“[B]ut if he earns a ten on a marble cross, the company earns at least three more than that, with no work and worries; yes, three, and who knows – maybe even four tens that will flow into the bottomless pocket of Adolf Loos’ widow, or travel to the Sparkasse in Germany.”
Josef František Karas, Vichři, Praha 1925, p. 209.
In the 1970s, during his research in the Albertina in Vienna, art historian Zdeněk Kudělka, the author of fundamental texts on the work of Adolf Loos in Bohemia and Moravia, came across a note that “at the age of 26, Loos allegedly built a ‘Landhaus’ in Brno (or near Brno).” If that house – the design could have originated around 1896 – were identified, it would be the architect’s earliest work. For many historians of architecture, it has always been tempting to relate this mention to the construction of a country house that his mother Marie had ordered in 1900 on the outskirts of the village of Nedvědice, where the family had rented a local quarry since 1865. The decision to mine Nedvědice marble had been made by Adolf Loos’ father, who ran a successful stonemasonry company in Brno with branches in the towns of Třebíč and Nedvědice. After his untimely death in 1879, the widow Marie Loos took over the supervision of the company. In 1925, František Karas, a former employee of the company and writer, set the plot of his novel Vichři in the stonemason’s workshop in Nedvědice.
The house is located by the road leading to Pernštejn Castle. It is a one-storey building with a cellar, characterized by dark red ceramic cladding of the façade and white marble bossage on the corners. The windows are framed with Nedvědice marble as well. The decorative wooden railing on the balcony set above a projection in the façade gives the building a romantic touch. The entrance porch, now walled-up, was originally made in the same spirit.
The plans of this charming house have been preserved, but they do not mention the name of the architect. The original client was Marie Loos, but the house later became the property of her daughters Hermína and Irma Marie, respectively. The last owner from the Loos lineage was Irma’s son Valtr Pirschl-Loos, who sold the house in 1920. If the house was indeed designed by Adolf Loos, the plans would have originated in a curious situation, namely after his return from a three-year stay in the United States, which he left in 1896. However, Loos’ departure was preceded by his voluntary agreeing to be disinherited by his mother, after which he broke off all contact with her.
Jana Kořínková