Structure/ornament and the modern figuration of architecture.

Roman architecture often reduced the Greek orders to mere ornament applied to arcuated structures.

The Lombard chapel piled up ornament on the purist structure of the Florentine model.

In the nineteenth century a building was made a structure to receive an envelope of surface ornament.

To be authentically modern was to strip categorically from structure all ornament.

Few readers would find anything remarkable about the prominent use of structure and ornament in such statements, which resemble actual passages of innumerable modern writings on architecture. These two words seem to describe unproblematically only what is physically there; "structure/ornament" appears to embody the very nature of much built reality. We do not in general question, or even feel that it is necessary to question, what structure and ornament actually signify, or to ask why they so typically appear as an oppositional pair. Nor do we often seriously reflect on the historical origin of the pair (which is generally grossly misdated) or study the implications of that origination. In the absence of such critical analysis, we fail to realize how pervasive and compelling a figuration of architecture the structure/ornament pair is, and that it determines in massive ways much of how we think and write about many aspects of architecture and its history, and even to a large extent how we build. To initiate such an analysis is the primary aim of this essay, which is intended not to resolve issues attending specific historical sites but rather to excavate and closely scrutinize certain assumptions and problematics that pervade and frame structure/ornament, and thereby to put to critical questioning the seemingly transparent nature of much recent and current architectural discourse.

St-Eustache as Structure/Ornament Paradigm

Architectural history today frequently seeks to interpret buildings as objects shaped by and expressive of their social meanings and historical contexts. The function of a building is consequently understood as primarily representational and often as actively engaged in defining the social world of which it is a part. It would be both unexceptional and commendable to decide that the best way to grasp the realities of, for instance, a fifteenth-century Florentine church is to chart the competing economic, political, religious, and cultural forces that brought it into being and to interpret it as a material expression of the ascending wealth and status of the mercantile class during the period.