Free

21 May 2013, 6pm – 7pm

RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London

While not strictly about houses, this talk at the RIBA titled the ‘Four Elements of Ornament, Meaning and Eloquence in Architecture’, will provide a crucial understanding into the removal of ornament from architecture that shaped modern housing in the twentieth century. In the last century, Oliver Domeisen believes ‘architecture lost an entire language that was uniquely able to convey intrinsic and extrinsic meaning beyond the categories of proportion, material and space.’ This talk attempts to trace and argue that there is a re-emergence of decoration, pattern and architectural ornament underway in contemporary practice. The talk will propose a theoretical framework that defines the core elements of ornament based on historical precedent in an attempt to provide a shared platform upon which this renewed design discipline may thrive.

Oliver Domeisen is the Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism at the V&A. He is also a thesis advisor and history and theory course lecturer for the MArch and BSc programmes at the Bartlett, UCL. He is the founder of dlm architectural designers Ltd and previously worked as a Unit Master at the AA and as a project architect for Zaha Hadid Architects. He has lectured and published on the topic of architectural ornament in the UK and abroad.

For more information and to book a free place, visit: RIBA