ABSTRACT
In her investigation of Adolf Loos’s European interiors from the 1920s and 1930s, Beatriz Colomina invokes Walter Benjamin’s classic discussion of the interior of the detective novel, asking “can there be a detective story of the interior itself, of the hidden mechanisms by which space is constructed as interior? Which may be to say, a detective story of detection itself, of the controlling look, the look of control, the controlled look. But where would the traces of the look be imprinted? What do we have to go on? What clues?” 1 As both writer and detective, Colomina identifies and follows a series of traces and mechanisms to reveal a Loosian plot of gaze, body, representation and performance. In this narrative, the interior is exposed as a highly controlled space of “physical separation and visual connection” framing the “scene of domestic life.” 2 In Loos’s interiors these mechanisms largely function to direct the gaze inward, turning away from “the outside world.” 3
