Re-sampling Ornament
Re-sampling Ornament
More than 100 years after Adolf Loos wrote “Ornament and Crime”, a manifesto that effectively relegated ornament in architecture to the peripheries of the discourse, “Re-sampling Ornament” takes a first step towards tracing its re-emergence.
For decades the language of architectural ornament has remained largely unspoken, but for a few memorable post-modern architectural experiments.
From Owen Jones "Grammar of Ornament"
Yet from Owen Jones 'Grammar of Ornament' to John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, Louis Sullivan and William Hogarth – and contemporaries such as Kent Bloomer, a rich vocabulary of opposing and often contradictory theories exists to be readapted, re-sampled, and once again applied at the heart of architectural practice.
Oliver Domeisen's research at his unit at London’s Architectural Association into the history and contemporary application of ornament in architecture has made it possible to embellish and enrich a mutual selection of new architectural projects with terminology drawn from many dictionaries; allowing for associations and groupings that can identify vital traces of ornament in current practice and at the same time rethink its boundaries, creating a new context within which contemporary projects can be redefined and rethought.
Whilst the ideological rigor of Modernism ¨rejected the supposed decadence and wastefulness associated with the mass production of ornament, it is undeniable that over the past 10 years new construction and manufacturing processes have made the return of ornament economically viable.
Evan Douglis Studio LLC, Helioskop. © Michael Moran
Crucial to a new reading of ornament in architecture is its enduring relationship to nature. For example, François Roche/R&Sie(n) embeds the trauma of nature’s gradual erosion into the design for a Swiss glacier museum in the alpine region of Evolène. The machinic transformation of locally sourced wood for the museum’s structure “corrupts” the twigs from the nearby forest into alienating spikes, creating ornament as a nightmare of potential loss.
Re-sampling Ornament reasserts the right to enjoy the intelligent conceptual play with beauty and to rediscover sensuality in current manifestations of ornament in architecture. .
Berthelier, Fichet, Tribouillet Architectes, Multimedia Library. © Philippe Ruault
According to the architectural historian Kent Bloomer, there are malleable and erotic 'Bio-Keys' that span cultures and histories, as though there were some deeply rooted genetic code of ornament. Ruskin's "Curves of Temperance and Intemperance" sought the geometry of virtue in ornament, one that William Hogarth traces with scientific exactitude in the curvature of bones and the lines of a woman's pelvis. Today, computer-aided design can bring forth organic forms in architecture as well as stretching artifice to its extremes.
Re-sampling Ornament reinstates ornament in contemporary architecture with an abundance of new conceptual and aesthetic possibilities. Ornament operates trans-historically and trans-culturally. It is constant dynamic movement and expansion. Ornament is not truth – it is mimesis, material transubstantiation, deception, artifice, pleasure and beauty that
render utility acceptable.
