February 11, 2002

Ornament: a vanishing quality?

Recently, visiting the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, I had a mini-epiphany about "decorative" design. There was a large section devoted to architecture, as it was practiced in the pre-modern era. This involved vast repositories of knowledge of decorative "languages", as mainly seen in neoclassicism. I was looking at a minutely detailed engraving of a building facade, and some accompanying models, and realised that while it is underpinned by sound engineering, what I am looking at most of all is an unbelievably rich language of ornament and decoration, which does not equate to whimsy in the slightest but is every bit as intellectual and rational and considered as the engineering. And how this ornament is not simply "clothing" for a functional building, how it is the building in the minds of the occupant and viewer, how it makes the building visually pleasing and functionally more articulate and coherent. (Consider e.g. how much the concept of "entrance" is articulated through decorative means -- pillars, mouldings, etc.)

Looking at that I felt as if CHI, under the usability banner, is perhaps following modernist form-follows-function too rigidly, and is ignoring (and forgetting) a vast body of knowledge of the functional and psychological role of ornament. That there was a time when these issues weren't lumped under "touchy-feely", but when aesthetics were every bit as rational as the engineering.

That said, I have to admit I'm quite happy that it's possible these days to design staircase banisters without acanthus leaves. All decorative languages tend to stultify over time.

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