Re-Sampling Ornament
1st June - 29th September '08
Swiss Architecture Museum
Steinenberg 7, Postfach 911, Basel
Exactly 100 years after Adolf Loos wrote Ornament and Crime, a manifesto that effectively relegated ornament in architecture to the peripheries of the discourse, the Swiss Architecture Museum is bringing it back to the forefront of architectural conversation with its exhibition “Re-sampling Ornament”.
For decades the language of architectural ornament has remained largely unspoken, but for a few memorable post-modern architectural experiments. Yet whilst the ideological rigour of Modernism once rejected the supposed decadence and wastefulness associated with the mass production of ornament, it is undeniable that over the past 10 years entirely new construction and manufacturing processes have made the return of ornament economically viable. Today, computer-aided design can bring forth organic forms in architecture as well as stretching artifice to its extremes.
Featuring works by Thomas Heatherwick, Toyo Ito, and OMA, “Re-sampling Ornament” takes a first step towards tracing this re-emergence while reinstating ornament in contemporary architecture with an abundance of new conceptual and aesthetic possibilities.
Thomas Heatherwick: East Beach Café, Littlehampton, West Sussex, England (2007) ©Andy Stagg
