Thesis Defence: Andrew Lord

This thesis recognizes ornament as not simply an excessive accessory, but an innate human desire to imbue objects with beauty and meaning. Ornament’s prominence throughout disparate architectures regardless of culture, era, or class intimates its instinctive nature. Despite modernism’s efforts to dispense with it, ornament subconsciously returned by turning buildings themselves into sculptural forms, or by embellishing facades with expansive screens, patterns, and louvers. However, these forms of decoration fail to provide many of ornament’s historical benefits. Traditional ornament was capable of breaking down imposing building masses to the human scale, allowing people to project a personal or regional identity onto a building. Not only have designers forgotten how to accomplish this, but an entire system of economics disincentivizes such architecture.

The commodification of real estate has turned architecture into another tool for capitalism to extract profit. Neoliberalism has found an ally in modernist principles by embracing the ideals of modularity, efficiency, and rationality as a theoretical framework to manufacture a globalized architecture. The architectural individuality of localities has largely disappeared, leaving citizens unable to identify with their own cities. From Brazil to France, Mexico, and America we see the rise of populism as the world reckons with the consequences of a global Neoliberalism. Nowhere is this more visible than in Britain, where Brexit demonstrates the anger of a public feeling unrepresented. In protesting the inequities of capitalism and societal elites, populism by extension repudiates the built environment that Neoliberalism produces: an urban architecture that rejects locality and ignores the irrational human impulse for ornament. The contentious dynamic between the elite and layperson is only exacerbated as architects rationalize their projects through professional jargon and academic theory that leaves the public alienated.

This thesis seeks to dispel modernist myths and posits ornament as a means to reintroduce regional identity in an increasingly homogenized world. Theoretical discussion is supplemented with case studies documented through photography, illustrating the consequences of ornament’s exile through economic and political narratives. Without a proper understanding of the societal influences that constrain the profession, architecture will continue to neglect the natural human desire for ornament.