concept
active
concept:ornament-as-whole-building-qualityornament (as whole-building quality)
Not an applied decoration, but the inherent beauty of a building's geometric structure; the building itself as ornament.
Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count
Thinkers (1)
thinker
- Christopher Alexanderstudies
Claims (1)
claim
- A fundamental redefinition of ornament: the entire building, in its microstructure, is an ornament.
Related by similarity (8)
cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edgeEntities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.
- Radical claim that the highest function of a building is to be an ornament in the profound sense.
- Load-bearing articulation of Alexander's redefinition of ornament.
- The decorative, formal beauty of a thing, shown to be inseparable from function.
- Tacit Assumption 7: Ornament and function in a building are separate and unrelated categories.claim0.808Seventh assumption, a cosmological split that leads to arbitrary decoration and dead functionalism.
- Claim that understanding ornament means understanding the principles of living structure.
- The conclusion of the argument that no real separation exists.
- Ornament and function arise from a single evolving morphology; in a living building they are one.claim0.780The alternative to the mechanistic split, crucial for a vital architecture.
- Ornament is the detail that forms as the process constantly refines the centers that are there during making.