ABSTRACT
‘The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat, his paddles, in short everything he can lay hands on’, wrote Adolf Loos famously in ‘Ornament and Crime’. The question of ‘ornament’ in Loos’s theory and in his own practice is a complex question, especially in the categorical division he draws between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ when it comes to the application of evocative ornamentation in excess in the interior spaces of the houses he designed. The point is, rather, to show that Loos’s dictum was in essence egalitarian, in spite of himself. He was a sharp critic of the hierarchical system dominant in the ‘backward’ culture of Austria and its state power. In 1898 Loos wrote a piece called ‘The Principle of Cladding’ on the occasion of the Austrian Jubilee Exhibition in 1898. The principle of cladding, which was first articulated by Semper, extends to nature as well. Man is covered with skin, the tree with bark.
