Essay
Ornament and Time
By Lisa Zeiger
���Be not afraid of being called unfashionable.���
A
Adolf Loos
nyone who has visited Le Corbusier���s totem of Modernism, the 1923 Maison la Roche in Paris,
knows it is no denuded white box, but an interior swept
with color���red and honeysuckle. Corbusier���s rooms remind us that the most fundamental ornaments are those
based on light and color: the whiteness of marble, the
purity of glass, the glint of metal, and the sensuality of
paint. More problematic for contemporary architects is
pattern���in papers and fabrics���which sheathe surfaces,
sometimes with scant regard for the function or structure
they cover.
O
rnament, from the earliest stages of Western civilization, has been the subject of dispute. The controversy
over ornament is somehow integral to the search to define beauty. There appears to be something as disruptive
as there is irrepressible about embellishment for its own
sake. Even design movements that have expostulated
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