Rufer House, Protected residential building in Hietzing, Vienna, Austria.
The Rufer House is a protected single-family home in the Hietzing district of Vienna, built as a compact white cube with a flat roof. The windows are distributed unevenly across the facade, and the building sits in a quiet residential street not far from the city center.
Adolf Loos designed this house in 1922 for Josef and Marie Rufer, and it was the first building where he fully applied his Raumplan concept, giving each room its own height and position within the structure. The house is seen as a turning point in Loos's career and in the broader story of modern architecture.
Casts of fragments from the Parthenon frieze are attached to the upper part of the exterior, which stands out against the plain white walls. This detail gives the building a layered quality that is easy to spot from the street.
The building is easy to see from the street, and a short walk through the neighborhood allows a good look at the facade. The interior is not generally open to the public, so it is worth checking in advance whether any guided visits are available.
Inside the house, a single central column conceals all the plumbing and service pipes, keeping the walls entirely free of technical installations. This allowed Loos to organize the rooms without the constraints that utilities usually place on interior layouts.
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