Ornamentation And Architecture 2432j

ORNAMENTATION AND ARCHITECTURE

Johanna Rannula MAUR I

Course: Architecture and Critical Theory Tutor: Andres Kurg Spring 2013 EKA

INTRODUCTION This essay is on ornaments and ornamentation within the realm of architecture and design. However, I will be taking a detached stance as I will not be looking so much at the visual expression of ornamentation but rather the ideas, thoughts, theories and critiques behind and about it. It is quite clear from the start that I am dealing with an enormous topic, one that has been tackled in numerous books. Therefore it is inevitable that this short essay can only brush over the surface of what could be elaborated probably on at least a 1000 pages. Nevertheless, I will be addressing two key texts, proposals, some would say even manifestos, that are directly connected to the formation of the trends - Alfred Loos’ “Ornament and Crime”(1908) and Venturi’s et al “Learning from Las Vegas”(1972/1997). The former was the initiator for the modernist movement and the latter started a discussion which is now know as postmodernism in architecture. They are the markers of the two shifts. All in all, the following is yet another way to retell the story of the rise and fall of modernism with the exception that this time it is told through the lens, the perspective, of ornamentation. My aim is to map the transformation of attitudes about ornamentation during the 20th century and its influence on ideas on architecture. I do this to touch upon and give context to a specific fragment of the postmodernist discourse. Before I start, I want to clear out a few things, all quite different. First, while an ornament is an embellishment, an individual motif, ornamentation is a “sum of ornamental vocabulary from an epoch or a style” (Schmidt et al, 2006). I will be using synonyms to signify this concept, such as decoration, embellishment etc, while I am aware that some others would define each of these differently. Nevertheless, I think that in this case the difference is not of key importance. Second, while basing this essay on two key texts of the field there are others which are probably just as important. I think that Louis H. Sullivan deserves to be mentioned, especially his essay “Ornament in Architecture” from 1892. He asked questions which are what this essay is about: why do we use ornament? and why is it said to be noble? At the same time he was making a revolution in the design and use of ornamentation in architecture (Sullivan, 1892). Third, I came across a very interesting discussion recording featuring writer Glenn Adamson, artist Grayson Perry, architect Sam Jacob from FAT and Charles Jencks. The architectural theorists discuss ornamentation starting from the question about its use, its function. I believe that this question is vital in the topic of ornamentation but I regret of not having the space here to go further into the issue(ICA, 2011). To an extent, this essay will touch upon these question indirectly. Fourth, when one addresses ornamentation, the concepts of representation and symbolism come up inevitably. However, this essay will refer to this only, again, indirectly. Fifth, while at first it might seem that ornamentation only concerns with the architectural surface, it actually has as much to do with space. While it is clear that form determines the surface, the latter is vital to architecture because that is the platform architecture communicates with its audiences (and this is what was lacking in modernist architecture, argues Pell, 2010). With these issues out of the way, I shortly outline this essay. The journey of taste and culture, reflected in ornamentation, over the last one and a half centuries has been like a ride on a roller-coaster. It led a path of avant-gardes of the arts and ed through the period of Modernism - one, which has had most attention in the recent decades. But as this is a journey of change in ornamentation, representation and taste, Modernism by itself does not suffice. Thus, I will start with what preceded and finish with what followed this most influential trend of the 20th century, meanwhile trying to understand (and at the same time explain) what were the criticisms and discontents that led to another shift in the understanding and values of cultural taste in general and about ornamentation. After having outlined this journey, I will reflect on two points of my own interest and discuss the relevance of the topic nowadays.

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THE JOURNEY OF ORNAMENTATION: THE 19th CENTURY It is probably incorrect to begin this discussion from the fin-de-siècle era rather than from an earlier period, because that is almost as if I was overlooking or skipping thousands of years of history. But that is the case nevertheless due to the fact that I am not writing a book, nor willing to do that in the future. Ornament had become a status symbol in architecture and in other fields of cultural production. In the 2nd half of the 19th century the situation, however, started to change. With the Industrial Revolution, it was not only the elite, the aristocrats, that could afford to have ornamentation. On the one hand, the production went from handicraft to machine manufacturing which cheapened the ‘product’ and on the other hand, a significant proportion of the rest of the society moved up the wealth ladder making them able to purchase items and luxury that had be out of reach from all but the elite so far. The newly enriched middle classes, who had not had aristocratic education, unconsciously aped what was thought of as the taste of the rich. Owen Jones, an influential writer on the topic, stated in Grammar of Ornament (1856), that there were “vagaries of the vilest taste, ugliness and incongruity”. Both Owen and Gottfied Semper expressed their opinion that ornament and adornment are things that the mankind cannot do without, and the degree increases with the progress of civilization and yearning for pleasure (Collins, 1998). The issues is even more stressed in architecture because until 1880 there had been no breaking inventions in the way buildings were constructed which led specialists to be more concerned with the surface and therefore ornamentation. In addition, John Ruskin, a leading art critic in the 1800s, wrote that the highest nobility of building were not the ones which were well built but the ones which had been nobly painted and sculptured. Moreover, it was even said that all there was about architecture was ornamentation, otherwise there would be just buildings. However, many started to advocate for moderation in ornamentation, probably mostly because of the ‘bad taste’ that the newly rich were promoting. In addition, it was believed that ornamentation should have mainly been left to the more important facilities, places of ‘rest’. Where there was no rest, beauty nor decoration had room. This last thought was from Ruskin and in reference of a plan of decorating a railway station. Finally, it is a fact that ornamentation was used indiscriminately and it was lagging behind the new age mechanical techniques of fabrication leaving many from the higher classes feel that the practice was becoming obsolete (Collins, 1998). LOOS AND HIS EFFECT ON ORNAMENTATION I already mentioned the ambiguity there was during fin-de-siècle about the situation of ornament. However, the most famous and resonating came in the new century. Adolf Loos, an Austrian thinker and architect, wrote an article called “Ornament and Crime” around 1908 and 1910 based on his lectures of that time. This was a huge step towards the 20th century theme in architecture and design - Modernism. It was more than a century ago that Loos uttered what was on the minds of many but he did it more radically than anybody else. It was a diatribe against ornament which to a great extent became responsible for the abolition of it in architecture and the plainness of architectural surfaces that were created in the era after. It is evident that after this article, and the popularity of these ideas, intricate surface patterns which used to be common on 19th century buildings disappeared, just as in painting and sculpture detailing became less and less important (Collins, 1998). Loos sermonised on undecorated surfaces, angled edges and straight lines. He damned not only Art Nouveau, a style of excessive luxurious formal language, but also everything else decorative, and predicted a future which was free from embellishment, patterns and ornamentation (Schmidt et al, 2006). Canales and Herscher write that “at the turn of the century, Loos’s essay already foreshadowed the white abstraction of ‘less is more’ architecture and the 3

functionalist rigour of the International Style which would dominate the twentieth century” (2005, p.235). But why was Adolf Loos so radically against ornament? Drawing his inspiration from and following the tradition of Nietzsche, Darwin, Lombroso (criminal anthropology), and others, Loos paralleled the use of ornament with cultural degradation, or just a more primitive state of cultural development. For him, cultural progress went hand in hand with the renouncement of exuberant decorations. Accordingly, unornamented architecture and applied art which Loos advocated for were seen as a liberating tool for a more modern life. In addition, he believed that the abandonment of ornament distinguished the more advanced of the mankind from the individuals, nations, communities and races that lagged behind (Canales and Herscher, 2005). In other words, Loos “identifies cultural progress with an increasing renunciation of decoration” (Schmidt et al, 2006, p.14). The triad of taste, race and civilization was what allowed Loos to say such thing, and he was not the only one, it was rather a general belief. ”Ornament and Crime” was a contribution to and an outcome of the nineteenth century discussion of evolution. It expanded the discourse that Darwin started with the theory of evolution, and especially with the emergence of social Darwinism. According to Loos, only primitive cultures would cover their objects with lavish ornamentation. And as said before, the criticism was not only referring to the Papuans or other indigenous tribes, for example, but also the people within the advanced societies of the West – children, criminals and women, to name a few. This idea seems ridiculous now but a century ago there was a lot of scientific material published that validated these kinds of opinions. The primitives and the criminals alike decorated themselves with tattoos, another form of ornament, which, for Loos, proved their lag in the evolutionary process where the adult man of the civilized world had risen to the top of the hierarchy. The children had to repeat thousands of years of development of mankind in the beginning of their lives with the help of education to reach the most advanced level of human evolution constituted in the grown male citizen. This development, according to Adolf Loos, was “marked by the disappearance of ornament from objects of daily use” (Canales and Herscher, 2005, p.242). While Loos preached the exclusion of decoration from the applied arts, he welcomed it into the fine arts. He wrote: “The ornament in every-day objects is the beginning of art. The black Papuan covers all of his utensils with ornaments. The history of humanity shows how art seeks to liberate itself from its profanation, emancipating itself from every-day objects, from the industrial product.” Or in other words: “the urge to decorate one’s face and everything within reach is the origin of the fine arts” (p.249). But according to Loos, fine art was to be the only field where ornament was suitable addition in the new era of civilized world (Canales and Herscher, 2005). Loos’ sermon was successful in that his article was one of the key contributors to the development of the modernist thought in which ornamentation of the likes of 19th century did not have a place in the applied arts. I shortly outline what happened with architectural ornament from the beginning of the 20th century onwards while being aware that this analsys lacks the depth it deserves. Historicism, curved lines, floral ornamentation of the 19th century were replaced with a rational design that followed the form. The industrial and economic conditions of the time demanded a new approach that made architecture an utilitarian art. Abstraction and functionalism could be said to have been the key words in this movement. Architecture and buildings became from status symbols to supra-individual, anonymous qualities of technology. Buildings were rationalised through standardization, typification, modularization. Schmidt at al say that “simple and economic construction became the model for architects and designers” (2006). It is obvious that the kind of ornamentation that was known in the 19th century, and before, did not have a place any more in the new world, it had to transform. While some have proclaimed that ornamentation disappeared during Modernism, other say that the movement changed the style of ornamentation but did not eliminate it. The style is best described through the work of the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and others. But without spending too much time on this, I move on to see what did this trend bring about as a reaction. 4

LAS VEGAS STUDY: A TURN TO POSTMODERNISM Quite like the kind of discontent that Adolf Loos and this contemporaries had felt towards to situation in culture and more specifically about the styles and tastes of ornamentation, there were many who started to feel uneasy about the modernist tastes and trends. In the field of architecture, the discontent was put down in a book called “ Learning from Las Vegas” written by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott brown and Steven Izenour (1997). They based it on a university students’ workshop trip to the city and it was first made as a report of this research but they later named it a ‘treatise of symbolism in architecture’. The year was 1972. It was all about “pluralism and multiculturalism; symbolism and iconography; popular culture and everyday landscape; generic building and electronic communication are among the many ideas they championed” (Unknown, 2009). While the book was not meant as a anti-Modernist diatribe, it set in stone a postmodernist thought and the message that architecture should and could tell, similar to the purpose that ornamentation had before Adolf Loos. The book analyses Las Vegas as a phenomenon in architectural communication. The Las Vegas Strip is used as an example for architectural communication over space, achieved through signs and style. The study was, according to Venturi, the “victory of symbolism-space over forms-in-space”. An internet commentator summarises the thought as such (2009): “Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour feel that this allusion is lacking in present-day (late 70s) Modern architecture. They argue that spatial relationships are created through symbols rather than forms. Their theory is articulated through this exploration of the Vegas terrain, where architecture is seen as symbol in space rather than form in space.” One of the most interesting conclusions of the book can be summed up with the following: All architecture is either a Decorated Shed or a Duck. The former is to name the kind of architecture of the more common type, one which has a surface filled with appliqué ornamental symbols that are supposed to evoke emotional responses. Historical buildings of the Renaissance are a clear examples of Decorated Sheds. Adolf Loos was criticizing this kind of buildings. The other type, however, the Duck, is a building that has become the sign. The shape of it, not what is drawn on it, is the message. According to Venturi, modern architecture is all un-itted Ducks. For him, the hypocrisy lies in the fact that "...modern architecture always demonstrated what it was by setting itself against what it wasn't." (Unknown, 2009, Venturi et al, 1997). The book drew attention to the importance of representation and symbolism in architecture. It is still relevant for this purpose. It challenged orthodoxies and paradigms of what is politically and visually desirable and acceptable. The application of Venturi’s and Scott Brown’s work was the idea of “nonplan” which urged the planning of cities to drastically change, to loosen up and to encourage a plunge of heterogeneity. All in all, “Learning from Las Vegas” was a marker for postmodernist ideas in the world of architecture and more specifically in the appearance of the built structures which we often call ornamentation. A SHORT REFLECTION AND FINAL THOUGHTS So what can and should I make of this? I have two simple observations that I want to highlight and bring attention to in this essay and a little something about contemporary relevance of the issue. First, I want to once again emphasize that the ‘”lack of” ornament which Modernism preached was just another style, not the absence of it. As I have already mentioned, the of Adolf Loos was (one of ) the starting points for Modernist thinking concerning the use of ornamentation. While he argued for the dismissal of all embellishment in architecture, Loos understood ornamentation in a very specific way – the flowers, curls and geometry used to decorate the empty spaces on the surfaces of buildings. But as I have a little wider definition of the term which takes into the whole look, the appearance of the architecture, including the construction elements and whatever else is significant in the appearance of the building and therefore also to urban environment. Saying 5

that leads to the statement that Modernism did not banish ornamentation but just created another, one which did not use the tools of which Loos was talking about but ones which could be included in the extended definition - the structure of the buildings, the arrangements of elements like windows, doors etc. Saying that white is the absence of colour is as hypocritical. The fact that Modernist designers chose to use white is equal to the choice of using other colours. At least in my opinion. Secondly, I am convinced that buildings communicate through appearance and ornamentation is a tool for that. I have addressed this thought already before but it is worth another mention. It is clear that design is not just for beauty but almost always there is a idea behind each line and angle, perhaps consciously, perhaps not. It is the facade with its look that can tell the public about its function, also probably about the designer’s taste and the wealth of the owner, to name a few options. In this case it does not matter that much whether ornamentations are defined in narrow (floral decoration etc) or in a broad (floral decoration and the structural make-up of the building) way. Either way the statement holds - ornamentation is a tool with which the building ‘speaks’ to the world. Thirdly, the relevance of the topic in the contemporary situation is obvious – there is a need for a deep-rooted analysis for the built environment from the perspective of their symbolic values. A discussion on architecture and the urban structure has to involve questions about how do buildings communicate and what do they communicate. The preceding discussion brought forward some ideas how (e.g. ornamentation) and what (e.g. status symbol) buildings have represented, portrayed, communicated in the past. It is a task of ours to take this information and learn to interpret the contemporary architecture but also the general make-up of the urban canvas in a similar way. The question that should be asked are the following. (1) What is the language, the system of ornamentation that contemporary building and cities communicate with? Is it some kind of style that is applied to the surface (Decorated Sheds) or is it the form itself that is used to tell stories (Duck)? (2) What is the message that the buildings and cities around us are portraying nowadays? Is the message comparable to the messages that the building have expressed before such as status or function, or is the message something completely new? These questions are probably ageless and therefore relevant now and in the future. The answers can be more than telling about the making of the current cultural and why not even psychological status of the society, just to give an example. A future research could probably address the following question as well and, in my opinion, detract some quite interesting observations: What is the role of adverisement on building in the light of the discourse on ornamentation? How do they influence the position of architecture? Is adverisement the new ornamentation of our times? What is its relationship to the financial sphere, i.e. the economic dimension of the relationship between architecture and the ments on top of it? And so forth. Without further ado, I wrap this short discussion up by saying that ornamentation should not just be thought of as flowers and curls but it should signify the whole design layout and appearance of a building. This would help many to realize the importance and depth of the topic. Moreover, when ornamentation is connected to symbolism and what comes out of that, it is clear that ornamentation stands for a language that architecture communicates to the public.

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REFERENCES Canales, J, Herscher, A. (2005). Criminal skins: Tattoos and modern architecture in the work of Adolf Loos. Architectural History. 48 Collins, P. (1998). Changing ideals in modern architecture: 1750-1950. McGill-Queen's Press ICA (2011) What is the Use of Ornament in Contemporary Art and Architecture?. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14uaSxLong on 10.12.12 Jones, O. (1856) Grammar of Ornament. Retrieved from http://books.google.ee/books?id=S_CqHwAACAAJ&dq=Grammar+of+Ornament+(1856),+jones+owe n&hl=en&sa=X&ei=82bUUMe-CK374QSQ3YHQBQ&redir_esc=y from 10.12.12 Loos, A. (1908). Ornament and Crime. Retrieved from http://home.wanadoo.nl/woutervandenbrand/portfolio/Architecture,%20Ornament%20and%20Cri me.pdf on 10.12.12 Pell, B. (2010) The Articulate Surface: Ornament and Technology in Contemporary Architecture. Basel: Birkhä Schmidt, P., Tietenberg, A.,Wollheim, R., (2005) Patterns in design, art and architecture. Basel: Birkhä Sullivan, L. (1892) Ornament in architecture. Retrieved from http://books.google.ee/books?id=Vn_M6j7KejAC&dq=ornament+and+architecture&source=gbs_nav links_s on 10.12.12 Unknown (2009) Learning from Las Vegas - Connecting with symbolism in architecture. Retrieved from http://bundleboy.hubpages.com/hub/Learning-from-Las-Vegas# on 10.12.12 Venturi, R., Scott Brown, D., Izenour, S. (1997). Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT Press

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