This paper picks up Brummel house (1928) designed by Adolf Loos. Brummel house was designed just before Villa Muller (1930) which was completion of the Raumplan. Loos had never used the word “Raumplan”. It was introduced in the first monograph of Loos (1931) by Heinrich Kulka. According to Kulka, Raumplan had the following characteristic "It was stopped to be divided a building horizontally every hierarchy such as the first, second floor and so on. It combines several rooms of various heights together and each room related mutually. And those rooms harmonize the total space which there was no waste of space." Ratifying his opinion, the studies of Raumplan has focused on the projects included various heights. That's why Brummel house with same height have been removed from the object of the study of Raumplan.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze Brummel house from the point of view of Raumplan. At this time, I use the clue of a special characteristic in Villa Muller. It clarifies to investigate how the special characteristic (= the spatial gymnastics) in Villa Muller is developed in Brummel house.
I refer to the paper of Tomonari, K.: ON THE FORMATION OF THE RAUMPLAN FROM ADOLF LOOS'S MIDDLE TO LATE PERIOD. He discussed Raumplan after arranging previous studies carefully. According to him, many previous studies focused on various heights in Raumplan. On the other hand, he valued two studies from the different point of view such as Van de Beek, Leslie Van Duzer and Kent Kleinman.
I focus on Duzer and Kleinman in Villa Muller, AWork of Adolf Loos, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. Especially I pick up their idea “the spatial gymnastics”. They tried to analyze interior space through physical and visual gymnastics depends on architectural promenade by Le Corbusier. They pointed out that Villa Muller had had the subjects of stationary and mobile. Interior space had stationary situation basically and mobile situation was in it. Such ambiguity situation is characteristic in Villa Muller, they said. For example, in the dining room, it is assumed that the stationary situation had collapsed and mobile situation appears by removing one corner of the square plan to serve as an entrance and exit.
I thought three elements are important for the spatial gymnastics such as the direction of plan, the symmetry by an axis and the joint of each room. I analyzed Brummel house by these three elements.
All rooms have a rectangular plan and it has the direction for a long side from the beginning. At the same time, the axis of symmetry was on the opposite direction. The mixture of these two directions canceled each direction. And furniture makes human places in each room. That is that each room had a stationary situation basically. On the other hand, an opening and doors aligned in a line and the symmetry axis centered on the door penetrated each room. It meant that the traffic line penetrating through the four rooms appeared when doors in a line were opened. In other words, the stationary situation of each room collapsed and the mobile situation was generated by opening doors.
In conclusion, it clarified that the harmony between the stationary and mobile situation were in Brummel house by the match of the symmetry axis and traffic line. Villa Muller had it by the mismatch of the symmetry axis and traffic line. Beyond this difference, Brummel house had the common special characteristic of Raumplan in Villa Muller. The meaning of this paper is that I can confirm the special characteristic of Raumplan in Brummel house.
