I have sometimes wondered whether our unconscious motive for doing so much useless work is to show that if we cannot make things work properly we can at least make them presentable.
"A builder who hides any part of the building frame, abandons the only permissible and, at the same time, the most beautiful embellishment of architecture. The one that hides a loadbearing column makes an error. The one who builds a false column commits a crime."
Contemporary architects are, however, increasingly engaging with ornamentation. The zenith was Grayson Perry and Charles Holland of FAT’s fairytale House for Essex (p64), but it does not serve as an indicator because the involvement of an artist has allowed an enhanced engagement with ornament until it surpasses mere decoration and becomes embodied in the architecture in a way that architects do not allow themselves to do. Think of FAT’s old work: the ornament is all contained within a surface - a facade - which allowed them to separate out the (Modernist) architecture from the (kitsch) superficiality of the elevation. Like Venturi before them, their ornament allowed them to have their ornamentally iced cake - and eat the Minimal Modernist sponge underneath.
In my opinion, what makes a designer competent is precisely their ability to credibly justify their conclusions. If you can’t do this as a designer—no matter how successful your results are—then neither I nor anybody else can tell if you aren’t just picking things at random.
What I am proposing, then, is no less than to make a designer’s entire line of reasoning a matter of permanent record. On the surface is the familiar set of prescriptions, components, examples and tutorials, like you would expect out of any such artifact. Attached to every element, though, is a little button that says You click it, and it tells you. The proximate explanation will probably not be very satisfying, so you click on the next until you get to the end, at which point you are either satisfied with the explanation, or you aren’t.