Ornamental End

Lamenting (and imagining) a lost world of ornamentation:

We can imagine an alternative history in which demand for ornament remained constant across the twentieth century. Ornament would not have remained unchanged in these conditions. Natural stone would probably have continued to decline, although a revival might be underway as robot carving improved. Initially, natural stone would have been replaced by wood, glass, plaster, terra-cotta, and cast stone. As the century drew on, new materials like fiberglass and precast concrete might also have become important. Stock patterns would be ubiquitous for speculative housing and generic office buildings, but a good deal of bespoke work would still be done for high-end and public buildings. New suburban housing might not look all that different from how it looks today, but city centers would be unrecognizably altered, fantastically decorative places in which the ancient will to ornament was allied to unprecedented technical power.

"Modern" architecture can look more alien than inviting...