The very thing that modernity attempted to abolish at the beginning of the machine age is making a comeback in architecture and design: the ornament. Whenever debates over ornament break out, it is a sign of a crisis. That theme runs like a thread through the essays collected in the book Ornament Today. Ornaments are not aesthetic events that affect style and taste but are rather symptoms that reveal a culture in transformation. Ornaments reveal changes, shifts, and rejections of culture.
The book is edited by Jörg H. Gleiter (Free University of Bozen-Bolzan/TU Berlin). It features essays by Mario Carpo (Yale University), Ingeborg Rocker (Harvard University), Elisabetta di Stefano (University of Palermo), Martin Kirves (University of Basel), Jan Bovelet (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) and Jörg Gleiter (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano/Technical University Berlin).
Art directed and designed by Thomas Kronbichler with Martin Kerschbaumer, printed in Italy on Munken Paper with two Pantone colours and foil stamp cover.
