Ralf Bock

A new volume dedicated to the constructed works of Adolf Loos represents an important and significant challenge, largely because it draws from a vast body of literature throughout the decades of the 20th century.
The work of excavation, analysis and redrawing of the Viennese master's oeuvre, realized by Ralf Bock and together with the previously unpublished and surprising photographic documentation by Philippe Ruault, bring to us a new architect, capable of imagining spaces and constructions that are surprisingly rich and dense. Adolf Loos' work represents his obsession with architectural emptiness and its physical and symbolic value; he created small fragments of architecture that would become premonitions of the future.
The decorative and material richness of the interiors of his villas and public spaces, the sophisticated role of urban setting and landscaping he gave each of his works, the meticulous attention to details conceived to strengthen the value of the human scale, the only true rule of his planned space, and the stereometric quality of the geometries and of the volumes, always rigorously organized, make Loos one of the most contemporary and vital masters of the present day. This book, with an analysis of the works planned by Loos, with original sources and recent photographic reproductions, offers a new and different way of entering into contact with this world and of transforming it into an instrument for understanding and planning.

Ralf Bock is an architect and has worked with Massimiliano Fuksas since 1994. He has been working on the Loos project since 2001. Philippe Ruault has photographed the works of architects such as Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Rogers and Massimiliano Fuksas.