Week 7 Discussion | Ornament and Crime

Discussing Adolf Loos' famous 'Ornament and Crime'; questioning the relevance of Loos' points today, and the state in which we treat Ornament.

Proposed Questions:

"a) What is the role of ornament in architecture today?

b) Are there certain types of structures/buildings that benefit/deserve/need it more than others?

c) Consider the role of symbolism, semiotics, and ornamentation in your own studio designs: (how) will you employ these ideas?

My personal response

"A) My opinions on ornament today aligns quite closely to that previously mentioned in this discussion; that ornament today has been blurred with functional and contextual concerns.

As I continued to read 'Ornament and Crime', Loos repeatedly likened ornament in architecture to child's play; and inevitably, to degeneracy. Ornament is likened to a baby committing murder vs an adult committing murder. Babies (in their elementary understanding of the world) are not deemed criminals; it is dismissible for them to decorate their boxes. When an adult (fully enlightened and conscious of the world) murders, they are a criminal or a degenerate. In presenting this analogy, Loos denounces Ornament into a facile impurity in architecture; something to serve only those less 'enlightened'. Apparently, "we have outgrown ornament".

I disagree with Loos' polemic against Ornament. We have not outgrown ornament, rather doing so would regress the human condition. If we speculate an architecture based exclusively around Structure and Function, the New Engineering Building and the ASB Building would be reduced to two ever-so-slightly different glass boxes with louvres. No matter how good or bad they look or function, I will always prefer a city littered with these efforts vs a set of formulae repeated across the city.

Must greater architecture always be one that facilitates all?

The effort to make unique; the effort to justify this uniqueness; Ornament has always served such purposes. Only today, we are more articulate on why we make these 'unique' gestures, thus resulting in ornament's blurring with function.

B) Similar to Maddie, I do not believe there is a specific building that benefits from ornament over another. Rather, ornament is implemented depending on the functional, contextual, and environmental context of the building, in addition to the stylistic preferences of the architect/client.

The situational nature of ornament makes its value in one building over another quite intangible. If Merriam-Webster's definition of 'Ornament' is something to work with, it is - broadly speaking - "a useful accessory". The word 'useful' in itself varies greatly between each person. While Loos saw the greatest architecture to be stripped of non-functional details; separating ornament from architecture and classifying it with the arts, others did not see it that way, as was the case with the Looshaus controversy. Inversely, the sculptural exterior of Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao elevated 'unnecessary' ornament into a spectacle for the public; establishing the Bilbao effect. In this case, Ornament became a truly "useful accessory" for the public. Of course, some see Gehry's ornament as trash on the side of the road (*cough* The Simpsons *cough*). But in the end, one's preferences on what a "useful accessory" is subjective.

C) I see the role of ornamentation in our design as a set of metaphorical gestures. Throughout the design process, my group and I use 'ornamental' elements to supplement the themes of our brief, and the large architectural gestures they translate into. Because we are dealing with digital media in the learning/working environment, pixelisation became a motif that has gone through several iterations during our process. In our early planar design, it became a plane component that distorted anything seen through it; something that would have been implemented sparingly into the "Planescape". It was, however, not to the taste of my colleagues, thus it was reduced to a 'semi-transparent' facade; used to supplement the role of anonymity in creating a healthy collaborative space. After scrapping our original scheme, the pixel language became a more functional gesture. Serving as acoustic panels in the study pods, the mosaic 'pixels' improve the acoustic performance of our study pod, whilst retaining the motif's relevance to entering a 'despatialising digital space'."

Personal Thoughts while Reading 'Ornament and Crime'