Ornamentation

Theory of decorative elaboration in architecture, from classical mouldings to modernist rejection and postmodern revival.

Core Characteristics

• Classical orders codified ornament as a system of proportion.
• Adolf Loos’s “Ornament and Crime” (1908) attacked decorative excess.
• Postmodernism reintroduced ornament as communicative symbol.

Related Concepts & Sources

Aesthetics, Postmodernism, Decoration