Embellishment is a basic human need. Why was it banished from modern architecture?

The first guide to decorating with architectural details--from stone gargoyles and wrought-iron work to colorful terra-cotta tiles--items often found in salvage yards, demolition sites, or estate auctions. This practical handbook teaches how to evaluate, buy, and install these fabulous artifacts. 150 full-color photos. 25 illustrations.

Yet during the twentieth century, ornament was scorned (Adolf Loos famously called it "crime") and its study all but eliminated from art and architecture curricula. What happened - and must we live with the result? Is ornament dead?".

For architects, historians, preservationists, students or homeowners, this richly illustrated two-part dictionary makes it easy to identify a specific architectural detail. This work allows you to visually identify a particular building element in a series of illustrations. Once the visual identification is made, the name of the term is given, making it simple to look up in the traditional architectural dictionary section of the book. The illustrations are arranged by main categories with common labels--windows and doors; walls; roofs; columns; stairs; ornament and moldings; and arches, vaults and domes. This broad range of architectural illustrations allows the work to function not only as a traditional architectural dictionary, but also as a design source or as an overview of architectural ornament and detailing.

A richly illustrated study of architectural ornament in the late Middle Ages.

An unprecedented homage to modernist architecture from the 1920s up to the present day Ornament Is Crime is a celebration and a thought-provoking reappraisal of modernist architecture. The book proposes that modernism need no longer be confined by traditional definitions, and can be seen in both the iconic works of the modernist canon by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, as well as in the work of some of the best contemporary architects of the twenty-first century. This book is a visual manifesto and a celebration of the most important architectural movement in modern history.