Architecture cannot be separated from the culture it is in. As the cultural setting changes, the aesthetic composition, the way of engaging the setting needs to be changed. Therefore certain terms should be redefined.

 

Farshid Moussavi pointed out the extended function of ornament. Ornament today is different from how it was understood before. For Gottfried Semper, building’s functional structural organization is subordinate to the artistic and semiotic goals. For the Modernist, according to Adolf Loos, ornament was understood as a device that emphasizes individuality, which should be suppressed at that particular culture. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, however, understood form (ornamental) as means of representation, isolated from the building’s functional aspect.

 

Moussavi, however, argues ornament in a functional aspect that embodies the affects and sensations that is created by individual experiences, not the traditional utilitarian functional aspect of ornament. It is beyond the architect’s intention. It is about the sensorial experience through the perception of form.

 

This thesis focuses on broadening the traditional relationship between architecture and people (individual) through Moussavi's reinterpretation of ornament, and specifically, this thesis engages the possibility of scale as a type of contemporary ornament, in the sense that a contemporary ornament might have a sensorial affect that is not based on function.  Scale, pertaining to human scale, is one of the most important elements in architecture. The way human perceive a mass cannot be understood without a relative scale. Scale, unrelated to size, can also be understood as the density of the materials, transparency and structure.  But, scale, in the digital age, is not a necessary part of design.  It's not inherent to modeling software, and so is added after, in the same way that ornament was traditionally understood in modernist doctrine.  Scale is seen in this thesis as a potential generator of tremendous personal affect and human perception. It is the ornament of the future.

 

The thesis takes on Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris as a typological study of a church built between 1163 - 1345 with an abundance of traditionally defined ornaments. These ornaments are used as a tool for two different scalar interpretations: 1) a play of scale as a tool to prove the flexibility of small elements in creating larger objects and vice versa; 2) a play of scale in part of a larger context to create different various affects.

 

 

 

 

Moussavi, Farshid, and Michael Kubo. The Function of Ornament. Barcelona: Actar, 2006. Print.

 

Semper, Gottfried. The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.

 

Picon, Antoine. Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity. 1st ed. N.p.: Wiley, 2013. Print.