Response to Adolf Loo's "Ornaments and Crime"

Adolf Loo’s Ornament and Crime depicted an absolutist view on ornamentation and its effect on the society - mainly on economical sides - at large. He made clear his argument in the early part of his thesis. 

“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use.”

Loo backed this up by making comparisons between Papuans and the Modern man, but seeing this from the fact that Adolf Loo spoke from a greatly prejudiced and racist point of view, I do not totally agree, as I think that Loo have taken the Papuan out of their context and put them in ours instead, which, of cause, would not yield tangible and reasonable results. A papuan who tattoos on his face was compared to a modern, tattooed man: “To us the Papuan is amoral...The Papuan tattoos his skin....He is no criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate.” But after all, who are we to say that the Papuan is amoral. Even though their cultural development may not be up to our level, we should recognize the norms of their society - in this case, the scarification was perfectly moral, being no different from our society’s crave for individuality that has spawned a field of etiquette we called ‘fashion’. The same for tattoo men - Loo provided no evidence whatsoever backing up his claim on the  link between tattooing and criminal conviction.

The main argument stated that ornamentation is wasteful in terms of manpower, production time, material, cost. It also causes its subjects to be discarded or to go out of style after some time.If I were to be in the shoes of an absolutist, I would strongly agree with what Loo said - all were logical and sound. However, in a real society, we all seek to create our own identity, much through what we do and use in our daily life. Therefore, ornamentation occurs in clothing brands, architectural details, or meticulous food preparation. Indeed, it might prove to be the end of the civilized world if all its citizens are reduced to eating roast beef and butter vegetables. The key point here is that, a middle line must be found and adhered to, in which expensive and valuable objects of long term used, such as, as exemplified in the thesis, a wooden working desk, should have a form that is bearable “for as long as it last physically”. On the contrary, cheaper items such as a schoolbag can be made decorative, as it does not demand investment in expensive material or production from a highly skilled craftsman. In today’s world all would agree that our society and the physical world in which it resides in would be a boring place if not for the diversity created through the process of ornamentation.

Response to Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus to Our House"

“I once saw the owners of [“modern” houses] driven to the edge of sensory deprivation by the white & lightness & leanness & cleanness & bareness & sparseness of it all. They became desperate for an antidote, such as coziness and colour.”

                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                 -Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe’s “From Bauhaus to Our House” explores chronologically the development of  architecture’s International and Modern style, primarily focusing on one, single quality that architects have sought about to bring into their ‘new’ design- “non-bourgeoisity”. First outlining the cause of the upheaval against aristocratic architecture, Wolfe went on to mock the race to achieve the Bauhaus quality and to publish new manifestos - “The battle to be the least bourgeois of all became somewhat loony.”. Many of the time, whether something is bourgeoise or not is subjected to the reasoning and the perception of each designer or critic. I do agree here and think that how “the building design itself [has been] directed at “illustrating this month’s Theory of the Century” has resulted in some impractical constructions while those that are “worth it” are left in the shadows. Take the infamous Pruitt-Igoe project as an example. The scale itself, reflecting the economicalness and the grandeur of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, is foreshadowing - a complex consisting of 33 buildings each 11 stories high, all laid out on a 57-acre land. The structure is designed with covered walkways being the main circulation route which only provides a public space to commit crime. The skip-stop lift system, which only stop at the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th floor, initially designed to encourage intermingling of residents, only add to the problem. It was later found that this system is unsuitable and dangerous, as it provides opportunity for planned molestation. Of course, such rigid system that is causing problem is pulled down in 1972.

To speak of American’s perception of the European as those that have accomplished a higher level of artistic and intellectual achievement , Wolfe’s text only endorse and give evidence to such phenomenon. In fact, this is used as the very reason of how the Bauhaus movement is imported into the American culture. Wolfe criticises how this is unsuitable, as the context in which the architecture is put in is different. The state of Europe at that moment when the movement was founded lend itself nicely to the school’s motto: “starting from zero” - Germany in rubbles, “crushed in the war and humiliated at the Versailles”, while America rises from the mist of the war unharmed, placing herself at the top of the Western world. 

However, the American was not greatly influenced, at least, in the mid- and latter part of the 20th century, as we see the emergence of new and radical, though casted into anathema at the time, architects such as Eero Saarinen and Edward Stone. I was particularly impresses by how Saarinen managed to break out of the cuboid mold and instead establish user-environment dialogues through the use of space and form. His TWA terminal significantly defied the Modernist’s ideal - though it made use of honest materials (concrete, metal and glass), the structure exhibits a curve-linear roof (instead of a flat-topped one) and an expressionistic zoomorphism- an eagle which makes the form of the architecture itself. These kinds of building provides the much needed “antidote”, giving us structures that are not engulfed by the “white & lightness & leanness & cleanness & bareness & sparseness”, as said by Wolfe, “of it all”.