Is Democratic Ornament Possible

book, Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity, deals with the comeback, over some thirty years, of ornament in architecture, after the modernist parenthesis which excluded it. A comeback, because ornament has always been present in European architecture-Antoine Picon's book takes its history back to the Renaissance, but we should go much further back than that: to the Middle Ages of Suger and Bernard de Clairvaux, or to the Antiquity of Vitruvius. 1 A comeback nevertheless marked by a deep-seated difference-and not just linked with the fact that the forms and ornamental motifs of contemporary architecture are novel, with regard to those of the architecture of past centuries. What is missing, according to Antoine Picon, is the political dimension of ornament in architecture. We can find confirmation of as much by examining theoretical writings on contemporary architecture. The famous book by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo, The Function of Ornament (2006), presents an ornamental typology of famous 20 th and 21 st century buildings, from Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott Department Store (1904) to Norman Foster's 30 St. Mary Axe ( A different history of modern and contemporary architecture is thus mapped out from the ornamental viewpoint: the authors note that pre-1900 edifices involve Form and Structure more, while Screen and Surface remain the main forms of architectural ornament after that date. But not a word is said about the political dimension of these buildings. 2 Great contemporary architectural projects, and the edifices of famous architects, skip the expression of the shared values which cement democracies. When, on the other hand, architects focus on the political aspect of their work, ornament disappears from their Is Democratic Ornament Possible

Democracy · Political science · Politics · Architecture, Modernity, and Design · Law