Instead of being too expensive, I think that once ornamentation became cheap enough that it no longer differentiated class, it became a revealed marker of low class.
I think there is a huge opportunity for some city manager to go against the grain and revitalize a city with ostentatious ornamentation and statues. Not woke crap. Renaissance level statues and buildings that people travel around the world to gawk at. Either novel construction, or alternatively, reconstruction of amazing old world fascades.
Fascinating essay. Coincidentally I am just back from an art and architecture trip to the Veneto and your piece triggered a few thoughts on three things that resonated.
1. A trip to the Canova museum. His half brother broke up his Rome workshop and transferred original clay models, original terracotta models, original plaster models and some finished marble copies to Possagno. Canova died an extremely rich man thanks to his enhanced productivity
2. Palladio pioneered the use of brick bases covered with plaster, stucco, ie fake stone. He died a lot less well off. Clients had the upper hand in his day. And another museum, in Vicenza his home town (though a bit too modernist-run, IMO).
3. Nevertheless the Palladio museum did host a brilliant-looking exhibition a couple years ago, showing where the wealth of Venice/Veneto came from once its trade advantages declined post the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The wealthy Venetians reinvested capital in draining the hinterland and much else besides. Here is the link to the catalogue:
Fantastic article. I find it telling, that technology worked to deliver more and better ornamentation as time went on, while it was the thought of the designers that changed and impoverished itself with the rise of "modernists". I hope we can cast off this undue devotion to the cult of blandness and return to architecture that people actually want.
The big change in style was greatly influenced by technological advancements after WWII that made glass clad buildings much less expensive than they were previously. Glass cladding leaves more square feet available inside compared to brick, and developers make their money based on the amount of square feet leased, so glass became the preferred type of cladding for large buildings. To choose a different kind of cladding would mean having to justify losing thousands of dollars of revenue per floor from reduced square footage.
That's interesting and may be right. But (a) glass cladding is not incompatible with ornamental treatment, as numerous glass Victorian buildings show, and (b) ornament obviously vanished from vast numbers of buildings that were not glass-clad, but instead featured revealed concrete or render or numerous other cladding types. So I do think cultural forces were mostly independent of technological change here.
The cultural factors leading towards no ornamentation may have been helped a great deal by the innovations that made glass box buildings economically attractive. After all, people knew what a masonry building should look like, complete with ornamentation, but weren’t used to seeing glass clad buildings and may have been less likely to notice missing ornamentation, since they had never seen a glass building like that before. Also, weren’t the brutalist buildings of the time that lacked ornamentation also using a new building material that people weren’t used to seeing whole buildings made of before: concrete? How many masonry built buildings in the 50s and 60s lacked ornamentation, compared to glass and concrete buildings?
I struggle to see anything very distinctive about Monumental Labs, except that they are part of the US tech scene. There are dozens of stone workshops of equal or greater sophistication in Central Europe / northern Italy.
I think the Apple campus (the giant circle) is a good example in your favor. It is the center of the best business in history and is a marvel in so many ways - the doors of its cafeteria were custom fabricated. And yet, it adopts the plainness of modern architecture.
Seems more likely that rising building costs, largely due to land costs, would be the main culprit here which is why you still see ornamentation on suburban new builds while elite buildings with high land costs have to strive for design distinctiveness through structural means
Instead of being too expensive, I think that once ornamentation became cheap enough that it no longer differentiated class, it became a revealed marker of low class.
I think there is a huge opportunity for some city manager to go against the grain and revitalize a city with ostentatious ornamentation and statues. Not woke crap. Renaissance level statues and buildings that people travel around the world to gawk at. Either novel construction, or alternatively, reconstruction of amazing old world fascades.
Thanks, hugely informative article!
Fascinating essay. Coincidentally I am just back from an art and architecture trip to the Veneto and your piece triggered a few thoughts on three things that resonated.
1. A trip to the Canova museum. His half brother broke up his Rome workshop and transferred original clay models, original terracotta models, original plaster models and some finished marble copies to Possagno. Canova died an extremely rich man thanks to his enhanced productivity
https://www.museocanova.it/
2. Palladio pioneered the use of brick bases covered with plaster, stucco, ie fake stone. He died a lot less well off. Clients had the upper hand in his day. And another museum, in Vicenza his home town (though a bit too modernist-run, IMO).
https://www.palladiomuseum.org/en/
3. Nevertheless the Palladio museum did host a brilliant-looking exhibition a couple years ago, showing where the wealth of Venice/Veneto came from once its trade advantages declined post the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The wealthy Venetians reinvested capital in draining the hinterland and much else besides. Here is the link to the catalogue:
https://www.palladiomuseum.org/en/shop/207
Fantastic article. I find it telling, that technology worked to deliver more and better ornamentation as time went on, while it was the thought of the designers that changed and impoverished itself with the rise of "modernists". I hope we can cast off this undue devotion to the cult of blandness and return to architecture that people actually want.
The big change in style was greatly influenced by technological advancements after WWII that made glass clad buildings much less expensive than they were previously. Glass cladding leaves more square feet available inside compared to brick, and developers make their money based on the amount of square feet leased, so glass became the preferred type of cladding for large buildings. To choose a different kind of cladding would mean having to justify losing thousands of dollars of revenue per floor from reduced square footage.
That's interesting and may be right. But (a) glass cladding is not incompatible with ornamental treatment, as numerous glass Victorian buildings show, and (b) ornament obviously vanished from vast numbers of buildings that were not glass-clad, but instead featured revealed concrete or render or numerous other cladding types. So I do think cultural forces were mostly independent of technological change here.
The cultural factors leading towards no ornamentation may have been helped a great deal by the innovations that made glass box buildings economically attractive. After all, people knew what a masonry building should look like, complete with ornamentation, but weren’t used to seeing glass clad buildings and may have been less likely to notice missing ornamentation, since they had never seen a glass building like that before. Also, weren’t the brutalist buildings of the time that lacked ornamentation also using a new building material that people weren’t used to seeing whole buildings made of before: concrete? How many masonry built buildings in the 50s and 60s lacked ornamentation, compared to glass and concrete buildings?
I struggle to see anything very distinctive about Monumental Labs, except that they are part of the US tech scene. There are dozens of stone workshops of equal or greater sophistication in Central Europe / northern Italy.
I think the Apple campus (the giant circle) is a good example in your favor. It is the center of the best business in history and is a marvel in so many ways - the doors of its cafeteria were custom fabricated. And yet, it adopts the plainness of modern architecture.
Seems more likely that rising building costs, largely due to land costs, would be the main culprit here which is why you still see ornamentation on suburban new builds while elite buildings with high land costs have to strive for design distinctiveness through structural means
I wonder how much it also has to do with regulations, safety and maintenance costs. No risk of ornamental pieces falling off from a glass tower.