The Liberec University will restore the memorial to architect Adolf Loos

Liberec - A memorial built in the 1980s in honor of architect Adolf Loos is being restored by the Technical University in Liberec. The artwork, at the intersection of architecture and sculpture, was created by Jiří Seifert and stood in front of the Stavoprojekt building, where the Faculty of Economics is located today. Several years ago, the school had the artwork removed because it was in very poor condition and drug addicts gathered in the enclosed space. Now, they are having the concrete pieces restored and plan to ceremoniously unveil the memorial again for the 150th anniversary of the architect's birth. Miroslav Brzezina, the rector, told ČTK about it.

Loos was born in Brno, but studied in Liberec from 1892 to 1897 at the industrial school. Fifty years after his death, architects from the Liberec Association of Architects and Engineers (SIAL) decided to commemorate the significant architect with a memorial. "It was the first memorial to Loos in the world, removed by our school a few years ago, although the question remains who actually owns it, as no one claims it," said Brzezina. The school is now having the concrete blocks restored with the support of the Liberec region and the city, and they intend to return them to their original location and add lighting.

"It is an example of visual art from the 1980s; it is not just a visual sculpture, but was also intended for the possibility of staying in that space. It is a kind of spiral that a person can enter, sit down in, rest, and meditate. It is essentially a pavilion with an open roof to the sky," said Osamu Okamura, dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Liberec, to ČTK. According to him, Seifert's memorial is a very good example of a brutalist approach to visual art. "And brutalism is now a very watched chapter of Czech architecture and art," he added.

Adolf Loos was born on December 10, 1870, and is considered one of the founders of modern architecture and a leading representative of architectural purism. There is no building of his in Liberec; the only known project intended for the city was a pavilion for Siemens & Halske for the exhibition of Czech Germans in 1906. It was the largest exhibition in the history of Liberec. A close collaborator of Loos was Heinrich Kulka, the author of the Kantor villa in Jablonec nad Nisou from the 1930s. The author applied Loos's raumplan in it, based on the smooth continuity and interconnectedness of the different parts of the house.