Few have loathed architectural ornamentation as much as Alfred Loos. In fact, in his 1908 book Ornament and Crime, the Austrian architect suggested that anything other than the modern purism the Austrian architect espoused was a criminal act.
The book stands as an antithetical artifact in an exhibit called Ornament Is, one designed to keep decoration alive. Curated by Stephen Wierzbowski, FAIA, and Josh Mings, AIA, the exposition features the works of recorders (drawings, paintings, watercolors, photographs) as well as creators (including furniture, macquettes, reliefs, sculpture as well as digitally and AI produced objects). It is on the fourth floor of the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, with a special viewing on Thursday for AIA members. CAB 5—the Chicago Architecture Biennale–is a cosponsor. The show’s virtual component at www.ornamentis.org will continue after the close.
The show’s premise: “The world loves ornaments. We delight in them. We preserve them. We marvel at the skills it takes to create them. We immerse ourselves in the stories they tell and their hidden messages. So why are so few bothering to use such a fundamental element of architecture and design? Why are they generally ignored in contemporary architectural discourse?”
Loos declared: “I freed mankind from superfluous ornament.” Weirzbowski wants to return the favor: “Untrapping” modernism from the bondage of abstract minimalism.
Wierzbowski and Jordan Mozer, whose name is well known internationally for hospitality design, have been talking about architecture and ornament since grad school days 40 years ago at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
“Our grad school dean, Thomas H. Beeby, described Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings as 3d ornaments,” Says Mozer, “and the mullions of Mies van der Rohe’s North Lake Shore Drive buildings as conceptual ornaments. Some modernists didn’t like that. Frank Gehry calls his work walk-in sculptures. That makes (sculptor) Richard Serra mad.”
But Mozer feels this is a different time. “There’s a mass rejection of gleaming modernist buildings and very manicured interiors. Our office buildings are 50 per cent full. The pandemic was a huge catalyst. People felt cozy at home. But if we don’t have offices in buildings zoned for office, it will impact cultural institutions, restaurants. There’s a lot of resonance. “
So Mozer suggests the current climate is ripe for color and detail—elements that always have been part of his design vocabulary. While ornamentation still is a contentious topic in architectural fundamentalist circles, the exhibit is especially engaging because of the wide range of perspectives and some well-known contributors, such as architects Ken Schroeder, Dan Wheeler, Darcy Bonner.
An AI computer-generated print by William Kolano has an ethereal quality and a sense of have I seen this before? The concept is to challenge the idea of a building constructed of repetitive masonry or seamed metals and proposes a dimensional ornamental skin of lacework, one of the most treasured forms of hand-made ornamentation.
Artificial intelligence also informed a series of columns that artist Emily Handley proposed in a limited edition set of 20 prints. The idea was to explore where history, nature and tech intersect. Bill Turner’s guitars are constructed of found objects, with one also adding 3D printing.
Audri Phillips’ futuristic landscapes show the relationship between “human ornamentation” of the landscape such as telephone poles, cell towers, communication towers and their intersection with nature—flowers, the fractal nature of leaves, sometimes whirling, sometimes chaotic.
Some pieces demand a closer look. Tom Rossiter’s Hagia Sofia is a brilliant photo montage composed of a series of photos depicting the 6th century Istanbul building through different time periods.
For Catherine Wetzel, the notion of ornament is “a product of the process by which a work is created and the method by which it is conceived shifts with new technologies,” says Wetzel. “The presence of the hand and the notion of the body as a dimensional measure may or may not persist.”
The beauty of watercolor or the simplicity of pen and ink or charcoal drawings is alluring. Wierzbowski’s capture of a staircase detail at Samaritaine in Paris is a good example.
There’s a cast resin of an original Frank Lloyd Wright terra cotta panel from the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Ill., which is the best-preserved and most complete of his early houses. And a cast acrylic piece in the style of Sullivan by John Welwyn Clark.
The breadth of Mozer’s holistic designs is shown in furniture, lighting, sculpture, photos, watercolors, most from Jordan Moser the Hamburg Hotel.
Ironically, Wierszbowki says he and co-curator Josh Mings are totally at odds on the exhibit’s topic. Mings, principal at Aggregate Studio, contributed pieces that demonstrate material as ornament, like ribbed concrete. “Building science has increasingly flattened the exterior wall over the last 100 years,” Mings says. “Brick and stone became veneer, panelization became key, leaving no room for the ornament of the past. Enter a new ornament, the material, and manipulation of it. Natural characteristics of materials meet new technologies to create an alternative expression of visual texture and a new human scale.”
Michael Henning actually showed three studies, one, a circa 1879 design by Frederick Withers, that integrate ornament into the essence of the construction medium.
Even though Wierzbowski isn’t so impressed with some new technologies, like marble-imitating porcelain (“still faux” he says), he still has a wait-see approach to 3D-printed buildings. Perhaps it’s the lack of passion that bothers him.
“There was a 60 Minutes piece on 3D-printed buildings. They showed the process: Squeezing out of a monumental concrete toothpaste tube. Layer after layer after layer. Just that. No energetic form-making possible. Built-up walls. Drop a roof on it. Contemporary? Flat. More vernacular? Pitched? Mid-century modern? Low pitched. We’re at the start.”
With so much computer generation and AI, is there a fear that we’ll lose those hand-drawn renderings?
“I can assure you,” says Wierzbowski, “that hand drawing is alive and well.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” he says. “I’m very involved at Carnegie Mellon University—I don’t know about others. But the drawing is as much a part of the curricula as parametrics, artificial intelligence, and robotics.”
