Adolf Loos's Raumplan Theory

This article presents an argument demonstrating the complexity and generative capacity of Adolf Loos’s raumplan theory. In pursuing this goal, I have used the first raumplan scheme to be realized—the Rufer House, built in Vienna in 1922—as a medium through which to review the definition of raumplan developed by Loos’s modernist disciples. As an alternative to traditional interpretations, I propose an analysis of the theory based on four characteristics of raum—site, presence, gathering, and staying among things—posited by Martin Heidegger in his 1954 essay, “Building Dwelling Thinking.