Ornament & Decoration
249. Ornament
Fine arts and decorative arts
Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle, 1995–7
- Bells
Presentable
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.
Sine qua non
What we see of a device is rarely the essential part, the sine qua non, but nearly always the superstructure which economy has imposed on it.
It seems that the work we call purely utilitarian is not more useful than its more ornamental counterpart. It is merely more economical.
Merely ornate
There is nothing merely ornate about nature: every branch, twig, or leaf counts.
Errors & Crimes
"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."
— Auguste Perret
The problem with ornament
An ArticleContemporary 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.
The Pleasure of Observing
Abbreviation
I generally do not like to abbreviate behavioral notes. An important detail may be ignored or considered irrelevant and discarded because it lacks a discrete category on the list. It is often an anecdotal event that offers special insight.
Beyond dry facts
If one has a personal knowledge of the individual animals being studied, observations in field notes cease to be impersonal, and an observer’s empathy can lead beyond dry facts to better intuition and insight.
A study should persist
Since we cannot interview the subject, we can only infer the past from the present. Ideally, a study should persist for at least the life span of an animal.
Precious intangible values
The “precious intangible values” of this wilderness.
Independent fragments of existence
You cannot divide me into independent fragments of existence.
— The Last Panda, 1993
Panda routes
A detailed route of a panda foraging on bamboo shoots, showing the number of shoots eaten and droppings deposited (black spots) on May 31, 1982.