Performative Ornament

Definition

Performative ornament names the conception of ornament Laura Garófalo-Khan assembles from Kent Bloomer's biophilic theory and her three contemporary exemplars: ornament that does not symbolize (the postmodern position) and does not merely decorate, but acts — a surface programme whose small, repetitive, rhythmic parts perform the work of connecting the interior's occupants to the non-human environment. Bloomer's prescription for the modern box: "small-scaled, repetitive, or rhythmic ornament that 'contests the material reality of the [modernist] box'" be layered over the hard structure "in order to subvert it, allowing for the multisensory experience necessary for effective biophilic design" — the box "dissolved from inside by what he calls the 'dynamic line work of ornament.'" Its three formal acts: "First is rhythmization (especially a driving syncopated formation of rhythm); second is a spectacle of changefulness …; and third is a composition of dynamic engagement or competition between different species of things. All of these … convey measures of indefiniteness, temporality, impermanence, mystery, ambivalence, and growth. None of them necessarily assert the order and harmony that is generally assumed to be a positive emblematic property of basic architecture, but all of them proclaim life, which is the subject of biophilia."

The chapter's three exemplars — "a small built work, an installation, and an unbuilt project" — are "radical expressions of performative ornament," and they share a defining freedom: "They do not address the environmental envelope, the structure that holds them up, or the exigencies of program. Their tactile, deep surfaces form part of a performative system that, like the grotto itself, is defined by dynamism and exuberance conscripted to create delight."

The three exemplars:

• Responsive ornament — Philip Beesley's Hylozoic Soil (and series): "a haptic wonderland" of "hundreds of feathery digitally fabricated units," with "microprocessors, proximity sensors, and globules housing chemical reactions" on "a net of mechanical acrylic components"; its "programmed activity engages the occupant in a delicate dance, like the Italian fountain grottoes with their orchestrated sprays and splashes"; "described as an artificial forest by its designer, it awakens not only the senses, but also the imagination, as it delves into the uncanny nature of a sentient environment." Its biophilic work: "The dissolution of the Cartesian bounding box obstructing biophilic integration of the natural and the human-made is accomplished through this shimmery interior landscape."
• Geometry undone — Rael San Fratello's SOL Grotto (Berkeley Botanical Gardens, 2012): a freestanding box (not embedded in the earth) whose boundary is "a discontinuous surface made of luminescent points and lines" — "over one thousand glass tubes of varied size embedded into a simple grid pattern," distorted by their own three-dimensionality, "the dynamic effect of the geometric aggregation of tubes resembl[ing] the flow of dancing shells arrayed in geometric patterns in historic shell houses." The tubes perform the grotto's water feature through "visual and aural manipulation," "evoking Plato's Allegory of the Cave where shadows, light, and sounds call reality into question"; they "behave like the thick earthen boundary of the subterranean space, providing refreshment as they infuse the space with cool air, provided by the Venturi effect"; and they "deliver unrecognizable images of the garden outside… an alternative image that dissolves the wall between the inside and the outside."
• Porous poché — Aybar Mateos's Bienvenidos al Sur (Spanish Pavilion proposal, Milan Expo 2015): "a literal garden room, an interior in the exterior; its set of connected rooms is formed by the landscape that provides an infrastructure for verdant growth," with "no continuous weather or thermal boundary, just a thicket composed of Spain's agricultural products forming domed spaces of varied size"; "the diffused boundary modulates moisture, light, air, smell, and sound… The architecture dissolves; what remains is a porous floral poché."

The theoretical frame: Frank Lloyd Wright links the mechanism to nature itself — "nature is excessive in its design. Like ornament, it fulfills a purpose through repetition, redundancy, and articulation of small performative parts." And the historiographic claim: "Architectural historians and theoreticians like Antoine Picon, Oleg Grabar, and Georg Vrachliotis tout ornament as an index of the prevalent ordering systems relevant to a given culture. The ordering system of today, bound to the endless variety of parametric functions, expresses emergent orders." Performative ornament is thus the grotto's historical surface programme (shell work, water plays) continued by digital means — the chapter's inheritance claim, running through Kiesler's Grotto of Meditation for New Harmony (1964) as "the predecessor of the thin-shelled constructs popularized by multiple digital fabrication techniques today."

Key Thinkers

• Laura Garófalo-Khan — the concept's assembler: Bloomer's theory joined to the grotto typology and three contemporary exemplars.
• Kent Bloomer — the ornament-theorist whose "dynamic line work" and three formal acts the concept crystallizes ("The Picture Window," 2008; "Ornament" and "Ornament as Distinct From Decoration," 2014, per the chapter's notes); not yet paged (see log).
• Philip Beesley — the installation designer: Hylozoic Soil and the series of responsive, chemically active, sensor-laden "artificial forest" environments (see also interactive-architecture via Carraher's Hylozoic Veil).
• Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello (Rael San Fratello Architects) — SOL Grotto (2012); not yet paged (see log).
• Aybar Mateos Arquitectos — Bienvenidos al Sur (2015, unbuilt); not yet paged (see log).
• Antoine Picon, Oleg Grabar, Georg Vrachliotis — the historiographic trio: "ornament as an index of the prevalent ordering systems relevant to a given culture"; not yet paged (see log).
• Peter Eisenman — the contrast case: where Eisenman's unnatural nature refuses to represent nature, Garófalo-Khan's grotto-esque structures "dismiss the dichotomy of art and nature."

Related Concepts

• architectural-ornament — the parent concept: performative ornament is its third historical position beyond purity (Loos) and symbol (Venturi) — ornament as act.
• biophilia — the warrant: ornament as "the subject of biophilia"'s proclamation of life; the "biophilization of the interior."
• artificial-grotto — the typology whose surface programme performative ornament continues.
• interactive-architecture — the technological register: proximity sensors, programmed activity, responsive units (Hylozoic Soil) — ornament as run-time performer.
• digital-fabrication — the enabling production: "feathery digitally fabricated units," thin-shelled constructs, parametrically varied parts.
• emergence — the ornament's contemporary logic: "the endless variety of parametric functions, expresses emergent orders."
• boundaries — ornament as "performative boundary": SOL Grotto's tube wall and Bienvenidos al Sur's thicket as boundaries that modulate rather than divide.
• inside-outside-dialectic — the ornament's spatial work: images "that dissolve the wall between the inside and the outside."
• atmosphere — the ornament's ambient output: "mediated experience of water, coolness, and light"; modulated "moisture, light, air, smell, and sound."
• picture-window — the condition the ornament cures: visual distantiation and sensual disconnection.
• event-space — the ornament's temporal home: the grotto as event space, not quotidian dwelling.
• uncanny — Hylozoic Soil's horizon: "the uncanny nature of a sentient environment."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — the concept's founding source: Bloomer's three formal acts (p. 260 of the source essay, via the chapter's notes); the three exemplars (Hylozoic Soil, SOL Grotto, Bienvenidos al Sur); Wright's excess-of-nature link; the Picon/Grabar/Vrachliotis index thesis; the Kiesler lineage.
• source-notes/brownell-2018-living-rooms-hypernaturalization
• source-notes/olsen-2018-on-technological-limits

Open Questions

• Bloomer's ornament "proclaim[s] life" by conveying "indefiniteness, temporality, impermanence, mystery, ambivalence, and growth" — is this ornament's content (what it represents) or its behaviour (what it does)? The exemplars suggest behaviour; the vocabulary of proclamation suggests representation. Can ornament be truly performative, or is performance here a metaphor for sensorial variability?
• "None of them necessarily assert the order and harmony that is generally assumed to be a positive emblematic property of basic architecture" — does performative ornament therefore stand against the classical order-effect entirely, and what remains of the architectural when ornament "contests the material reality of the box"?
• If ornament is "an index of the prevalent ordering systems" (Picon, Grabar, Vrachliotis), parametric ornament indexes emergent orders — is that an aesthetic claim, a historiographic method, or a naturalization of computation (reading the algorithm's output as nature's own complexity)?
• The three exemplars are free of "the environmental envelope, the structure that holds them up, or the exigencies of program" — is performative ornament therefore parasitic on an architecture it refuses to be (an ornament without a host building), and can it survive contact with envelope, structure, and program?