Ornamental Operations

Elective Leader: Brent Allpress

Wednesday 9.30-12.30 pm

Rm 100.04.004

“Cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles of everyday use.” – Adolf Loos

“The new decoration is orthopaedic”. – Le Corbusier

“Featurism is not simply a decorative technique, it starts in concepts and extends upwards through the parts to the numerous trimmings. It may be defined as the subordination of the essential whole and the accentuation of selected separate features.” – Robin Boyd

“The anguish of the beautiful that shines through the fragility of ornament is atopian: more than could any nudity.” –

Franco Rella

Ornament haunts architectural discourse and practice. Theories of the ornamental in the canon cross and interrupt the central texts of the architectural tradition, both constructing and dividing them with unresolved uncertainties. Modernist theory negated the supplementary role of applied ornament. Modernist practices however involved radical ornamental operations employing abstract spatial surfaces as semi-autonomous systems. The representational role of ornament in contemporary architecture remains complex and contested.

This elective provides a framework for investigating the complexities of the legacy of the Modernist prescription against the ornamental. It provides an opportunity to reconsider and revise postmodern accounts of the role of ornament. Non-standard digital technologies that revise modernist economies of standardization shift the debate on the role of figuration beyond representation and communication towards performative architectural actions.

Critical readings will be made of key architectural texts on ornament. Modernist, postmodernist and contemporary precedent projects will be analysed involving questions of ornament The Elective will examine a thematic series of ornamental operations and actions including framing, masquerade, grotesquery, interlacing, prosthesis, negation, marginalia, backgrounding and mediation.

The late-Classical theorist Boethius argued the role of ornament was to mediate transitions in state from conditions of tension to resolution to tension in iterative cycles. Related counter-compositional strategies will be explored.

This is a design project and practices focused History and Theory Elective that integrates theoretical reading and critical discursive writing with representational analysis and speculative project based design studies.

This Elective provides a vehicle for research into significant architectural precedent and practices, provoking a critical and creative response that focuses on qualitative and performative design operations and outcomes. An iterative discursive and project-based mode of working is encouraged