Adolf Loos (1870 – 1933) believed all ornamentation that had been preserved from the past was useless. To him ornamented furnishings served little purpose other than pleasing the eye and representing wealth. Items of the working class were made to serve a purpose and had no need for ornamentation. This meant they were discarded and the knowledge lost. A.Loos (1910) We possess no carpenter's benches of the Carolingian period; instead any rubbish which had even the smallest ornament was collected, cleaned and displayed in ostentatious palaces that were built for them, people walked sadly amongst the display cabinets. The Industrial Design Reader, p.76.
Loos believed in the discontinuation of ornamentation and his resolution to this was to promote a style without it. He makes a very valid point with how much effort goes into these processes; it uses more material, time and as a result more money. Also who was affected by this were the workers, not spending the extra time to decorate these things meant they could put their efforts into making the objects more reliable, make more of them and also work less hours.
I thought this sounded like a great idea however there is a certain joy in the making of something that shouldn’t be discarded. Without joy in your work it becomes strenuous and repetitive and you soon lose interest, making everything else seem that much worse. I believe that ornamentation can be celebrated through the experimentation and knowledge of material. Also it needs to be made with the same understanding to create the form it collaborates with. Then again this combination would be nothing with out the frame of a solid construction because the real beauty about an object is how it is made.
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