“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use.” - Adolf Loos, 1908.
Do you agree or disagree?
Why?
Adolf Loos (1870 - 1933) was an Austrian architect who firmly believed that ornamentation was simply a crime. Throughout his essay, Ornament and Crime, he stated that ornamentation held back the cultural development of civilization, that it was a waste of manpower, which lead to a waste of health.
As with Loos I do believe that nowadays, everyday objects have simplistic aesthetics to them in comparison to previous eras i.e the 18th century [Rococo movement]. However, human beings always have and will always have, a want of what we call our own 'individuality' as our form of self-expression; I do not believe removal of ornamentation is what our culture has become of, if that was the case, it would have caused us to lose our individuality and identity, and nor do i see society as ever being 'plain and simple'. Designer Owen Jones stated that ornamentation is instinctive and I myself agree with this particular statement. I believe that ornamentation reveals individuality, culture and society. I do not believe that ornamentation is a 'waste' of health; people like to express. How can our culture reveal itself if our daily lives were shown bare and without personality?
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Apple i-phone 4 |
The world-renown i-phone has vastly become one of the worlds top technologic devices. Here we see that the physical design is simplistic and clean; I believe that Loos would have agreed with this phones physical design. To a point, we can say that it looks as though it has almost no highly time-consumed aesthetic value because of its cleanliness, but in accordance to Loos' statement with evolution of culture being synonymous with the removal of ornament, I disagree. To strip away ornamentation would mean stripping away us a people; analyzing the i-phones design, ornamentation comes from the individual: what he or she chooses to decorate his/her phone with; the Apple company has designed a smart phone such as this where they have allowed you as a consumer, to personalize it and make it your own.
Loos was strict concerning the waste of materials; Loos’ architecture was very much stripped down to its bare minimum in regards to ornamentation. Thus saying, Loos' designs would be appropriately in line with one of our very main goals today: Sustainability. In our present day, I believe our 'Zeitgeist' is focused on technology, humanity & sustainability: the development on keeping our designs environmentally-friendly in order to allow our world to survive.
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Reference list:
Loos, Adolf, Ornament and Crime, The Industrial Reader (1910). Sourced from: http://dev.schoolofdesign.ac.nz/mod/folder/view.php?id=135
Lupton, E. (2008) The Modern Curve: Form, Structure, and Image in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, in Rococo: the continuing curve, 1730-2008 (pp. 218-245). New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Sourced from:
Jones, Owen The Grammar of Ornament, 1856
Image sourced from:
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