Lively, snapshot-like vignettes form an intimate, literary portrait of the infamously eccentric and influential modern architect Adolf Loos. Adolf Loos, the Czechoslovak-Viennese theorist and architect, is widely thought to be 20th-century architecture's most controversial figure. His scathing jeremiads on hypocrisy and ornament have generated their own torrent of interpretations, only to prove the enduring fecundity of his ideas. Claire wrote [Adolf Loos Privat] — first published in 1936 — to raise money for the tombstone Loos designed for himself. The book is so very alive with his presence, however, that surely it was a means to keep him close to her. [?] In razor-sharp anecdotes, some a paragraph, some several pages, Claire writes in the present tense. The result is altogether Loosian: timeless, with as little ornament, but as much empathy, as any protégé could deliver. Here, theory in the flesh walks in.
—Barbara Lamprecht, coauthor of Neutra, Complete Works, book review for the Society of Architectural Historians