Overview

A graphic guide to 20th century ornaments, The Function of Ornament contains drawings of iconic projects unveil the function of ornament as the agent for specific affects. Architecture needs mechanisms that allow it to become connected to culture. It achieves this by continually capturing the forces that shape society as material to work with. Architecture's materiality is therefore a composite one, made up of visible forces (structural, functional, physical) as well as invisible forces (cultural, political, temporal). Architecture progresses through new concepts that connect with these forces, manifesting itself in new aesthetic compositions and affects. Ornament is the by-product of this process, through which architectural material is organized to transmit unique affects. This book is a graphic guide to ornaments in the twentieth century. It unveils the function of ornament as the agent for specific affects, dismantling the idea that ornament is applied to buildings as a discrete or non-essential entity. Each case operates through greater or lesser depth to exploit specific synergies between the exterior and the interior, constructing an internal order between ornament and material. These internal orders produce expressions that are contemporary, yet whose affects are resilient in time.

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9781940291697

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Farshid Moussavi is an internationally acclaimed architect and Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She was previously co-founder of the London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA). Moussavi has completed her first U.S. commission, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (2012), its installation at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2012), and The Victoria Beckham Flagship Store in London (2014), and she is currently working on a wide range of prestigious international projects including residential complexes in the La D fense district of Paris and in Montpellier, as well as a department store in Paris, France; and an office complex in the City of London, UK.

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