The best architectural ornamentation?

[CNB30]

Actually I know quite a bit, thank you for asking. I know about all of the modernists (Louis Sullivan, Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der rohe) and how they thought a building should be striped of all "useless" things. although they had some great ideas and revolutionized architecture, I dislike the idea of removing the ornament and visual appeal away from a building. I believe form is a function in a way, and that all permanent structures should also add to the harmony of the planet.
.I appreciate modernism, but I don't want to wage a war on form, function, or ornament, but I dislike the Idea of scrapping things like ornament. Actually, one of the reasons I like buildings from about the early 20th century (such as art deco) combined both function and form very well, and thankfully, architects appear to be balancing the two (function and form) much better than in the recent past.

[Paper Ninja]

Alwyn Court

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulmats...n/photostream/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulmats...n/photostream/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindus/4891067087/

[alexandru.mircea]

Originally Posted by Sandstein

Baroque, what else?
...................

That's Nordic baroque, right? German or Austrian, I would suppose. It's interesting for me, I absolutely adore the original baroque, which is the 17th century Italian Roman baroque (Bernini, Borromini, Pietro da Cortona etc), which is clever and dry. At the same time, I kinda hate Nordic baroque, which I find excessively decorated, for decoration's sake. Some such stuff makes me puke.

[dexter2]

It's rather matter of a peroid in architecture. Baroque evolved from bright, but still pretty steady renaissance into very expressive, wavy and (for me) a little bit kitchy rococo.
And that Is generally what you see in Sandestein's post.


By the way, Its' the first time I hear about Nordic Baroque... And why It supposed to be in Austria or Germany if It's Nordic?

[CF221]

Originally Posted by Paper Ninja

Alwyn Court

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulmats...n/photostream/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulmats...n/photostream/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindus/4891067087/

MARVELOUS.

really appreciate this post.

[Sandstein]

Originally Posted by alexandru.mircea

That's Nordic baroque, right? German or Austrian, I would suppose.

Well, that's not absolutely correct. I've posted a little selection of South German, Portuguese and Spanish Baroque churches.

Originally Posted by alexandru.mircea

It's interesting for me, I absolutely adore the original baroque, which is the 17th century Italian Roman baroque (Bernini, Borromini, Pietro da Cortona etc), which is clever and dry.

Italian Baroque architecture can certainly be very lavish and "excessively decorated", too.

[Caravaggio]

The Baroque style can run the gamut from excessive decoration where no surface is left bare to the more restrained and simple. The baroque style in France is far less elaborate than that found in southern Germany or parts of Italy.

[White House]

An impressive gothic structure: The Milan Cathedral

[ThatOneGuy]

Gothic is my favourite architectural detailing, though I like buildings without ornamentation more.
The Duomo Cathedral, in my opinion, is the epitome of such architecture, since I never found Art Deco as appealing, Art-nouveau was bleh... and whatever that style was that Gaudi built was just...gaudy...*ba dum tss*

Unfortunately, pressure from the architecture Taliban led to some really awful examples of postmodernism being built. If a building wants to revamp old styles, they should stick to one style only, and not blend them like the postmodernist buildings do. Either modernism done right, or classical done right. A lucky few make it out nicely, like Pelli's earlier work.

[alexandru.mircea]

Originally Posted by dexter2

It's rather matter of a peroid in architecture. Baroque evolved from bright, but still pretty steady renaissance into very expressive, wavy and (for me) a little bit kitchy rococo.
And that Is generally what you see in Sandestein's post.

I would rather disagree, for example the Baroque of Bernini, Borromini and Pietro da Cortona never evolved into highly decorated stuff like what we're seeing here, Roman baroque always stayed more dry and less decorated. I think that what we see here is rather the own version of Baroque of other artistic schools with different traditions and creative types. For example, if for Southern Germany you're familiar with their Gothic sculpted wooden altars, then their version of Baroque is not going to surprise you.

Originally Posted by dexter2

By the way, Its' the first time I hear about Nordic Baroque... And why It supposed to be in Austria or Germany if It's Nordic?

There isn't a Nordic Baroque school per se, it's just that Austria and Germany (which had their schools of Baroque) were Nordic countries. Up to the modern era, anything North of the Alps was considered "Nordic".

Originally Posted by Sandstein

Well, that's not absolutely correct. I've posted a little selection of South German, Portuguese and Spanish Baroque churches

Thanks for that, I'm not at all familiar with Spanish and Portuguese Baroque (with the exception of Spanish Baroque painting). Are they worth investigating?

Originally Posted by Sandstein

Italian Baroque architecture can certainly be very lavish and "excessively decorated", too.

Not the Roman Baroque I was talking about, no. There were other artistic schools in Italy that had a different take on baroque (and on a different timeline too), like those in Palermo and Turin. But they were different schools, with different characteristics and different backgrounds.

[Jos68eph]

The crime is the theft of ornament and character.

[Suburbanist]

I was hearing an interesting argument about how ornaments are obsolete at this day and age. They are like ultra-realistic renascence painting. Realistic landscape or portrait painting had its time and place when there were no other reliable forms to register images. Then, extremely impressive works by great masters of painting was meaningful and had a function.

After the advent of photography, realistic painting became obsolete, which in turn ushered in a number of changes and new styles in painting, once it was free from its reference of realism.

Likewise, in an era when people had few if any visual stimuli available to them, ornaments were a form or art that enriched the human experience. Thus, buildings and even clothes were had a lot of details and a visual overload of ornaments if their owners were rich enough to afford them.

Now that he have TV, computers, smartphones, cinema and all sorts of visual stimuli anytime we want, ornaments in buildings became moot. Thus, movements like modernism and even expressionism advanced architecture by stripping buildings from their obligation to be one of the few sources of detailed complex imagery people could face in a given day. Free of these obligations, architecture could then resort to use its monumentality and ability to dwarf human-scaled space projections and human-scaled visual sights to become much more free, unattached and creative on its larger scale, not on (now) irrelevant complex stone details on a spike.

By undergoing that process, architecture become a much more powerful form of art that can deal with scales previously unknown to men. Thus, it can impress men by playing tricks with their biological references of size, proportion and what else that come from thousands of years living in shacks and caves. Thus, architecture becomes more powerful.

In this context, ornaments became kitsch, appendixes that can be discarded and even removed from older buildings in certain cases, if they are not masterpieces, like an extremely talented realistic painter whose obsession was only to reproduce reality on a 2D canvas would be deemed "moot", since a cheap point-and-shoot camera does a much better job to attain that functional goal. It is moot to expect ornaments to play any function on the human experience related to buildings, because there are much better resources to attain that without putting a lame fixed detail in a façade.

[ThatOneGuy]

Good theory, never thought of that.

[Sandstein]

Originally Posted by alexandru.mircea

Thanks for that, I'm not at all familiar with Spanish and Portuguese Baroque (with the exception of Spanish Baroque painting). Are they worth investigating?

Of course!

Originally Posted by Jos68eph

The crime is the theft of ornament and character.

That's mostly true.

[Chimer]

Originally Posted by Suburbanist

By undergoing that process, architecture become a much more powerful form of art that can deal with scales previously unknown to men. Thus, it can impress men by playing tricks with their biological references of size, proportion and what else that come from thousands of years living in shacks and caves. Thus, architecture becomes more powerful.

In this context, ornaments became kitsch, appendixes that can be discarded and even removed from older buildings in certain cases, if they are not masterpieces, like an extremely talented realistic painter whose obsession was only to reproduce reality on a 2D canvas would be deemed "moot", since a cheap point-and-shoot camera does a much better job to attain that functional goal. It is moot to expect ornaments to play any function on the human experience related to buildings, because there are much better resources to attain that without putting a lame fixed detail in a façade.

Well, it all was totally right for a while - since 1920's to... let's say early 2000... But now we can see, that play with scale and forms only give limited opportunities. Build simple and bland huge glass cube? Well, it was fresh and magnificent first time. Not so perfect another dozen of times. But when we have full city of such cubes and boxes it is very boring. Look on Tokyo and you'll see what i mean.

Then architects started using weird form and lines, cracked and broken, making people feel disturbed and uneasy. But it will help not for long. It was interesting only while it was fresh idea, now it's coming to the end too.
Now it is time to return to ornaments on a new level, to make our buildings not so similar, not so boring, with mood and character, isn't it?

Sorry for my english, wish i could explain better my feelings about it...

[Suburbanist]

It's better to have buildings that look similar but are impressive than have a plethora of fake ornaments or "small scaled" buildings (such as an enormous block, structururally, whose façade is broken down as if it were 10 different buildings).

Architecture should be imposing on overwhelming, not be in some "dialogue" wiith people using/passing/seeing buildings.

[Hcrayg]

This is what I think.... Very simple

[ThatOneGuy]

I actually love Tokyo's skyline. No details make it look very mature and modern. No bull, just business.

[Chimer]

Originally Posted by ThatOneGuy

I actually love Tokyo's skyline. No details make it look very mature and modern. No bull, just business.

I agree about skyline part of Tokyo. Skyline, air view - this all really look impressive, especially by night. But if you walk down the street there is absolutely nothing to stop your eye there. All buildings are quite similar and almost no one of them have really unique look, which couldn’t be found anywhere else from Cape Town to Oslo, except some very few old buildings.

I mean, the city in the whole *have* the unique look, but not the separate buildings in it.

Now the question is… Do we build cities for the great view from long distance, impressive night wallpaper, or we build it for people who live there every day and for those, who should come here looking for something interesting to view? Of course, it's a matter of taste, but for me it's look not mature and modern, but very boring and heartlless.

And “just business” – is it really good? Build something just to make money – what does it have with art? It can’t be count as architecture at all.

[CNB30]

Why did this thread have to go from people posting a bunch of beautiful buildings, to a bunch of tasteless anti-ornament freaks.

Anyway, back to the good stuff that 99% of the population enjoys