The Life of Ornament

An undergraduate thesis project investigating the role of ornament in contemporary architecture, concluding that ornament must transition from classical symbolic meaning into experiences of meaningfulness. Ornamental experience can happen when the routines of daily life become ritualistic through programs that punctuate habits with moments of profundity. Therefore, 3 typologies are chosen: the laundromat, the library, and the bathhouse. These are places that exist at unique intersections between the individual and the collective, and are firmly rooted in their locality. Looking at ornament as both a noun and a verb of ornamental experience, the project uses strategies of: 

• labyrinthine movement that presences people in time and their actions

• participatory ornament - moments where users create the ornament itself through their choices, the collective emerging through individuality

• pareidolic illusions - fragmentary patterns and forms that allow individual meaningfulness to emerge through interpretation

The project is sited in Bakersfield, CA to investigate how ornament can enhance daily rhythms in a center of agricultural and industrial production and as the place I know and love.

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The laundromat is thought of as less a place of waiting and more as a social space. The concept centers on the idea of a folding central table containing all the activities done in a laundromat where users negotiate the formal affordances of the table to fit their needs and desires.

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The library is thought of as a memory-tending space where columbariums and reading nooks are dispersed throughout the space to both sanctify the act of reading and make visiting the memories of loved ones more rooted in daily life. Below grade, more dense bookshelves are organized in a labyrinthine manner that emphasizes the journey of discovery of knowledge.

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The bathhouse treats water as a sacred resource given the conditions of drought and heat in the city. Visitors proceed from washing their hands to misting gardens to full immersion in pools, guided by the movement of the water through space. In this way, the bathhouse becomes more intimate of an experience as people find oases of their own within the collective.