What is the difference between Loos and Hoffmann?

The difference between Loos and Hoffmann comes down to their design philosophies and styles. Austrian and Czechoslovak architect Adolf Loos was a forerunner of the International Style and exercised immense restraint in his building projects as well as his designs for chairs, tables, storage pieces and other furniture, and wrote prolifically on his disdain for taking a decorative approach to architecture. Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann was a central figure in the evolution of modern design and a leader in an aesthetic movement born in Europe in the late 19th century that rejected florid, extravagant ornamentation in favor of a new emphasis on a simplicity of line. As a founder of both the Vienna Secession — a union of artists and designers determined to upend Austria’s artistic conservatism — and the Wiener Werkstätte (in English: the Viennese Workshops), a design cooperative that produced superbly crafted furniture and housewares, Hoffmann was a pioneering practitioner of what would become a fundamental principle of modernism: that good design is a way of life. While Loos believed that art and the design and production of everyday items were distinct fields, Hoffmann wished to infuse art into architecture and furniture. Shop a range of Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann furniture on 1stDibs.