Contemporary 'Ornament'

摘要

Ornament has returned-again-from exile. This is a claim that will turn out to be more complicated than at first it might seem. The terms under which it has been able to return raise questions about the very nature of ornament. What is it? What is its role in the constitution of architecture? So what is back? Pattern is back-pattern, one of ornament's chief incarnations: patterned colors, patterned materials, and pattern-making structures and assemblies. Other kinds of pattern too: information as pattern (surfaces of data, flickering letters and numbers and ads) creating ornamental effect rather than communicative surface. Why should this resurgent pattern-making be referred to, forcibly, as "ornament?" Where do we find this pattern-making phenomenon and how has it been described? Some of it presents itself in publications on morphogenetic form, on parametrically controlled patterns (deriving from Generative Components or CATIA, or already dated animated transformations of Maya), or on the structural variety of the informe that has been engineered, named, and promoted by Cecil Bal-mond.