The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture: Is It a Substantive or Surface Issue?

https://doi.org/10.46610/JoRAAS.2024.v09i02.001

Abstract

This article deals with the ambiguity of ornament in architecture, the historical tensions that have
characterized its use, and the factors that have led to its return today. In an architectural
panorama marked today by the excessive use of parametric and kinetic patterns, many architects,
historians and theorists are trying to find a theoretical basis justifying a tendency to an obsession
with the patterns. The systematic link between what today adorns the envelopes of parametric
architecture projects is made without reference to this history full of tensions. The Grasshopper
and Dynamo plug-ins operate excessively in a total break with the thinking of William Morris,
John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, Alois Riegl or Alberti. Modernist architecture has made a break
that has generated a collective amnesia about the essence and purpose of certain architectural
practices, particularly those relating to ornament. The reflection, therefore, engages in a
genealogical investigation to trace the intimate relationships that have linked ornament to
architecture. It reveals how these positions of rejection and admission have been motivated more
by the technical and technological implications and the capitalist desires that carry them than by
artistic impulses.