I incline to your views because you write persuasively and with illuminating knowledge. But we must be careful not to give to free a rein to the ornamentally inclined. There is ornamentation and ornamentation. Also: ornamentation upon ornamentation (Help!). You give particularly beautiful examples, but I think ornamentation can sometimes be defined as fiddling about with forms that are beautiful already and should be left alone. The drive to ornament can look obsessive and even manic and perhaps some of the modernists architects' austerity was an over-reaction to the imperial ornamentation mania of the Victorians. See how the fussy mosaic panels the Victorian designer William Blake Richmond stuck up in the choir of St Paul's Cathedral compromise Christopher Wren's elegant, soaring design.
Why would ornamentation negate usefulness? I would take one beautifully ornamented building in Paris or Dresden over a thousand useful boxes. Give me all the ornamental architecture! 👏👏👏
To me it is interesting you mention Corbusier as a man of the machine age because I think about what makes beautiful machines beautiful (as opposed to buildings or paintings or other forms) and simplicity of form is at the top of the list. 1970s American "Broughams" are usually considered hideous, slathered in superfluous, dishonest ornaments. Cars that are widely considered timelessly beautiful, like the 1955 Chevrolet, Aston Martin DB5, Jaguar E-Type, 1960s Ferraris, the Fiat 130 Coupe, the Mercedes W124, even the original Volkswagen Golf, none of these have superfluous details, instead achieving beauty through elegance of proportion and, in the case of sedans, efficient, purposeful, and practical packaging. People often complain about how ugly modern cars are today, and they are more ornamented than they have been since--yes--the Brougham era. But even now, upmarket cars are not marked by adding ornamentation, but by taking it away. Cheap cars have lots of fussy little creases and moldings, lots of different textures of cheap plastic in the interior, etc. Expensive ones, even on the same platform, tend to be much more sober—compare Honda models with their Acura counterparts. And of course, Tesla took the car market by storm, not least of which because of their minimalist design, with even what could be thought of as *engineering* ornaments like the frameless glass being there to eliminate *visual* detail--in the case of the glass, it makes the greenhouse look simpler and cleaner. The same with electronics--Apple products of both the modern era and the 1980s are spare yet elegant in design. Would anyone have wanted woodgrain on a Macintosh II, that simple white box with some grooves and slats in it? No, it is perfect. Machines do not obey the same rules of beauty as other things humans make, and what makes a building beautiful makes a machine fussy and vulgar, and vice versa. That to me is fascinating. Why is this?
I incline to your views because you write persuasively and with illuminating knowledge. But we must be careful not to give to free a rein to the ornamentally inclined. There is ornamentation and ornamentation. Also: ornamentation upon ornamentation (Help!). You give particularly beautiful examples, but I think ornamentation can sometimes be defined as fiddling about with forms that are beautiful already and should be left alone. The drive to ornament can look obsessive and even manic and perhaps some of the modernists architects' austerity was an over-reaction to the imperial ornamentation mania of the Victorians. See how the fussy mosaic panels the Victorian designer William Blake Richmond stuck up in the choir of St Paul's Cathedral compromise Christopher Wren's elegant, soaring design.
Why would ornamentation negate usefulness? I would take one beautifully ornamented building in Paris or Dresden over a thousand useful boxes. Give me all the ornamental architecture! 👏👏👏
Preach
I've got one word for you son. Sealants
To me it is interesting you mention Corbusier as a man of the machine age because I think about what makes beautiful machines beautiful (as opposed to buildings or paintings or other forms) and simplicity of form is at the top of the list. 1970s American "Broughams" are usually considered hideous, slathered in superfluous, dishonest ornaments. Cars that are widely considered timelessly beautiful, like the 1955 Chevrolet, Aston Martin DB5, Jaguar E-Type, 1960s Ferraris, the Fiat 130 Coupe, the Mercedes W124, even the original Volkswagen Golf, none of these have superfluous details, instead achieving beauty through elegance of proportion and, in the case of sedans, efficient, purposeful, and practical packaging. People often complain about how ugly modern cars are today, and they are more ornamented than they have been since--yes--the Brougham era. But even now, upmarket cars are not marked by adding ornamentation, but by taking it away. Cheap cars have lots of fussy little creases and moldings, lots of different textures of cheap plastic in the interior, etc. Expensive ones, even on the same platform, tend to be much more sober—compare Honda models with their Acura counterparts. And of course, Tesla took the car market by storm, not least of which because of their minimalist design, with even what could be thought of as *engineering* ornaments like the frameless glass being there to eliminate *visual* detail--in the case of the glass, it makes the greenhouse look simpler and cleaner. The same with electronics--Apple products of both the modern era and the 1980s are spare yet elegant in design. Would anyone have wanted woodgrain on a Macintosh II, that simple white box with some grooves and slats in it? No, it is perfect. Machines do not obey the same rules of beauty as other things humans make, and what makes a building beautiful makes a machine fussy and vulgar, and vice versa. That to me is fascinating. Why is this?