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Dr. Jan C. Bentz
Dr Jan C. Bentz lectures at Blackfriars Studium in Oxford, where he teaches courses on Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, Philosophy of Art, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of History.
The Death of the Ornament and the Poverty of Modernist Architecture
Returning from an educational trip to Rome and Florence, what stays with me is not just a few famous buildings, but the overall experience of being in places shaped by beauty. In both cities, architecture does more than serve a function—it gives form to history, creates a sense of order, and affects how one moves, looks, and even thinks. The streets and buildings feel intentional in a way that is hard to ignore. It becomes clear, almost immediately, that architecture can do more than meet practical needs—it can shape how we experience the world around us. A large part of this effect comes from something often overlooked today: decoration and ornament. It is not only the scale or age of these buildings that leaves an impression, but the way their surfaces are worked, articulated, and brought to life. Cornices, mouldings, carvings, and patterned stone do not simply adorn the structure—they guide the eye, clarify the form, and give the building a kind of presence. What might at first seem like a mere detail reveals itself as essential and points to the essential. Without it, much of what makes these buildings engaging and memorable would quietly disappear. Ornament is often dismissed as something secondary—a flourish added after the essential work of building has been completed. It is treated as an embellishment, a luxury, even a distraction from the “real” task of architecture. And so its disappearance in modern building is frequently praised as a sign of honesty: nothing superfluous, nothing deceptive, nothing beyond necessity. But this judgment rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. Ornament was never meant merely as an addition. It completed the form. In the medieval understanding, for instance, the work of architecture does not end when the structure stands. It requires those those who “finish or decorate the principal work—who polish, dress, carve, rub, paint.” (1) These are not secondary acts. They are the moment in which the building becomes fully intelligible—when matter is brought to the point where it can speak to the onlooker and where the onlooker finds something of himself in the building: something human. The understanding of ornament as an essential component of architecture points beyond mere technique. It points to knowledge—and even to a kind of wisdom that cannot be reduced to the ability to design a building at all. The medieval architect was not simply a technician, but a learned figure, formed in the liberal arts, who stood at the head of the craftsmen and guided their work. Ars sine scientia nihil potest—art is powerless without knowledge.(2) Ornament, therefore, does not appear as mere decoration, but as part of a larger whole to which it simultaneously refers: the unity of form as it is expressed in architecture. Ornament, in this context, is not decoration in the modern sense. It is the visible unfolding of a form that it realizes and signifies.
To define ornament, then, is to correct a modern error: ornament is not what is added to a building, but what arises from it. It is the articulation of its inner order, the flowering of its structure into visibility. It is what allows a building not merely to stand, but to appear. And it is precisely this that has been lost. The modern rejection of ornament is almost always justified in the name of practicality. Buildings, we are told, must be efficient, functional, economical. Anything that does not directly serve these ends is considered unnecessary, and therefore expendable. This conviction is deeply rooted in the principles of modern architecture itself. Adolf Loos famously argued that ornament is not merely unnecessary but even harmful, insisting that it distracts from the true purpose of architecture and should therefore be eliminated altogether.(3) In a similar spirit, Le Corbusier defined the house as “a machine for living in,” reducing architecture to efficiency, utility, and performance.(4) Within such a framework, the smooth glass façade, the bare concrete wall, and the repetition of identical elements appear as the logical outcome of a rational architecture freed from what is perceived as illusion or excess. Examples are not difficult to find. The severe geometries of the Barbican Estate, or the polished abstraction of the Seagram Building, present themselves as complete in their functionality, stripped of all excess. They do what they are meant to do. They house, they shelter, they organise space. But they do not speak. The appeal to the “practical” rests on a deeply impoverished understanding of the human person and, for that matter, what it means for a human to be “practical.” For man does not live in fragments. He does not inhabit a purely functional sphere, to which beauty may be added—or from which it may be subtracted—without consequence. He lives always and everywhere as a being who perceives, who judges, who responds to form. A building ought not merely to be used. It is a place to live in, and part of living is to work. Thus, it is also a building to work in. The building always shapes perception, mood, athmosphere. It form and thus is part of the texture of life. It is therefore not merely “practical” but it serves life in all of its facets. We often make the mistake of applying the same criteria to a Renaissance palace as we do to a modern office building.
From that perspective, it is easy to argue that such buildings would be impractical—perhaps even unusable—for the kinds of tasks we associate with contemporary workspaces. How, one might ask, could the business of administration, coordination, or concentrated labor be carried out in the halls of the Palazzo Strozzi or the Stanze of Julius’ II Papal apartments. And yet this objection rests on a confusion. The Renaissance palace was not an aesthetic luxury detached from life. It was itself a place of work. The Palazzo Medici Riccardi functioned as the centre of political, economic, and social activity for the Medici family. The Stanza della Segnatura was not conceived as a gallery, but as a working room—associated with the papal library and the conduct of official duties under Pope Julius II. Likewise, the Palazzo Vecchio served as the seat of civic government, where decisions were made, envoys received, and the affairs of the city conducted. These spaces were, in every meaningful sense, practical. They were ordered toward concrete functions: governance, administration, reception, deliberation. But they were not reduced to those functions. The same pope who conducted business also understood that man does not live by function alone. And so he commissioned artists such as Raphael to adorn the very rooms in which this work took place. The result was not inefficiency, but enrichment. Beauty was not opposed to use—it was integrated into it. Indeed, if one were to speak in modern terms, such patronage even had an economic dimension. The commissioning of artists, architects, and craftsmen generated work, sustained workshops, and fostered entire networks of production. But more importantly, it testified to a different understanding of human life: one in which the practical and the beautiful were not set against one another, but belonged together. What separates us from this world is not primarily a change in architectural technique, but a fragmentation of experience. We have grown accustomed to dividing life into distinct spheres—utility here, beauty there—and to restricting each to its proper domain. Beauty is reserved for the museum, the concert hall, or the occasional monument, while the spaces of everyday life are surrendered to efficiency alone. Architecture becomes the most visible witness to this division. In stone, glass, and concrete, it records a way of thinking in which the fullness of human life has been broken apart—and in which what once belonged together has been artificially separated. The disappearance of ornament, then, is not simply the removal of decoration. It is the visible sign of a deeper rupture. Hans Sedlmayr diagnosed this rupture with particular clarity. The death of ornament, he argued, did not occur because architects ceased to decorate, but because ornament lost the very condition of its existence. No living ornament, he observed, has been created in the modern age—not because ornament was rejected outright, but because it became impossible.(5) The essence of ornament, Sedlmayr insists, is that it grows out of the body it adorns. Its form and color arise from the nature of the object itself. It adheres to the mass, intensifies it, reveals it. It is not imposed from without, but unfolds from within.(6) Once this relation is broken, ornament becomes something else entirely. It becomes applied. This transformation, already underway at the end of the eighteenth century, marks the beginning of its death. Decoration is no longer the expression of form, but its covering. It can be added or removed without altering the essence of the building. And precisely because it is no longer necessary, it becomes suspect. The logic of modernity follows inexorably: what is unnecessary is dishonest, and what is dishonest must be eliminated. At the same time, the forms of architecture themselves undergo a process of simplification. Structure is reduced to pure geometry—planes, lines, volumes. Ornament, in turn, is either reduced to abstract pattern or abandoned altogether. And as it becomes increasingly detached from any concrete meaning, it is judged superfluous. Sedlmayr’s insight is decisive here: ornament is the only category of art that cannot become autonomous. A painting can exist on its own. A sculpture can stand independently. But ornament cannot be separated from what it belongs to without ceasing to be itself.(7) Its very nature is relational. It exists only as participation—of surface in depth, of appearance in structure. This is why modern attempts to revive ornament often fail. Pattern returns, but without necessity. Decoration reappears, but without meaning. It floats on the surface, no longer rooted in the object it adorns. And yet even within our own architectural landscape, the older understanding has not entirely disappeared. It persists in places where ornament still arises from structure rather than being applied to it. Consider the entrance arches of the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities or the stone façades of Oxford’s older colleges. Here, ornament does not obscure the building—it clarifies it. The carving follows the movement of the form, articulating and intensifying it. One perceives not an addition, but an unfolding. As Otto von Simson observed of Gothic architecture, ornament renders structure luminous, revealing its inner order rather than competing with it. By contrast, much modern construction replaces articulation with repetition. Surfaces remain flat and indifferent; buildings function, but they do not invite attention. What is lost here is not merely aesthetic, but moral. Ornament requires time, care, and the willingness to go beyond necessity. It is the visible sign that a building matters—that it was made not only to serve, but to be worthy of its place. In this sense, ornament is an expression of dedication, even of love. Its disappearance reflects a broader fragmentation of life, in which beauty is separated from use and confined to isolated domains. The recovery of ornament, therefore, cannot be achieved by imitation alone. It demands a recovery of vision: a recognition that form carries meaning, and that building is not merely technical production but an act of understanding. Only then can ornament return—not as decoration, but as necessity. For while the necessary sustains life, it is the beautiful that makes it worth living.
Notes
(1) Edgar De Bruyne, The Esthetics of the Middle Ages (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1969), 185.
(2) Ibid., 186.
(3) Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, trans. Michael Mitchell (London: Penguin Books, 2019 [1908]).
(4) Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover
Publications, 1986 [1923]), 95.
(5) Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 91.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid., 92.
The Death of the Ornament and the Poverty of Modernist Architecture
Returning from an educational trip to Rome and Florence, what stays with me is not just a few famous buildings, but the overall experience of being in places shaped by beauty. In both cities, architecture does more than serve a function—it gives form to history, creates a sense of order, and affects how one moves, looks, and even thinks. The streets and buildings feel intentional in a way that is hard to ignore. It becomes clear, almost immediately, that architecture can do more than meet practical needs—it can shape how we experience the world around us. A large part of this effect comes from something often overlooked today: decoration and ornament. It is not only the scale or age of these buildings that leaves an impression, but the way their surfaces are worked, articulated, and brought to life. Cornices, mouldings, carvings, and patterned stone do not simply adorn the structure—they guide the eye, clarify the form, and give the building a kind of presence. What might at first seem like a mere detail reveals itself as essential and points to the essential. Without it, much of what makes these buildings engaging and memorable would quietly disappear. Ornament is often dismissed as something secondary—a flourish added after the essential work of building has been completed. It is treated as an embellishment, a luxury, even a distraction from the “real” task of architecture. And so its disappearance in modern building is frequently praised as a sign of honesty: nothing superfluous, nothing deceptive, nothing beyond necessity. But this judgment rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. Ornament was never meant merely as an addition. It completed the form. In the medieval understanding, for instance, the work of architecture does not end when the structure stands. It requires those those who “finish or decorate the principal work—who polish, dress, carve, rub, paint.” (1) These are not secondary acts. They are the moment in which the building becomes fully intelligible—when matter is brought to the point where it can speak to the onlooker and where the onlooker finds something of himself in the building: something human. The understanding of ornament as an essential component of architecture points beyond mere technique. It points to knowledge—and even to a kind of wisdom that cannot be reduced to the ability to design a building at all. The medieval architect was not simply a technician, but a learned figure, formed in the liberal arts, who stood at the head of the craftsmen and guided their work. Ars sine scientia nihil potest—art is powerless without knowledge.(2) Ornament, therefore, does not appear as mere decoration, but as part of a larger whole to which it simultaneously refers: the unity of form as it is expressed in architecture. Ornament, in this context, is not decoration in the modern sense. It is the visible unfolding of a form that it realizes and signifies.
To define ornament, then, is to correct a modern error: ornament is not what is added to a building, but what arises from it. It is the articulation of its inner order, the flowering of its structure into visibility. It is what allows a building not merely to stand, but to appear. And it is precisely this that has been lost. The modern rejection of ornament is almost always justified in the name of practicality. Buildings, we are told, must be efficient, functional, economical. Anything that does not directly serve these ends is considered unnecessary, and therefore expendable. This conviction is deeply rooted in the principles of modern architecture itself. Adolf Loos famously argued that ornament is not merely unnecessary but even harmful, insisting that it distracts from the true purpose of architecture and should therefore be eliminated altogether.(3) In a similar spirit, Le Corbusier defined the house as “a machine for living in,” reducing architecture to efficiency, utility, and performance.(4) Within such a framework, the smooth glass façade, the bare concrete wall, and the repetition of identical elements appear as the logical outcome of a rational architecture freed from what is perceived as illusion or excess. Examples are not difficult to find. The severe geometries of the Barbican Estate, or the polished abstraction of the Seagram Building, present themselves as complete in their functionality, stripped of all excess. They do what they are meant to do. They house, they shelter, they organise space. But they do not speak. The appeal to the “practical” rests on a deeply impoverished understanding of the human person and, for that matter, what it means for a human to be “practical.” For man does not live in fragments. He does not inhabit a purely functional sphere, to which beauty may be added—or from which it may be subtracted—without consequence. He lives always and everywhere as a being who perceives, who judges, who responds to form. A building ought not merely to be used. It is a place to live in, and part of living is to work. Thus, it is also a building to work in. The building always shapes perception, mood, athmosphere. It form and thus is part of the texture of life. It is therefore not merely “practical” but it serves life in all of its facets. We often make the mistake of applying the same criteria to a Renaissance palace as we do to a modern office building.
From that perspective, it is easy to argue that such buildings would be impractical—perhaps even unusable—for the kinds of tasks we associate with contemporary workspaces. How, one might ask, could the business of administration, coordination, or concentrated labor be carried out in the halls of the Palazzo Strozzi or the Stanze of Julius’ II Papal apartments. And yet this objection rests on a confusion. The Renaissance palace was not an aesthetic luxury detached from life. It was itself a place of work. The Palazzo Medici Riccardi functioned as the centre of political, economic, and social activity for the Medici family. The Stanza della Segnatura was not conceived as a gallery, but as a working room—associated with the papal library and the conduct of official duties under Pope Julius II. Likewise, the Palazzo Vecchio served as the seat of civic government, where decisions were made, envoys received, and the affairs of the city conducted. These spaces were, in every meaningful sense, practical. They were ordered toward concrete functions: governance, administration, reception, deliberation. But they were not reduced to those functions. The same pope who conducted business also understood that man does not live by function alone. And so he commissioned artists such as Raphael to adorn the very rooms in which this work took place. The result was not inefficiency, but enrichment. Beauty was not opposed to use—it was integrated into it. Indeed, if one were to speak in modern terms, such patronage even had an economic dimension. The commissioning of artists, architects, and craftsmen generated work, sustained workshops, and fostered entire networks of production. But more importantly, it testified to a different understanding of human life: one in which the practical and the beautiful were not set against one another, but belonged together. What separates us from this world is not primarily a change in architectural technique, but a fragmentation of experience. We have grown accustomed to dividing life into distinct spheres—utility here, beauty there—and to restricting each to its proper domain. Beauty is reserved for the museum, the concert hall, or the occasional monument, while the spaces of everyday life are surrendered to efficiency alone. Architecture becomes the most visible witness to this division. In stone, glass, and concrete, it records a way of thinking in which the fullness of human life has been broken apart—and in which what once belonged together has been artificially separated. The disappearance of ornament, then, is not simply the removal of decoration. It is the visible sign of a deeper rupture. Hans Sedlmayr diagnosed this rupture with particular clarity. The death of ornament, he argued, did not occur because architects ceased to decorate, but because ornament lost the very condition of its existence. No living ornament, he observed, has been created in the modern age—not because ornament was rejected outright, but because it became impossible.(5) The essence of ornament, Sedlmayr insists, is that it grows out of the body it adorns. Its form and color arise from the nature of the object itself. It adheres to the mass, intensifies it, reveals it. It is not imposed from without, but unfolds from within.(6) Once this relation is broken, ornament becomes something else entirely. It becomes applied. This transformation, already underway at the end of the eighteenth century, marks the beginning of its death. Decoration is no longer the expression of form, but its covering. It can be added or removed without altering the essence of the building. And precisely because it is no longer necessary, it becomes suspect. The logic of modernity follows inexorably: what is unnecessary is dishonest, and what is dishonest must be eliminated. At the same time, the forms of architecture themselves undergo a process of simplification. Structure is reduced to pure geometry—planes, lines, volumes. Ornament, in turn, is either reduced to abstract pattern or abandoned altogether. And as it becomes increasingly detached from any concrete meaning, it is judged superfluous. Sedlmayr’s insight is decisive here: ornament is the only category of art that cannot become autonomous. A painting can exist on its own. A sculpture can stand independently. But ornament cannot be separated from what it belongs to without ceasing to be itself.(7) Its very nature is relational. It exists only as participation—of surface in depth, of appearance in structure. This is why modern attempts to revive ornament often fail. Pattern returns, but without necessity. Decoration reappears, but without meaning. It floats on the surface, no longer rooted in the object it adorns. And yet even within our own architectural landscape, the older understanding has not entirely disappeared. It persists in places where ornament still arises from structure rather than being applied to it. Consider the entrance arches of the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities or the stone façades of Oxford’s older colleges. Here, ornament does not obscure the building—it clarifies it. The carving follows the movement of the form, articulating and intensifying it. One perceives not an addition, but an unfolding. As Otto von Simson observed of Gothic architecture, ornament renders structure luminous, revealing its inner order rather than competing with it. By contrast, much modern construction replaces articulation with repetition. Surfaces remain flat and indifferent; buildings function, but they do not invite attention. What is lost here is not merely aesthetic, but moral. Ornament requires time, care, and the willingness to go beyond necessity. It is the visible sign that a building matters—that it was made not only to serve, but to be worthy of its place. In this sense, ornament is an expression of dedication, even of love. Its disappearance reflects a broader fragmentation of life, in which beauty is separated from use and confined to isolated domains. The recovery of ornament, therefore, cannot be achieved by imitation alone. It demands a recovery of vision: a recognition that form carries meaning, and that building is not merely technical production but an act of understanding. Only then can ornament return—not as decoration, but as necessity. For while the necessary sustains life, it is the beautiful that makes it worth living.
Notes
(1) Edgar De Bruyne, The Esthetics of the Middle Ages (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1969), 185.
(2) Ibid., 186.
(3) Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, trans. Michael Mitchell (London: Penguin Books, 2019 [1908]).
(4) Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover
Publications, 1986 [1923]), 95.
(5) Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 91.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid., 92.