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.
Prescriptive feedback limits creative collaboration. I’ve seen it time and time again, but I’ve struggled to articulate the exact reasons and their remedies. Recently, though, I got some insight from an unusual source: a game of chess.
In hand and brain chess, each team has two players: a “brain” and a “hand.” At the beginning of each turn, the “brain” tells the “hand” which piece to move, and the “hand” then has to move that piece, but can move it wherever they think it should go. No other communication is allowed.
In every feedback conversation, one person is the hand. That’s the person doing the design — they’ll leave the meeting and go back to their computer and fire up a dozen Adobe apps. The other people in the room (virtual or otherwise) are the brain. Regardless of their skill in design, it’s their job to give the hand some constraints to work within.