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1、INTRODUCTION Urban design, the art of city building, is concerned with the methods used to organize and structure the urban realm as distinct from the detailed design of the private domain. This book deals with one aspect of urban design: the role, function and form of ornament and decoration in the
2、 city. The book is written from the perspective that all development should be judged as an attempt to decorate the city. Alexander has suggested that each increment of development should aim to heal or make whole the city (Alexander, 1987). The thesis presented here accepts this notion but advocate
3、s the primacy of ornament and decoration in the process of unify- ing parts of the city into comprehensive wholes. The thesis that each increment of development should be seen as an attempt to decorate the city does not conflict with the idea that urban develop- ment results from consideration of su
4、ch practical matters as function, use, cost, economic location and available finance: the city would stagnate and die without due consideration being given to these prerequisites of development. However, having solved the practicalities of development, the ultimate criterion for evaluating any addit
5、ion to the city is whether that increment decorates the city. Ornament and decoration, when used to heal the city has three interrelated functions. They are: to go beyond the decoration of individual buildings and to enrich the decorative themes of a locality; to enhance the physical, social and spi
6、ritual qualities of location, that is, to strengthen the genius loci, and thirdly to develop the legibility and imageability of the city. Prior to the twentieth century, the conscious effort to decorate was an intrinsic part of large scale development (Figure 1.1). In the twenti- eth century, with e
7、xceptions, it would appear the primacy of decoration has been replaced in urban development by other, mainly economic interests. It may be that we have to look back to the past to rediscover the rationale for decoration. Without such a rationale, decoration and ornament in the city may be seen as fu
8、ssy, precious and florid, a veneer to cover cheap and shoddy development. For the purpose of this book, ornament and decoration will be taken to mean the ways in which the main elements within the city are arranged to form a pleasing and memorable pattern. The analysis of ornamentation and decoratio
9、n in the city will be structured around Lynchs notion of urban legibility (Lynch, 1960). The text will therefore be based upon the five components Lynch suggested as being key to imageability: the path, the node, the edge, the 1 THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ORNAMENT AND DECORATION 1 landmark and the dis
10、trict. The legible city, that is, the city easily visualized in the minds eye has, according to Lynch, a clearly defined, easily recognized and distinctive perceptual structure. To a certain degree the reading or understanding of a city is personal but with a clearly structured city, the result, it
11、is argued, is a city population with a shared set of images. It is this shared image which is one of the concerns of urban design. This book explores the possibility for ornament and decoration to emphasize and clarify the five components and so strengthen the citys image and enhance its attraction
12、for citizen and visitor. The two words decoration and ornament appear in the title of this book. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, both words have a similar meaning: embellishment. Decoration, however, has everyday associations: one decorates the home, the living room, the Christma
13、s tree, or the wedding cake. Ornament, on the other hand, has more formal overtones: the ornamental work associated with certain architectural styles or the work of individual architects. This book accepts this subtle difference in meaning and uses ornament to mean the installation of sculpture, fou
14、ntains, obelisks and similar features into the urban scene. Decoration is used to describe populist activities such as the placing of gnomes in the front garden, topiary work or decorating the city for festivals such as Christmas and Diwali. Obviously there are large areas of overlap: a precise boun
15、dary between formal ornamentation and informal decoration is not possible, nor indeed, would it be desirable. Figure 1.1 Decorative railings, Nancy U R B A N D E S I G N : O R N A M E N T A N D D E C O R A T I O N 2 Camillo Sitte, a Viennese architect writing in the 1890s, argued that the main ornam
16、ents of a city are its streets and squares (Sitte, 1901). Others would no doubt, add to Sittes list of city ornaments and include, for example, parks, waterways and its main civic buildings. Even within his apparently limited palette Sitte was deeply concerned with the embell- ishment of streets and
17、 squares. He made an exhaus- tive analysis of the location of sculpture and fountains in urban spaces. He was equally concerned with the badly sited public building which, in his view, debased the urban scene. The great piece of sculpture or elaborate fountain are not the only features that decorate
18、 the city streets and squares. More mundanely, but of great importance for the quality of the urban scene, are items of street furni- ture such as telephone boxes, railings, signs and seats, or soft landscape features such as trees and shrubs. Adshead writing in 1911 made this important point about
19、the furnishing of the street: We must bear in mind that all objects in the street utilitarian or otherwise are things to be seen parts of an organic whole, each having their respective part and place. Olympus, Athens and Rome were each crowded with such objects, arranged for the most part in picture
20、sque association (Adshead, 1911a). DECORATION FOR VISUAL PLEASURE The most obvious, and perhaps the most important, dimension of decoration is its contribution to formal qualities, such as visual order or unity, proportion, scale, contrast, balance and rhythm. Ornament and decoration also have the c
21、apacity to unleash feelings, trigger reactions, feed the memory and stimulate the imagination. Decoration at one level is an activity giving visual pleasure, a formal physical process for visual delight; an activity for its own sake requiring no outside or higher authority to justify its existence.
22、Attitudes to the embellishment of cities with ornament and decoration range from a puritanical iconoclasm which sees such embellishment as decadent and pernicious, to one of joyous pleasure in the experience of complex, intricate and extrava- gant patterning. The Modern Movement (or movements) in ar
23、chitecture, epitomized by the writings of Le Corbusier, the pronouncements of CIAM, the work of the Bauhaus together with the much criticized post-Second World War city devel- opments in Europe, collectively reflect a time when ornament and decoration in architecture was eschewed. In Britain, the Mo
24、dern Movement in architecture can be seen as a reaction to the over- elaborate, and some would say debased, work of the nineteenth-century architects and their twenti- eth-century followers. Pugin writing in the mid- nineteenth century attacked much that he saw as vulgar in works of his own day, des
25、cribing them as those inexhaustible mines of bad taste (Pugin, 1841b). There may be a need for periods of puritan- ical zeal to rid city architecture of self-indulgent excess in decorative effects. Such periods allow time to reassess the value and role of decoration and ornament in the city. This bo
26、ok, therefore, rejects the notion that there is something inherently immoral in decoration. Furthermore, it affirms with Scruton (1979) that there is no place in aesthetic debate for the moral argument. Decoration and ornament on buildings is properly enjoyed for its own sake whether it is the intri
27、cate black and white patterns of the half timbered village, such as Weobley, or the traceried cast-iron arcades of Lord Street, Southport. A satura- tion of complex decoration stimulates primitive pleasure in the viewer. This book seeks to bring order where possible to this primitive activity. It is
28、 argued that from the theoretical and philosophical perspective so established it is possible to appreci- ate more fully the aesthetic experience of city ornament, supplementing with thought and judge- ment the undoubted sensuous and immediate pleasure of visual complexity. Such appreciation may the
29、n provide the basis for the organized use of ornament and decoration in future developments. T H E O R Y A N D P H I L O S O P H Y O F O R N A M E N T A N D D E C O R A T I O N 3 The aesthetic experience and visual appeal of decoration depends upon four factors. The first is the quality of the space
30、 which is both the setting for the decoration and which in turn is enhanced by it. The second is the physical form and the pattern of the decoration. The third is the circum- stances under which the decoration is seen; for instance, weather conditions, particularly the quality of the light. The four
31、th factor relates to the percep- tual framework of the observer, his or her mood, how he or she sees and what has been seen before. PHYSICAL VARIABLES OF DECORATION UNITY While a full discussion of basic design concepts and their relationship to urban design has appeared elsewhere (Moughtin, 1992),
32、it is proposed in this text to relate them directly to ornament and decora- tion. Probably the most important quality of any work of art is the clear expression of a single idea: any idea in any medium must, a priori, be complete, it cannot be composed of scattered elements without relation to each
33、other. Urban design aims therefore to express complete unity in its compositions. Theorists such as Lynch, Alexander and Norberg-Schulz have tried to come to terms with the complexity of the concept of unity when applied to the field of urban design (Lynch, 1960; Alexander et al. 1987, Norberg-Schul
34、z, 1980). For such writers, the study of human perception is important for the understanding of unity. The Gestalt school of psychology stresses the simplicity of visible form in the geometrical sense for produc- ing clarity and singularity to distinguish figure from background. (Katz, 1950). Man, i
35、n order to orientate in the city, of necessity reduces the environment to an understandable simple pattern of signs and clues. In the words of Norberg-Schulz (1971): If we want to interpret these basic results of perception psychology in more general terms, we may say that the elementary organizatio
36、nal schemata consist of the establishment of centres or places (proximity), directions or paths (continuity) and areas or domains (enclosure). Composition in urban design is the art, first of all, of creating visual unity out of a diversity of elements. For this purpose, a common theme for decoratio
37、n is important to reinforce the normal tendency to see, understand and respond to vivid and coherent images. Secondly, it is to bring together these lesser unities into a city or town structure which itself is a visual and organizational unity. The goal of urban design has been given by Lynch as the
38、 development of a strong urban image. The structure of a pattern of decorative treatment with related themes emphasizing Lynchs five components is important for making the city whole in Alexanders (1987) terms and more imageable in Lynchs terminology (1960). PROPORTION An important characteristic of
39、 unity is the propor- tion of the parts or elements which make up a composition. Proportion is the method by which visual order is established, giving due weight to the compositional elements. For example, as Wlfflin (1964) points out: The Renaissance took delight in a system of greater and lesser p
40、arts, in which the small prepared one for the large by prefiguring the form of the whole. Following the laws of propor- tion, some central idea, a visual element or group of related elements should dominate the whole compo- sition. In urban design the dominant may be the main town square around whic
41、h the main civic buildings are arranged. Equally important for unity is the dominance of one decorative theme: the repeti- tion of roof materials, pitch, skyline, ridge, verge and eaves details; the consistent use of floorscape materials and patterning; and the choice of street fittings of compatibl
42、e form (Figure 1.2). The designers task is to unify floor, walls and fittings in urban spaces which meet functional and symbolic requirements so that they are pleasing and attrac- tive. The visual understanding of the city improves when the main structural elements are emphasized U R B A N D E S I G
43、 N : O R N A M E N T A N D D E C O R A T I O N 4 using ornament and decoration. It is argued here that visual pleasure is related to this understanding of city structure. SCALE Scale depends upon the comparison of one set of dimensions with another set. Urban design is concerned with human scale, th
44、at is, the relation- ship of buildings and urban space to the size of a human being. Man is therefore the measure used for the built environment. The visual qualities of urban space and its architectural envelope and the act of healing or making whole the city are both closely related to the correct
45、 scaling of the urban landscape. Decoration and ornament play an impor- tant part in creating human scale in an area. Taking man as the measure of scale, then for scale to be determined man must be visible. The mathemat- ics for the measurement of scale has its origins in the work of Maertens (1884)
46、. Maertens found that we cannot distinguish any object at a distance more than 3500 times its smallest dimension. The limitations set by optical geometry define the varieties of urban scale. The nasal bone, according to Maertens, is a critical feature for the recognition of the individual. It is pos
47、si- ble to distinguish individuals at about 12m (40ft) recognizing facial expressions; at about 22.5m (75ft) a person can still be recognized but at about 35m (115 ft) the face becomes featureless while at 135 metres (445ft) body gestures only can still be discerned. Finally it is possible to see pe
48、ople and recognize them as such from up to about 1200 metres (4000ft). Figure 1.2 Chipping Campden T H E O R Y A N D P H I L O S O P H Y O F O R N A M E N T A N D D E C O R A T I O N 5 The perception of the unity or wholeness of a building according to the theory developed by classical writers assum
49、ed a static viewer who at a glance could take in the whole composition of the faade. This condition is achieved when the viewer is at a distance from the building of about twice its height. At this distance a line from the building to the viewer makes an angle of 27 with a horizontal floor plane. According to Blumenfeld (1953), who followed this line of reasoning, the height of a building should be 9 m (30 ft) if it is being seen at a distance of 22 m (72 ft). For more intimate condi- tions where recognition of ones neighbours facial expressions is u