Building as Ornament

Ornament is back–not as detail adorning a facade, but in the body of entire structures, producing buildings in the shape of letters, a heap of pebbles or a national emblem. In Building as Ornament, Michiel van Raaij investigates how this new tendency in architecture emerged in the late 1990s and how it has developed at the start of the twenty-first century, through interviews with ten leading architects, among them Adriaan Geuze, Michiel Riedijk, Winy Maas, Steven Holl and Bjarke Ingels. This generation of architects sees the design of the ‘upscaled’ ornament as an inextricable element of their practice. What are their motivations? How do they orient their ideas in the tradition of their profession? Michiel van Raaij argues that the new ornament is bound by certain rules: successful ornament represents a virtue and clarifies the function, status, construction, organization and context of the building.