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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Ornament: Semantics and Tectonics for Contemporary Urban Architecture A thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE In the school of Architecture and Interior Design of the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (DAAP) 2005 by Gavin R. Farrell B.S. Arch, University of Cincinnati, 2003 Committee chairs: Jeff Tilman David Niland John Hancock i Abstract ____________________________________________________________ With some notable exceptions, ornament today has largely increased its scale and reduced its descriptive content in what can only be described as an evasion of putting forward a readable socially-relevant meaning. It may be that current sentiments of a diverse, relativistic modern society prevent ornament’s conveyance of direct idealistic social messages. If this is so, then ornament has two ‘holding patterns;’ 1. To express the purpose of the building, and 2. to increase the building’s significance. The theoretical root of the problem of ornament will be investigated, and its various types and methods of application will be described with an eye for giving an understanding of ornament’s strengths, weaknesses, and its intimate, mutually-enhancing connection with form, structure, and the resultant space. Tentative principles of use for the 21st century will be developed, suggesting the necessity of a real or implied relationship between tectonics and semantics. iii Contents_______________________________________________________________ Abstract i Contents ii List of Illustrations iii Introduction 1 1. Ornament: Definition and Etymology 4 2. The Meaning of Ornament: Psychology and Origin 8 3. Vitruvius to the Italian Renaissance Writers 16 4. Growing Rationalism: Baroque through the 18th Century 54 5. 19th Century and Ornament 86 6. 20th Century and Ornament 119 7. Conclusion: Principles and Propriety for the 21st Century 144 8. The Project 152 Bibliography 157 Program 162 iv Illustrations ____________________________________________________________ 3.1.1 Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture: Volume I, Books I-V of ‘Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva’, trans. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks. Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996. 3.2-4 Serlio, On Architecture. 3.5 Anthony Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. A. Zwemmer Ltd., London. 1958. 3.6-3.7 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor, Richard Schofield. MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2002. 4.1 Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boulée, Ledoux, and Lequeu. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1952. 4.2 Internet source 4.3-5 Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects.. 4.6 J.N.L. Durand, Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’École Polytechnique, trans. David Britt, intr. Antoine Picon. Getty Research Institute Publications Program, Los Angeles, 2000. 4.7 Louis Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers. Eakins Press, New York, 1967. 4.8 Frank Lloyd Wright, et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992. 4.9 E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, 1979. 5.1 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2001. 5.2 Selections from Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament. DK Publishing, In., New York, 2001., Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture, and Frank Russell, ed. Art Nouveau Architecture. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 1979. 5.3 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary. ed. M.F. Hearn. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990. 5.4 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture. 5.5 John Zukowsky, ed. Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922. Prestel-Verlag, Munich, in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987. 5.6 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919. A.D.A EDITA Tokyo Co., Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, 1981. v 5.7 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary. ed. M.F. Hearn. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990. 5.8 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2000. 5.9 Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, trans and int. Harry Francis Mallgrave. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, 1988. 5.10-11 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture. 5.12-14 Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919. 5.15 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture. 6.1 Thomas Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” VIA III Ornament, ed. Stephen Kiernan. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977. 6.2-8 Frank Lloyd Wright, et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992. 6.9-12 Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture. 6.13-14 Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919. 6.15 Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, Jones The Grammar of Ornament, and Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture. trans. Frederick Etchells. Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1986. 6.16 Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 2002. 6.17 Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, Jones The Grammar of Ornament. 6.18-19 Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. 6.20 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. Phaidon Press Limited, London, 2000., Jones The Grammar of Ornament. 6.21-3 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. 6.24 Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 1998 edition. 6.25 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. 6.26 Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. 6.26, 7.1 Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Robert Venturi, Learning From Las Vegas. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1977. 1 Introduction____________________________________________________________ The argument for an ornamented contemporary architecture begins with several assumptions: 1. That Architecture can and in some cases should convey meaning. 2. That the meaning, if it is worth communicating, should be clearly readable. 3. That abstract form alone is insufficient to fully convey meaning; ornament expands architecture’s capability for communication. 4. Ornament that evidences human craftsmanship is valued by society. Perhaps the weakest assumption is the first. In 1831, Victor Hugo boldly declared in The Hunchback of Notre Dame: ‘the book will kill the building’ and that as humanity’s main form of expression ‘architecture is dead.’1 The role of communicating the great ideas of humanity had been stripped from architecture’s hands and taken to the printing press. Hugo’s statement has particular relevance for ornament because undeniably architectural ornament has played a great role in the communication of ideas; in much architecture perhaps more so than space, form, or structure. Alternate mediums of communication have usurped this important role of ornament; even in 1831 Hugo discerned a movement towards un-ornamented geometric abstraction that would eventually be fully realized by the Modern Movement: “Starting with Francis II, the architectural form of the edifice was rubbed off and allowed the geometrical forms to become visible… The sweeping lines of art were replaced by geometry’s cold, inexorable ones. A building became a polyhedron.”2 Hugo suggests that since buildings were not needed for communication any longer they were becoming mute geometric exercises. As late as Complexity and Contradiction in 1966 architects were still attempting to come to terms with their displacement in society: Industry promotes expensive industrial and electronic research but not architectural experiments, and the Federal government diverts subsidies toward air transportation, communication, and the vast enterprises of war or, as they call it, national security, rather than toward the forces for the direct enhancement of life. The practicing architect must admit this. …Architects should accept their modest role rather than disguise it…3 1 Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. trans. Catherine Liu, Random House, Inc. New York, 2002 Modern Library Paperback Edition. 161, 171. 2 Hunchback, 170. 3 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Second Edition reprint, 1998. 44. 2 We have to face the fact that Hugo, Venturi and Scott Brown’s observations are correct. However, although architecture and ornament are no longer a primary focus of society there is no reason why ornament cannot still communicate meaning. The book may have killed architecture, but now it seems as though the book itself has been killed in turn by other mediums. Yet architecture is still here with an important, if diminished, role of social support to play and ornament’s