Adolf Loos and Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Common Bond of Sprachkritik

This paper analyzes the friendship that occurred between Adolf Laos and Ludwig Wittgenstein which began in 1914. The friendship had reached an end by 1922, a year in which both men produced sigmficant works, each in his own discipline. Laos designed and constructed a residence in Vienna for the Rufer family; this project was subsequently recognized as the first house to fully realize the principles of raumplan, a theory on which he had been laboring for several years (Figure I). For his part, Wittgenstein finally found a publisher for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a philosophical treatise he had begun prior to the onset of World War I (Figure 2). After establishing thisframework, the essayjuxtaposes the raumplan building and the philosophical text. From this parallel setting the author argues that there is a demonstrable--tangible and conceptual-correspondence between the two works.