The essay is important in articulating some moralizing views, inherited from the Arts and Crafts movement, which would be fundamental to the Bauhaus design studio and would help define the ideology of modernism in architecture.
"The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects," Loos proclaimed, thus linking the optimistic sense of the linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying evolution to cultural contexts. Loos's work was prompted by regulations he encountered when he designed a tailor shop without ornamentation next to a palace. He eventually conceded to requirements by adding a flowerpot.
In the essay, Loos explains his philosophy, describing how ornamentation can have the effect of causing objects to go out of style and thus become obsolete. It struck him that it was a crime to waste the effort needed to add ornamentation when the ornamentation would cause the object to soon go out of style. Loos introduced a sense of the "immorality" of ornament, describing it as "degenerate", its suppression as necessary for regulating modern society. He took as one of his examples the tattooing of the "Papuan" and the intense surface decorations of the objects about him—Loos says that, in the eyes of western culture, the Papuan has not evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man, who, should he tattoo himself, would either be considered a criminal or a degenerate.
Loos never argued for the complete absence of ornamentation but believed that it had to be appropriate to the type of material.
Loos concluded that "No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who lives on our cultural level ... Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength".
“Absence of ornament has brought the other arts to unsuspected heights,” proclaimed Adolf Loos in his 1908 essay and lecture “Ornament and Crime.” The quote precedes the hundreds of photographs of modernist homes compiled in the new book Ornament is Crime: Modernist Architecture by Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill. “Beethoven’s symphonies would never have been written by a man who had to walk about in silk, satin, and lace,” the Loos quote continues. “Anyone who goes around in a velvet coat today is not an artist but a buffoon or a house painter.”
Perhaps some of Loos’s railing against Art Nouveau has not aged well, yet his reaction to the ostentatious decoration of some early 20th-century architecture was echoed through the Modernist styles that followed. Ornament is Crime, published by Phaidon, takes a broad look at what is “modernist” in design, ranging from Loos’s own architecture to familiar names from the movement, like Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, and Mies van der Rohe, as well as contemporary work by Snøhetta, Tadao Ando, and David Adjaye. All are represented in black-and-white photographs, their chronology and geography thus blurred.
“The result is a visual manifesto that seeks to reposition Modernism as a style that has transcended the generations to emerge remarkably unscathed,” Gibberd writes in a book essay. “Very clear themes emerge flat roofs, cubic or cylindrical structures, large windows in horizontal bands, truth to materials, and a tendency towards plain-rendered exterior surfaces.”
SAMI MOHAMMED 1001746306
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