What do fashionable wall decorations, ornamental iPod sleeves, and tattoos have in common? They are a sign of decadence and latent criminality. The famous Austrian architect Adolf Loos could have thought so!
Adolf Loos wrote his essay Ornament and Crime in 1908. That, and his other essays, had a huge impact on architecture and design for decades to come. He starts by describing the development of a human, from embryo to an eight-year-old. A child goes through the stages of the development of civilization from Papuan to Voltaire.
“A child is amoral. A Papuan too, for us. The Papuan slaughters his enemies and devours them. He is not a criminal. But if a modern person slaughters someone and devours him, he is a criminal or a degenerate. The Papuan covers his skin with tattoos, his boat, his oars, in short everything he can lay his hands on. He is no criminal. The modern person who tattoos himself is either a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons in which eighty percent of the inmates have tattoos. People with tattoos not in prison are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats.”
In other words, ornament is a sign of primitiveness and thus not suitable for modern man. Loos also argues that ornaments make clothing, tableware, and furniture quickly obsolete and thus economically unsustainable.
Loos claimed that ornaments harmed their producers, the craftsmen.
“Since ornament is no longer a natural product of our culture, but a symptom of backwardness or degeneracy, the craftsman producing the ornament is not fairly rewarded for his labour. The condition among wood carvers and turners, the criminally low rates paid to embroiderers and lace makers are well-known. An ornamental craftsman has to work for twenty hours to reach the pay a modern worker earns in eight […] The result of omitting decoration is a reduction in working hours and an increase in wages.”
The original reasoning behind the disdain for decoration is probably forgotten. Modern design, however, still seems to prefer austere, clean, and unornamented things.
Quotations are from Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime
