Measuring Adolf Loos’ Parallax: Retroactive Photogrammetry and the Persistent Off-Screen

This article traces the ever-shifting and often contradictory nature of what it calls Adolf Loos’ architectural parallax. Parallax, the effect whereby an object’s position appears to differ when viewed from different positions, is suggested to encapsulate a key quality of experiencing Loos’ spatial compositions. Centrally, the article uses a set of 1901 photograph capturing the parallactic qualities of a Loos-designed, mirror-lined Viennese tailor shop as an unintended source for its digital photogrammetric reconstruction. The photographic evocation of Loos’ architecture’s immeasurability is turned against itself and misused to take its measure. The resulting three-dimensional point-cloud model recuperates the enigmatic shop’s geometry as well as the position of the photograph’s carefully staged protagonists. Yet the photogrammetric reconstruction also prompts the emergence of new elements of the immeasurable. It is this persistent off-screen, this ongoing personal/photographic/architectural reference to a difficult-to-grasp ‘Other’ that is finally proposed to constitute an expanded understanding of Loos’ parallax.