Importance of ornament

The Modern Movement in architecture had scarcely succeeded in abolishing ornament before people began to speculate about how and when it would return. In Britain, the historian Sir John Summerson, as a young journalist, found it hard to believe that architecture would be able to communicate without it beyond the initial period of purification which he and many others believed was a necessary transitional phase. In 1935, the Peter Jones store was fitted with outward-opening bronze casements in its ‘curtain wall’ with only sections of blank wall behind them, and the architects suggested that not only could the walls be repainted periodically in different colours, but also that patterned wallpaper could be used to dress up the building (it never happened, but it is not too late to try). Osbert Lancaster, more predictably, broadcast in 1951 to celebrate the death of modern architecture and the recovery of ornament in the Festival of Britain, and was denounced by the Architects’ Journal for this heresy.