Plzeň will exceptionally make the valuable interiors of Adolf Loos accessible

Plzeň - Four unique residential interiors created in the 1920s and 1930s by world-renowned architect Adolf Loos will be exceptionally accessible in Plzeň during the European Heritage Days on Saturday, September 18. Three of the otherwise inaccessible interiors belong to the city, while the fourth is privately owned. The tour is organized by Plzeň as part of its campaign for the European Capital of Culture in 2015 and also as a commemoration of the 140th anniversary of Loos's birth, Kristina Štěpánová from the municipal department of presentation and marketing informed ČTK.
    Loos often stayed in Plzeň; his last wife, photographer Claire Beck, was from there. "He found cultured clients here, for whom cooperation with this esteemed architect was a prestigious matter," Štěpánová noted. In the city, he carried out the reconstruction of the so-called Brummel House at Husova Street 58 and 13 residential interiors, which experts consider extremely valuable in the context of 20th-century European architecture. Not all of them have survived to this day.
    During guided tours, the public will be able to glimpse Loos’s interior in the municipal house at Bendova Street number 10, featuring a unique music salon clad in marble, which was used as an apartment until recently. They will also see a dining room and salon in Klatovská Street number 19, and the interior at Klatovská 12 offers two well-preserved reconstructed rooms. "The tour of a part of the private apartment at Husova Street 58, which is among the best-preserved of Loos's works in Plzeň, has been exclusively allowed by its current owner in agreement with the city. A notable feature of this interior is, among other things, the original enormous decorative fireplace," described Štěpánová.
    The tours in Plzeň will be free, but they have limited capacity. Therefore, interested parties must reserve a time and place at the city's information center.
    Loos (1870 to 1933) is considered the most significant Central European architect of the first third of the 20th century and a co-founder of modern purist architecture worldwide. His style is characterized by clean rectangular shapes, the absence of ornaments, simple functional forms, and noble materials. The future of his interiors in Plzeň is part of the cultural development program for the period 2009 to 2019. It also includes the establishment of a tour route through Loos's interiors.