FORMATIVE EDUCATION, ENGINEERING FORM,
ORNAMENT
PART ONE
We also take on the form of our surroundings. Not only does the man make his world, but
the world makes the man. Homo faber and also homo fabricatus^1 —both are equally true;
they are dialectically interrelated. The very way in which a chair causes us to sit has—at
least at times—an effect on our general posture. And as for the arrangement of the
furniture in a room, as telling as it can be of the arranger, at the same time it clearly
contains him and his guests in its form. So, for example, the more approachable and
gregarious personality is expressed in the abundance of seats offered in his rooms. On the
other hand, even more telling is the room which lacks ample chairs but whose walls are
richly decorated with elevated objets d’art. Hence the manner in which objects fill a
space generally reflects the manners of those who are served by them.
PART TWO
Of course, these manners never depend solely on the taste of the individual, of Mr.Jones
or Mr Doe. They are never as individual as the name on the door, notwithstanding any so-
called personal touches. The most appropriate posture in the chair, as well as that of the
chair itself, is determined by the social habitus of an entire era, i.e. by its fashion-
determining class and, not least, by the petty bourgeoisie’s imitation of the taste of the
ruling class, by the latter perhaps most revealingly. This relationship is most visible in the
visible, in exterior and interior architecture, both of which dominate by imposing the
forms of those who dominate. This relationship, then, is what is called style. Up until the
first half of the last century, there existed a relatively genuine architectonic style, i.e. one
without the deceptions of a class which set the fashion and its false creations. However,
especially in the realm of home decoration and construction, the appearance of the
nouveau riche bourgeoisie brought with it a decline in craftsmanship, enduring
mediocrity, and the swindle of mechanical reproduction. This trend served that entire
counterfeit enterprise which can be called the Gründerzeit^2 of art history.
We are a direct result of this period even though it is barely past as a social era.
Through its products, it became clear how our so-called artistic taste should not taste; in
it we saw bad taste. Nothing should be as it was then, when the parvenu wore a false
mask, when there were coverings everywhere, stuffed Renaissance furniture, overly high
plaster ceilings, and plaster busts of Goethe and Schiller around. Enough of all this;
unless of course such abominable kitsch—the petty bourgeoisie tapestry circa 1880, the
halberd with a tiny thermometer on its plush post—was to be taken surrealistically, as a
harmless caricature. Of course, à la Werkbund-Bauhaus, such things were and are not
even under consideration; those movements strove to liberate themselves from such
unmitigated kitsch, not only aesthetically, but also morally, out of honesty. And so,
around the turn of the century and into the following decades, there arose an asceticism,
partially indebted to socialism, against swindle and extravagance, and absolutely anti-
ornament. It was intended to educate to pure purposive-functional form,^3 and thereby to
make the pure table, for example, sharp against, as Adolf Loos said, the scabrous and
Rethinking Architecture 42