writer of effervescent, caustic wit, as shown in this selection of essays on all aspects of design and aesthetics, from cities to glassware, furniture to footwear, architectural training to why 'the lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power'.

Translated by Shaun Whiteside
With an epilogue by Joseph Masheck

Adolf Loos (1877-1933) was a leading Austro-Hungarian architect, perhaps most famous for the revolutionary 'Loos House' opposite the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, which caused outrage when it was built in 1912, and the wonderful American Bar, also in Vienna. He wrote extensively on architecture and design, working in reaction to the elaborate mass of decoration celebrated by the Vienna Secession movement.

Joseph Masheck, modern art and architectural historian and critic, and sometime editor-in-chief of Artforum, was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Artof the College Art Association.