The Müller Villa

The Prague villa for František Müller and his wife Milada built between 1928 and 1930 was created according to the design of one of the greatest architects of that time, Adolf Loos.

Adolf Loos is one of the most significant personalities of modern architecture. He was born and raised in Brno at the time of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. He studied architecture in Dresden and spent three years in the United States. His article “Ornament and Crime“ where he declared that ornament is a feature of a primitive culture, is considered to be the most significant architectural essay of the 20th century. The commission for František Müller, the co-owner of the Kapsa-Müller construction company and a significant representative of Czech society at that time, made it possible for Loos to bring his original spatial concept, the so-called Raumplan based on spatial and height differentiation of incorporated rooms, to culmination. This concept that was together with the absence of ornament the basic idea characteristic of his other famous buildings (the Goldmann & Salatsch department store in Vienna, the house of the poet Tristan Tzara in Paris and the unrealized project of a house for Josephine Baker) led to new modern architecture. The Müller Villa was nationalized in the 1950s. In 1955 it was proclaimed a National Cultural Monument and became a part of the Museum of the Capital City of Prague. Between 1997 and 2000 the villa underwent a meticulous reconstruction during which preserved parts of the interior were restored, period objects sought out and replicas of missing objects created based on period photographs.