After its famous denunciation by Adolf Loos, ornament seemed a wasteful frivolity to most architects and designers. But that attitude has lost steam in recent years, as firms derive much of their revenue by building in places with a healthier regard for pattern and decoration. Right at the outset, this scholarly tome firmly establishes the vitality of architectural ornament today, ... Read moreleaving readers to peruse premodern histories after having shed their Loosian prejudice.
Metropolis [A] handsome book.
Peter Parker, A Magazine for RIBA Friends of Architecture [An] important volume ... seamlessly edited by Necipo?lu and Payne, [the book] covers an unprecedented and stringent collection of scholarly research and reflection. It is not a history of ornament per se, but rather a rigorous and sometimes cautionary record of the history of ornament's shifting meaning and theoretical basis. This volume assesses ornament as a legitimate aspect of designing the future built environment. It is neither elegy nor encyclopedia; the purpose instead is summed up simply in the editors' introduction as 'to address what ornament does [and did].' The result is a summons to surrender preconceived notions about ornament as somehow apart from or inferior to architecture in its full range of possible expression.
Paul Gunther, Architect's Newspaper An exceptionally stimulating ... collection of essays on a topic that is certain to be of increasing importance to our discipline.
Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Show Less