Mies van der Rohe and Ornamentation

 Mies van der Rohe is a master of the modern architecture. He likes simple, plain and makes everything minimal just like what he says “Less is more”.  Most of his building is as simple as a glass box and this is what makes him became famous. In his architectural work, he always uses an honest material, which means that you can see every single detail in his architecture.  He normally put in every piece of construction material together without any painted or covered on. The purpose of doing this is because he wants his building to be as a book, which people can come and learned from it. Mies’s building looked so stunning by itself, so there is no need for any ornament involved. The more decoration will take people’s attention away, which lead to the failure of the architecture. Beside this people will only care about the ornament and forget about the function of the building.

However, Mies seems not interested in any house decoration. But, in fact, he also uses it unclearly. The decoration is carefully camouflaged along with the building, so that the building still looks modern. In this case, I feel like Mies just had broken his own rule because the main thing about being a modernist is to make everything functional and turn back against every kind of the ornament. But maybe this is an exception for those rules, which the main purpose of the rule anti-decoration is that it will take the attention away. For Mies, his decoration is become one part of the architecture and it’s enhance the aesthetic of the building itself.

In the conclusion, the ornament is acceptable as long as it not takes attention away from the building. Otherwise the design of the building will not significant any more.