Ornament and craft : digital design and the profession

The separation of ornament from Modern architecture declared famously in Adolf Loos' essay "Ornament and Crime" placed space as the primary concern of architecture, with evidence of craftsmanship and symbolism removed from the canonical and conventional public buildings of the past century. Yet, Harvard Graduate School of Design's historian Professor Antoine Picon notes the widespread return of ornamental expression in architecture today is "inseparable from the massive diffusion of the computer" and furthered by a "weakening in the tectonic approach and the increased importance attached to surface." In Cellular Tessellation (CT)"”a project developed for Vivid Sydney 2014, an 18-day festival of light, music and ideas" this contemporary problem of the separation of surface from structure was addressed as a core area of interest, as were ornament and the expressive potential of architecture through digitally enabled craftsmanship.