Only at second glance it becomes clear that the object exhibited here is a lamp. It refers to the famous design for a skyscraper by Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933). In 1922, the American daily Chicago Tribune, then considered “the world’s greatest newspaper”, had announced a competition for the construction of its new headquarters in the heart of the pulsating metropolis. The ambitious owner and publisher of the magazine, Robert McCormick, envisioned nothing less than “the most beautiful office building in the world”. Because of the high prize money, which Mc Cormick offered and which totalled 100,000 dollars, renowned architects from all over the world submitted designs, including Walter Gropius, Eliel Saarinen and Bruno Taut. This competition is now widely considered a key moment in architectural history, because it was precisely the spirit of the unsuccessful entries - above all Saarinen’s - that was to shape America’s cityscapes from then on. The contract was ultimately awarded to the office of the Americans John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, who - inspired by French Gothic architecture - interpreted the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune as a cathedral of the modern age. Completed in 1925, the Tribune Tower housed the offices of the newspaper until 2018. Afterwards, it was broken up and converted into luxury apartments.
Instead of medieval architecture, Loos’ design is based on the classical formal canon. The building’s exterior shape is that of a Doric column with a stepped, cuboid pedestal. Instead of supporting an entablature - like the two other examples at the main entrance, which are reminiscent of the Looshaus in Vienna - the Doric column itself thus forms the actual architecture. The column shaft alone, with its fenestrated fluting, would have accommodated no less than twenty-one floors. With this peculiar choice, Loos plays on the double entendre of the English word ‘column’, which means not only column, but also column in the field of journalism - the Chicago Tribune’s field of business. The design was not recognised in the competition, but its originality and radicality continued to inspire subsequent generations.
Stephan Tschavgov and Hans-Heinz Frickel, both architects themselves, transformed Loos’ design into a lamp in 1989. From within the Loos Tower, which was molded in ceramics, a spotlight would have shone upward through the opening in the abacus, the square-shaped plate on top of the capital. The direction of light would therefore have alluded to the supporting function of the column and thus humorously counteracted Loos’ basic idea. However, serial production never took place and the present example - acquired by Egidio Marzona for the Archive der Avantgarden - is the last surviving prototype. Unfortunately, it is not electrified.
Text: Alexander Röstel