Richard Hirsch’s Apartment
When speaking of this completed work, it must be mentioned that Loos’ first renovated apartment in Pilsen can be found in this Neo-Renaissance home of William and Marta Hirsch. It was designed in 1907 to be very luxurious, occupying the entire first floor. Twenty years later, Loos expanded the apartment even more, adding a small courtyard veranda and designing a bachelor’s apartment for the son, Richard Hirsch, on the second floor.
Richard’s apartment was designed for a bachelor, meaning it included only a lounge, bedroom, and sanitary facilities; in this case, a kitchen wasn’t needed.
The Hirschs managed to successfully escape the Nazis by fleeing to Argentina and later settling in Australia. Immediately after the war, the home served as the headquarters for an American institution, where talks for the “Thank You America” monument contest to honour the American army took place, amongst other things. In the 50s, the precious apartment designed by Loos for the Hirsch parents served as an after-school facility. In the 60s, the interior was removed and destroyed, with only a few fragments surviving, which then gradually disappeared over time. In the 90s, the home served as accommodation facilities for the University of West Bohemia. Today it’s used as an apartment block, owned by the City of Pilsen.
In 2012, the Pilsen City Hall Heritage Department managed to uncover Richard’s near-complete bedroom from 1927, with its characteristic built-in wardrobes. Here Loos used a combination of green-painted wardrobe frames with Orient-themed wallpaper on the wardrobe door. Thus, experts once again became aware of this completed work, originally believed to be lost. In 2015, the city had the original, surviving furniture completely restored. In the 1980s, the furnishings from Richard’s adjoined lounge were taken away by private collector Vladimír Lekeš, who had them restored after the revolution and installed in a new location in Prague as part of a private gallery.
In 2015, the empty space of Richard Hirsch’s apartment in Pilsen was filled with an installation of cardboard models of the furniture created by students of the Internationalen Masters für Interieur Architecture Design (IMIAD) programme of the Stuttgart University of Technology under the guidance of Prof. Wolfgang Grillitsch. The exhibition Wish You Were Here reflected on the differences between the lady’s and gentleman’s concepts of living.
Currently, the apartment is open to the public only a few times a year together with Hugo Semler’s home, and it’s waiting for the next renovation phase, which will include fitting the missing parts of the bedroom and adjoining lounge furniture.
Interestingly, two rare portraits of William and Marta Hirsch survive today, originally painted at Loos’ request by world-renowned painter Oskar Kokoschka. The paintings are separately part of gallery collections in Berlin and New York.
Every piece of furniture, every thing, every object tells stories, the history of the family. An apartment is never finished: it evolves with us, and us in it. Therefore, a young man is rich if he has sense in his head and a good suit in his wardrobe.