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.

This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern Euroamerican traditions with their Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican counterparts. At a time when ornament has re-emerged in architectural practice and is a topic of growing interest to art and architectural historians, the book reveals how the long history of ornament illuminates its global resurgence today. Organized by thematic sections on the significance, influence, and role of ornament, the book addresses ornament's current revival in architecture, its historiography and theories, its transcontinental mobility in medieval and early modern Europe and the Middle East, and its place in the context of industrialization and modernism. Throughout, Histories of Ornament emphasizes the portability and politics of ornament, figuration versus abstraction, cross-cultural dialogues, and the constant negotiation of local and global traditions. Featuring original essays by more than two dozen scholars from around the world, this authoritative and wide-ranging book provides an indispensable reference on the histories of ornament in a global context. Contributors include: Michele Bacci (Fribourg University); Anna Contadini (University of London); Thomas B. F. Cummins (Harvard); Chanchal Dadlani (Wake Forest); Daniela del Pesco (Universita degli Studi Roma Tre); Vittoria Di Palma (USC); Anne Dunlop (University of Melbourne); Marzia Faietti (University of Bologna); María Judith Feliciano (independent scholar); Finbarr Barry Flood (NYU); Jonathan Hay (NYU); Christopher P. Heuer (Clark Art); Rémi Labrusse (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense); Gülru Necipoğlu (Harvard); Marco Rosario Nobile (University of Palermo); Oya Pancaroğlu (Bosphorus University); Spyros Papapetros (Princeton); Alina Payne (Harvard); Antoine Picon (Harvard); David Pullins (Harvard); Jennifer L. Roberts (Harvard); David J. Roxburgh (Harvard); Hashim Sarkis (MIT); Robin Schuldenfrei (Courtauld); Avinoam Shalem (Columbia); and Gerhard Wolf (KHI, Florence).