Ornament and Crime

I really like how Adolf Loos compared 'ornament' to tattoos that applied to human bodies and murals on cave walls or streets.  In the past, these ornaments represent art, but nowadays you'll get caught if you put them up publicly.  Mr. Loos pointed out various examples of how they were crime and that educated people will know it is not pleasurable to have them.  He stated that by reducing the excessive decoration, we saved a great deal of time and labor that wasted unnecessarily, which I found quite true.  I have seen pictures of rococo-style buildings with fully decorated interior and they looked kind of pointless to me.  I know it was to show the power and wealth that the owner possess, how they can hire artists to draw very complicate arts for them, but the work itself is really time-consuming and the effort wasted does not really paid off for what was done.

Amusingly, Tom Wolfe mentioned in his “From Bauhaus to Our House” like it is a shame that architecture nowadays (around 19^th-20^th century according to the book and the date that he wrote it) turned into a simple repetitive cube box.  It seemed like he was not quite happy with the ‘less ornament’ way that we were developing into.

Personally I would not be as harsh as to say that ornament is a crime that needs to be punished.  I think with proper amount of it, it makes the work looks complete and lively.  In “Kissing Architecture”, it was stated that architecture failed in conveying stories it hold, and a “kiss”, a temporary connection, a phenomenon, with another media makes it more eventful.  I think with appropriate “ornament” to the architecture, stories untold can, too, be unveiled.

Miller, Bernie, and Melony Ward. Crime and Ornament: The Arts and Popular Culture in the Shadow of Adolf Loos. Toronto, ON: YYZ, 2002. Print.

From Bauhaus to Our House

While I’m reading this book by Tom Wolfe, it tickles me several times that Mr. Wolfe somehow tried to be overly critical on architecture.  I agree with him on a few topics, though, like the one he said about how we all live in a repetitive ‘glass boxes’.  But even some of those ‘glass boxes’ have its meaning, and with that only one topic, he dragged it all the way to how Napoleon turned Paris into Rome, and it really make my head feels dizzy.  Although I admire how, not being an architect, he knows quite a lot of architectural background, I can’t help feeling that his understanding toward it was quite right.  He wrote sarcastically about Josef Albers’ teaching of the fundamental of materiality and snickered at the unknowing students: “starting from zero”.  Moreover, the words he used to describe lots of famous architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright or Louis Kahn, made them looked like a joker.

Mr. Wolfe talked about modern architecture as if it is a bad thing, but I found it very attractive.  Personally I like minimalism, because it leave spaces for abstraction, and it is up to each person to imagine what it can be.  However, I do agree that sometimes designers’ imagination are too restricted by those ‘glass box’ they see everyday and that make a lot buildings, especially in Thailand, look boring. 

Also, I understand the point that Mr. Wolfe stated that during that period of time (after World War I), there were lots of art and architectural movements, styles, -isms, or whatever we called it.  Architect maestros that taught in schools introduced these movements and so it became a ‘law’ that students must follow.  It took away students’ freedom to have their own design.

Anyways, “From Bauhaus to Our House” is an enjoyable book in some parts, although I would prefer to have it more straight to the points, and it does provide significant amount of architectural history.

Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981. Print.