The Ornament — A resource of Identity
“ The building’s identity resides in its ornament.”- Louis Sullivan
The dimension of ornament having no deeper meaning than aesthetics and personal feeling has been a subject of many debates over the time period in the life of what we call as architecture. Identity in its true sense is seen as something which is acquired by a person or a group as a result of their expression of individuality, culture, way of living, context, geography by the fact of simply being. Shelter, is one such tangent where all these is reflected onto.
Architecture can be classified into broadly three streams which can define a built-form. Style , which has one evident characteristic ,whether in its making, methods or materials; Time, the boundaries within which a physical or political scenario is set defining a set of buildings; Region, the special places which become the backdrop to building landscape. The collective association leads to an ultimate identity of a particular building built in a specific time period leading to a specific kind of construction, say. A lot of sense of identity comes from activity and people occupying it.
So does the identity of a community lead to chiseling the style of a particular building or its elements? Or is it the other way round? Does the style result from other factors like availability, context and physical contours and in the process brings with it the identity? This dialogue between identity and style can be understood in various examples around us.
Pol Houses of Old Ahmedabad , so intricately carved, are an amalgamation of Indian and Islamic as well as British aesthetics, which essentially defines a certain time period and that point of time in history. The ornamentation, essentially, differs in size, nature and degree depending upon the social status of its occupants. So this ambiguous relationship might get a clarity when we look at the planning of the entire old city leading to small streets, nearness, not really luxurious spatially and hence the need to differentiating within themselves became important through community and religion, thus ornamentation. A personal taste of a group plays a very important role in giving that specific tinge to the character.
Looking at ornamentation within the context of Indian temple architecture, it may be interpreted as the celebration of the sacred. There is no space for styling here. The chunks of ornamentation as structure, as sculpture give a certain sense of scale to the building complex by an element of exaggeration. The metaphysical manifestation is sensed by scale to communicate the physical strength of The Divine. The open spatial quality with maximum connection to outside and the garbhagriha demarcates the common and the uncommon. Here, certain group of people and their beliefs results in this built-form which is by religion.
A style can overlap its layers with ornamentation and identity and it sometimes does become a vicious circle. The lines may be even blurred. The ornamentation, often, misunderstood as decoration, is meant for beautification, but for beautifying the world of meanings. Ornament can be identity for a detail; it can be an element of display, an element of space-making, an element of structure or just an element of decoration. Ornamentations can mean different for different communities and groups. The technique of using colors can also mean ornamentation yet communicating the identity of a specific belief system, religion and rituals. The walls of monasteries are adorned with the traditional paintings called the Thangka paintings. The overuse of colors form a meaningful relationship with respect to overall spatial quality it generates. The dark spaces due to use of five colors, namely, red, blue, white, orange, yellow. The order of applying is also of great importance. White is used at the end since it signifies a doorway to enlightenment. The imagery and various figurines of Buddhist mythology are the subject of the two dimensional art which gives sense to the space and makes it sacred. The two- dimensionality also converts into a fresco-like form in space-making elements like columns, doors and windows.
Louis Sullivan is perhaps best known for his talent with ornamentation. He developed a style of ornamentation that reflected nature through symmetrical use of stylized foliage and weaving geometric forms. He was also heavily influenced by Asian design traditions, which also focus on geometric abstraction and linear design. He believed ornamentation as not an afterthought but integral to building’s overall design. (Structure and ornament as one idea) This too much use of classicism and Renaissance styling attracted critics into having an opinion of the revival of Victorian ideals, which used too much ornamentation. Here , Style dominates the act of ornamentation. Lot of his buildings make an identity today as something of American Architecture.
The Yaama Mosque, recipient of Aga Khan Award for Architecture 1986, built in semi-desert region of Africa, it is made of mud-bricks solely by hands of villagers using traditional techniques and generally available materials. Here, the context dominates the styling and identity with material and construction methods. The surface quality and textures thus generated complements the Islamic quality of intrinsic-ness. With time, the contemporariness has snatched the ornamented surfaces in Islamic spaces and exaggeration which gave the sole character to the style. The methods of construction should also not negate the mosque-ness from the mosque.
Coming in terms with abstract-ability
A library;
By saying this, we give a space its identity. The books; in their most raw sense become the ornate elements; while the quality of space can be reduced to saying style. The ornate elements occupying the space first, say; also gives identity to space while spatial quality would mean it’s a library. The utopia can be achieved by perfect and in proportion fusion. Though this dimension of design is more towards intuitive side than the conscious. History has seen some intellectual fusions and transformations.
The visual metaphor represented on the ceilings of Sistine Chapel conveys humans need of religion. The narrative elements of the ceiling illustrate that God made the World as a perfect creation and put humanity into it, that humanity fell into disgrace and was punished by death and by separation from God. Humanity then sank further into sin and disgrace, and was punished by the Great Flood. The strong beliefs taking physical form complemented the architectural scale. Michelangelo has elaborated it with illusionary or fictive architecture. The purpose is apparently purely decorative.
There is clearly an interdependence of these three aspects discussed. Within ornament there are three degrees of depth from simple to complex, from abstract to meaningful. Ornament is a very strong semantic entity to define identity The combinations of any two, results ,in the third one and one cannot exist without affecting other. The relationship thus generated is an interaction on socio-cultural grounds where sometimes limitations on various aspects may deviate from the intent.
An excerpt which shows a very psychological way of looking at this.
Architect Farshid Mossavi says ,
“ So the question is how we define and construct those elements; in other words, how do we define ornament today? If we were to acknowledge the sensorial performance of forms, built forms, we would acknowledge that they have a function, they perform a functional role. If we are to broaden our concept of function beyond utility then we start including sensorial roles as part of the function of forms . Now this opposition of function to ornament is representative of our dualistic thinking towards how we approach the environment. I would say up until the end of the 20th century in architecture it probably initiated from this duality which Plato set up between matter and mind, so built forms are basically subject to this duality of physical infrastructure and ideological super- structure. There are structural rules, physical rules that dictate the form of buildings and then there are symbols and ornaments added to perfect this art of building. Since ornament is historically an imitation, we haven’t had to think about how it is produced and therefore we continue this binary opposition between organicism and ornament. I would say once we consider ornament as an architectural production with the function to trigger new affects and sensations then we approach ornament creatively.”
