Architectural Ornament

Definition

Architectural ornament refers to decorative elements applied to or integrated into buildings that serve symbolic, communicative, or aesthetic functions beyond structural necessity. In Learning from Las Vegas (1977), Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour rehabilitate ornament against Modernism's rejection of it, distinguishing between ornament as applied decoration (signs, facades) and ornament as structural articulation (Modernism's "unadmitted decoration").

Key Thinkers

• venturi-robert — Argues for ornament as legitimate symbolic communication
• scott-brown-denise — Analyzed ornament in commercial architecture
• adorno-theodor-w — Critical theory on ornament (negative view)
• loos-adolf — "Ornament and Crime" (Modernist rejection)

Related Concepts

• decorated-shed — Building type defined by applied ornament
• symbolism — Ornament as symbolic system
• denotative-symbolism — Explicit ornament (signs, letters)
• connotative-symbolism — Implicit ornament (form, material)
• the-duck — Ornament fused with form

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• venturi-1977-learning-from-las-vegas
• The Classical Language of Architecture — the classical system of ornament: standardized carvings matched to standard profiles ("the ovolo is enriched with egg-and-dart, the cyma reversa with water-leaf..."); rustication raised by Giulio Romano "to a pitch of expressiveness which no one else had dreamed of"; and the eighteenth-century rationalist attack on the whole apparatus — Cordemoy's call to abolish "architecture in relief" as the ancestor of modernist anti-ornament.

Open Questions

• How does digital fabrication change the economics and aesthetics of ornament?
• What is the relationship between ornament and cultural identity?
• Can ornament be politically progressive?