ABSTRACT
The idea of progress plays a key role in the thinking of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos. It is based on progress, translated into the idea of cultural evolution, that Loos justifies his refusal/condemnation of ornament. An idea of evolution influenced by the cultural context of Vienna 1900 and which in the results in a complex thinking that reflects the contradictions of the end of the century, simultaneously pessimistic and optimistic about progress, and which over the years has been the subject of contradictory interpretations. Nowadays, in a period once again marked by uncertainties and doubts about the future, we propose revisiting the theoretical thinking of this author.
