LECTURE 03

ARTICLE READING

What is the role of ornament in architecture today? Is ornament (i.e aesthetic expression) predominantly a technological, cultural, economic, environmental, or artistic task; some combination of these; or something else? In other words, if a fourth text were added to this topic what would the argument be?

Ornaments and architecture has had a series of transitions in terms of its relations. There were lots of different arguments that were risen by lots of different influential figures in the field of architecture and design. More notably, Adolf Loos himself, who made a strong statement saying, “ornament is crime”.

Along the journey in the ever-evolving theories on architecture design, the so-called ornaments, have been floating right on the surface between necessity and pointless. In certain period of time, ornaments are adopted excessively, dwelled in the previous time of architecture, architects in that time believe buildings are incomplete without heavy coating of ornamentation elements over the whole, inside and out, vernacular ornaments or imitative ornaments. Then came the time where, a revolution when so called ornaments, are to be minimized to as little to none in architecture design, where you have four blank walls, covered in the same on the outside as the interior. But as time moves on, I believe the revolution of ornamentation in architecture does as well.

Ornamentation in contemporary architecture are different, not in a way that it is totally another thing from the past, but in a way that it has revolutionized. Today ornamentation has slowing crawled back into the norms of architecture design, but in a different form. Technological, cultural, economic, environmental or even artistic task, are all debatable in the role of ornamentation in contemporary architecture.

I believe that ornaments in architecture, certainly has different kind of approach to architecture now as compared to the passed, and this is mostly due to the arguments in the past where ornamentation are strongly stuck to the statement as pointless addition. Thus architects, tends to bring a twist to approach ornamentation, bringing a purpose function to it.

A very outstanding addition of ornamentation functionality, I believe is the idea of green architecture. As seen in contemporary green architecture, plantation and greeneries are used in all kinds of architecture which includes a range of buildings from villa houses to condominium. The ornamentation of plantation came to a function of not only as a visual pleasing factor but also creates a green atmosphere, addition to the “greening” of the environment. In my opinion this addition of greeneries is indeed an ornamentation, but it does come to sense in terms of its idea of tackling global warming. Thus, ornamentation here are seen used as a role of environmental task.

But of course, there are others who used ornamentation as a sensation factor, to somehow attract the eyes of the viewers, architectures have never fail to stop attracting others, neither in the past nor present, one way or another. Ornamentations are definitely one of them. Contemporary architectures have slowly but surely started to adopt ornaments back into the design. In fact, some contemporary architectures are even classified as “building as ornaments”. Where the building itself, is an ornamentation, as a purpose to either showcase the technological advancement, or skills of engineering.

In conclusion, I do felt that ornamentation have always been ever-present in certain ways, no matter how small it is, I believe ornamentation in architecture have never been set apart in any ways. I believe the arguments now, is not about ornaments or not, but a way of balancing ornamentation and a functional simplicity of architecture. How should we balance the use of necessary ornamentation, and not to abuse it in design for pointless motives?