History: Ornament

In architecture, the term ornament refers to decorative details enhancing structure, including different shaping and placement of buttresses, cornices, moldings, ceiling, roof, capitals and columns as well as materials, color, and texture. Ornament and the design of ornament have followed the development of artistic eras, experiencing the pinnacle of enthusiasm during the baroque period. Ornamental use in architecture dates back to ancient civilizations. For ancient Egypt many ornaments were symbolic, such as the scarab, the sacred disk and the vulture; others were architecturally practical, such as huge stone columns supporting the immense stone-slab roofs. Egyptians also incorporated natural objects into their ornamentation, like the palm leaf, the papyrus plant, and the lotus flower.

Today, ornament is still an important part of architectural design. Due to archaeological discoveries in the 19th century, the repertory of available ornament expanded until its sheer variety became burdensome.

At that point, some architects like Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Antoni Gaudí attempted to create a common vocabulary for ornament, while others, like Aldof Loos took the opposite route and abandoned ornament all together. By the mid nineteen hundreds, the lack of ornament in buildings was associated with simplicity, honesty, and purity; there was no room for ornament in modernist structures. This movement, and the aversion to ornament ended around 1960 with the beginning of the Postmodernist buildings; at this time, ornament began to serve practical purposes like establishing scale, signaling entry ways, and aiding way finding.

Timeline