In 1908, Adolf Loos published a polemic modern architecture pamphlet titled “Ornament and Crime”. Ornamentation, he argues, is redundant, cost-intensive kitschy decoration, and an expression of the cultural backwardness which can be found in primitive cultures, and which is not representative of modern man. “The barbarian era,” the architect concludes, “is finally past.”

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Only a few years later, Siegfried Kracauer showed that even the modern era, which strives for practicality and rationalization, produces ornaments on its surface. He argues that these ornamentations are an expression of modern mass society, visual representations of modern life and its realities. The ornamentation is not taken into consideration by the masses who produce it. It develops without their knowledge. They do not produce it consciously or on purpose, which is why it resembles “the aerial shots of landscapes and cities”, in which patterns only emerge for the distant viewer. more »