New programmatic principles originated in France, where, under the name "purism", an artistic and later architectural movement arose, which in the early 1920s spread throughout Europe. The initial thesis of purism was formulated by Le Corbusier and the artist A. Ozanfant in 1918 in a work entitled “After Cubism” and later in the jointly published magazine Esprit Nouveau (1920-1925), which was accompanied by the slogan “The new spirit is the spirit of construction and synthesis guided by a clear idea. " Purism itself, however, meant, first of all, the reduction of architectural form to an elementary system of cubes, prisms, cylinders, cones and balls. Purism then often subordinated the system of these elementary geometric bodies to the principles of classical composition. He returned to Cezanne's idea that everything in nature and in human activity is based on original geometric forms. Purism relied on the idea that in architecture and in art what is needed is not deformation, but formation through selection and improvement. This led to the principle of economy of form and to the theory of the standard, which was one of the foundations of the purist aesthetics of mass production and mass consumption.
Purism, understood not only as a simplification of form, but as a movement associated with practical problems and found support in new constructive systems, opened the way to rationalism in the early 1920s. A. Loos contributed to the definition of the essence of purism even before the First World War. In critical articles, projects and buildings, he rejected embellishment in architecture and applied arts that had become an end in itself. However, the swap of the most significant projects he carried out only in the 20s - the villa
Tristan Tzara in Montmartre in Paris (1926) and the Villa Muller in Prague.
Stylizing the appearance of both buildings under a simple prism, in the interiors A. Loos, changing the surface and height of individual rooms, the degree of their illumination and color saturation, achieved the maximum contrast of the intense composition. Loos was the first in modern architecture to consistently implement the principle of terraced solutions in the project of the Babylon Hotel and residential buildings for Vienna. He considered ancient architecture to be the highest level of unity of purpose and beauty. He proceeded from this position when creating the project of the building "Chicago Tribgon" (1923), the appearance of which is a symbolic reminder of the forms of the Doric column73.
A group of Czech architects were also inclined towards purism. I. Khokhol with his projects of a dwelling house and a factory (1914-1915) outstripped the policy statement of purism. B. Foerstein, who had worked for A. Perre for a long time and was a direct bearer of the influences of modern French architecture in Czechoslovakia, also made original proposals; they also include I. E. Cole, the so-called purist four - K. Gonzik, J. Fragner, E. Lingart and V. Obrtl, whose ideas determined the nature of the association of architects "Devetsil", which arose in 1920.
Among the structures in the spirit of purism in Czechoslovakia, the crematorium in Nymburk (1921, authors B. Foerstein, B. Slama) and the Institute of Pathology in Prague (1920, author J. Spalek) should be noted. J. Gocar also adjoined purism, according to whose projects the schools built in Hradec Kralove became a step for Czech architecture in the transition from decorativeism to functional and simple architecture. The aspirations for purist simplicity in the early 1920s merged with the demands of poetic beauty, which laid the foundations of purely Czech artistic and literary poetism, theorist of which was K. Teige.