What is it like to live in a landmark?

Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Loos

Fortepan / Gara Andor

I grew up in a small town in West Germany, in an average middle-class house. To buy new furniture, my parents would drive to the local shops and choose from what they happened to have on display. As I grew older, I discovered that the way we lived and my friend’s families lived wasn’t the only way. I realized that things are designed, that some things are more thoughtfully designed than others, and that things admired for their design are available for everyone willing and able to buy them. I also realized that furniture and even entire houses are sometimes built with unique ideas and particular care.

I decided to craft my living environment more intentionally than the people in my hometown. I started reading books about the history of design and architecture, went to exhibitions showing design objects, and traveled to architectural landmarks. Eventually, I wondered how living in spaces built and furnished by notable creators must feel.

What I found out was different from what I expected.

From our house to Bauhaus

In the noughties, I spent some years in Budapest. As an expat, I did my best to explore my guest country’s mentality, history, and culture, not just because I thought it was the right thing to do but also because I wrote a travel book that was eventually published in 2009. It included a chapter about architecture. Much to my surprise, Hungary turned out to be a hub of modern style. Hungarians like László Moholy-Nagy, Farkas Molnár, and Marcel Breuer played a decisive role in developing European modernism in art, photography, and architecture. Nowhere else in Europe, outside of Germany, can you admire as many Bauhaus buildings as in Hungary.

Old black and white photos show a flawless modernity, with elegantly curved shapes, spacious terraces, and window fronts that offer spectacular views of the Buda Hills and the old town of Pest. At times, these villas are reminiscent of Richard Neutra and "Martini Modernism,“ the only difference being that, in this case, it is not the backdrop of Los Angeles at night that flickers in the background but the city on the Danube.

I developed a strange obsession: Armed with old black-and-white photos, an oversized city map, and a long list of addresses, I walked through Buda and Pest, craning my neck, looking through overgrown gardens, peering over fences and walls, and trying to catch a glimpse of run-down houses that were once the spearhead of the avant-garde. Occasionally, I was lucky enough to be given a spontaneous tour of a resident’s home. The houses included original door handles, innovative ceiling lights, and wonderful checkerboard patterns on the floor. One had a spectacular staircase and cylindrical elevators sliding up and down in a glass tube. I was overwhelmed by how beautiful the most everyday things can be!

However, most of the houses had suffered and were in dire need of reconstruction and renovation. Weather and dirty air had left their mark. Even worse, the residents had changed them according to their liking, with all kinds of additions and alterations, rustic doors, questionable curtains, flower pots, and tons of junk. They randomly rearranged the interiors „to make them cozy and colorful,“ as noted by Tom Wolfe in his 1981 essay, whose title I have reversed in the headline. My walks showed me that architecture is not an image in a coffee table book. I wondered if living in a landmark was possible without ruining the architect’s intentions.

Trying to get inside the Wohnmaschine

Back in Germany, I was looking for an apartment. One offer immediately caught my attention: a unit in West Berlin’s Corbusierhaus, also known as Wohnmaschine (a machine for living), a solitary high-rise built by the legendary architect in 1958. Until then, I had only seen Le Corbusier’s unité d’habitation in Marseille–from the outside. Now, the apartment’s owner invited me to peek inside, and I already imagined living in a landmark of architectural modernism.

In stark contrast to my experience in Hungary, where the tenants had appropriated the apartments according to their taste, the Corbusierhaus was in excellent shape, measured by the architect’s intentions. A small exhibition in the entrance area informed the guests about the house’s history. Everything seemed to have been reconstructed carefully and correctly, in as much detail as possible. Originally part of a public effort to create affordable rental housing after the destructions of World War II, the 530 apartments were converted into privately owned apartments in 1979. Since 1995, the Corbusierhaus is a protected landmark.

From an architectural point of view, the new, affluent owners had done everything right, but in doing so, the social project turned into a stylistic preference for architecture buffs. The apartment I visited was impressive, but at the same time, it seemed sterile. I felt like I was in a museum with precious exhibits where you don’t want to move around freely.

Modern architecture, driven by a star system, is often made to impress from the outside, to look at. What is striking and typical of a star architect's brand is more important than the well-being of those who work or live there, the comfort of a building for its residents, or the durability of its construction. A rare exception is Peter Zumthor, the Swiss Pritzker Prize winner, who once noted that a building is “neither a message nor a sign” but “a shell and background for passing life, a sensitive vessel for the rhythm of steps on the ground, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep.“

The owner of the Corbusier apartment rented his Wohnmaschine to someone else, and I moved to the house I described in a former post.

Loos living

Neither compulsive purism nor appropriation beyond recognition appealed to me. Was there any alternative?

I discovered an online portal for architecturally outstanding holiday homes and decided to continue my explorations by spending vacations in landmark buildings, including a water tower, a house in Porto converted by Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura, and, most recently, a wooden building in southern Lower Austria built by Adolf Loos.

Loos was one of Europe’s most influential pioneers of modern architecture. He is best known for his outstanding American Bar in Vienna, which ingeniously uses large mirrors to give the room depth. In 1908, he delivered his famous lecture „Ornament and Crime.“ Money quote:

“evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from everyday objects (...) for me, and with me for all cultured people, ornamentation does not increase the joy of life“

The Loos Haus, where I spent my summer vacation, is located 60 kilometers south of Vienna, in Kreuzberg near Payerbach, 900 m above sea level. It was built between 1928 and 1930 on behalf of the food manufacturer Paul Khuner, a long-time supporter of the eccentric architect.

Loos reflected the problems of architecture designed purely according to visual criteria already at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1913, he wrote a text titled "rules for those who build in the mountains,“ where he claims:

“Don't build picturesquely. Leave that effect to the walls, the mountains, and the sun.“

Following his criteria, Loos sensitively integrated his client's summer house into the Alpine foothills landscape while respecting the local building tradition. It is a spacious, two-storey wooden block building made of local spruce on a quarry stone base. The terrace offers a stunning view of the mountains.

What is it like to live in it? The house, now a hotel with a restaurant („Wirtshaus“), is astonishingly well preserved, painted in dark green, red, and light blue. (Modernity wasn’t just white or grey, as Wolfe suggests.) The guests, most of them architecture enthusiasts, show each other their rooms and feel so comfortable that many become regulars.¹

The rooms are small, with low ceilings, and functionally furnished. It is difficult to say whether Loos sensitively anticipated the visitors’ movements or whether the guests, educated by their use of modern buildings, adapted their movements to the room’s requirements. I, at least, have been happy to accept the cramped conditions, partly because that was the price for staying in an original building, partly because the natural materials have aged beautifully, the well-thought-out details are pleasing, and Loos’ economy of space still impresses today.

Much of what was revolutionary a hundred years ago has become commonplace: cupboards disappearing into the walls, shelves sinking into niches, desks built in front of the windows. But then again, not so commonplace. Considering how often contemporary architecture falls behind the quality achieved by the classics of modernism, there is still a lot to learn from the masters.

At least if you didn’t grow up in a landmark.

1. If you ever want to book one of the 14 rooms, number 11, authentically preserved and equipped with a balcony, is my favorite; in room 10, there is an original glass bathtub; room 5 and room 3, where I stayed, are also mainly in their original state.