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Just as architectural order and techniques of assembly
have been given expression via ornamentation, more recently,
it has been techniques of design and planning that have been
reflected in ornamentation. Entire buildings and urban quar-
ters appear like proliferating ornamentation, thereby betray-
ing their conceptual provenance in digitalized design pro-
cesses and parametric models.
By recommending a particular distance depending upon
the > scale involved, the ornamented built form establishes
a concrete relationship with the beholder. The enlivening of
architecture through ornamentation offers the stimulus of
empathizing with it, and supports the appropriation and af-
fective occupation of the built environment in everyday life.
In opposition to commodity aesthetics, which continually re-
news ornamentation in order to render objects obsolescent
and market new ones via the latest fashions, ornamentation
should serve as the basis for an emotional > warmth and
familiarity with one’s immediate spatial surroundings. This
contrasts with the demand for coldness of an ‘experiential
poverty’ (Benjamin 1933/1999) through lack of ornamenta-
tion in modernity. Regardless, ornamentation contributes to
spatial atmosphere and to the desired emotional character
of a particular situation. Implicit in the related concept of
decor, accordingly, is the ethical component of appropriate-
ness; ever since antiquity, the Latin word decorum has re-
ferred to that which an object or individual requires in order
to fulfil the task assigned and to express this in fitting fashion.
Literature: Gleiter 2002In centred spaces, we are often exposed to curious, oscillating
impulses towards movement. This > figure of movement, so
characteristic of circular, oval or polygonal spaces, consists of
a repeated change of position between centre and periphery.
Once we have entered a centralized space, we are attracted
sooner or later towards the centre, where we tend to occupyOscillation