Why is simple decoration so rare in recent work?

I think the author might be making the common assumption that other people hold the same preferences they do. In the footnotes they speculate that most people prefer decorated objects but buy plain ones "to appear normal". Is it really so bizzare to suggest that many people actually prefer the clean, simple aesthetic?

One example shows some patterned plates. If you told me I could buy those patterned plates for $1, and the same plate but perfectly white for $10, and no-one but me would ever see or use them, I would take the $10 plates every time. I find the patterns annoying and distracting, especially for a surface which I want to ensure is clean.

On the streetlight example, I think the difference there is less a change in aesthetic and more a change in cultural expectations around public works. If you built the ornate street lamps today, even if it was in style, it would likely be decried as "unnessecary spending".

I do think there's a reasonable point to make that in today's market of mass-production, any preference besides the single most mainstream, mass appeal one is extremely hard to find. I wish the author could find more options that suit their preferences, even if I personally don't share them.

The author sort of brushes aside the idea that it became unfashionable due to it no longer being a status symbol in the footnotes, but I think that is basically the answer, but with another step in between.

When ornamentation became cheap and mass producible, it also frequently became _ugly_. Tacky knockoffs of appealing designs became far more common than the original decorations. So much more so common in fact that it became the default association people have with decorative ornamentation. A plain white plate is making no pretensions and is exactly what it appears to be, but the same plate stamped with a pattern is something that's trying and failing to appear fancier than it is. Worse, a hand-painted plate will be assumed to be a cheap stamped plate.

Bit of a selection bias here. Why are all the things we bothered keeping around for 100 years so durable and fancy?

This topic shows up every month,l. People surround themselves with different objects of different aesthetics for different reasons. Ornament is beautiful, ornament is noise, its just relative. I think the author admires either specific aesthetics or the value craftsmanship, which might be easier to spot in highly decorated objects, but it's arguably subjective!

Right? So like in the late 1700's, in the "Rococo" period, we had lighting like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Palazzo_...

then by the time we get to the "Edo" period of the 1600's, it got reduced to almost bare pragmatism, along the lines of something very similar to this modern reproduction:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Toshima_House07s...

The simple fact of the matter is that people have essentially zero expectations when it comes to aesthetics in the public realm. This lack of expectations also comes with a lack of education, which means that they both lack aesthetic literacy and don’t care about correcting it.

Hence you get hoodies and sweatpants as the default fashion and boxes as the default building style. It has very little to do with actual cost of making the items. None of this will change until it becomes socially unacceptable to dress poorly or build an ugly house. And considering that H. L. Mencken commented on the “American lust for the hideous” a century ago, it’s probably never going to get better.

Craftsmanship. You can have it with elaborate roman or colonial architecture or minimalist design.

It needs to be present every step along the way from design, to building, to installation. But it starts with design and needs to be intentional. I think this has become rare for the general public.

There are plenty of places that are installing nice streetlights. For example, in Berkeley when they underground utilities they install nice old-school lighting fixtures.

This is very much a "these things are true and terrible" essay when it should be "I'm seeing a lot of these things that I don't like." Don't assert as facts things that you do not know to be facts.

And like most things that try to invoke authority by mentioning Jobs or Apple, this essay is entirely wrong about the invocation. A style for the case of an extremely functional device should not detract from the device, but streetlights aren't "extremely" functional devices that do a lot of things.

I had wondered why cars often had so original design character, which I can explain with this example. I was at an auto show where a couple was looking at an Oldsmobile Aurora (pictured [0]). It's an innocuous design with the rear lights being the distinctive/only stand-out styling feature. I could overhear them both going back and forth, "I like the car... but those rear lights..."--a lost sale. Later model years appear to use split rear lights.

That's when I realized how industrial design has to eliminate "reasons not to buy" often much more so than generate "reasons to buy". A bland design offends everyone about the same amount or less, an opinionated/ornate design offends some much more than that base amount. So in the end, with mass manufacturing and globalization, it means needing to appeal to greater masses and less ornamentation. I mean if it was my job to draft the streetlights, I wouldn't want to deal with a redesign because of pushback on artistic choices. I probably just want to get done on designing more resilient city garbage bins, etc.

[0] https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2023/12/20/15...

My ex recently picked an apartment to rent. She's rich and they rent fancy places in $5000-$7000 range that's like 5x median rent in their city in Greece so can afford just about any place. She consistently rejected anything that had any sign of decor. "They have a goddamn Roman column in the house - what are you, an emperor? this is ridiculous!". Resulting place was high-tech minimalistic - basically a large empty space with nothing to catch the eye and very mild, bland colour scheme.

Decoration got displaced by design.

Dieter Rams to teenage engineering... There are ascetic elements all over, but they are those of industry.

Eames Chair's aren't embellished, they are the embellishment in the room. With a flood of space in the modern era a plain room becomes a blank canvas that you fill with "Stuff" to make a statement.

This goes for clothing as well. WE have gone from "look that the dress I got that I will wear for 2 years" to "look at the shoes I got that will wear for two months".

Is this a weird thread to bring up tattoos? Those are certainly often ornamental and have become much more common than in the days of that streetlamp he describes. Also, they are lasting and very personal. They buck the trend the author describes. Why?

I wonder if at least part of it is a reaction to the pervasive overstimulation present in our modern lifestyles.

Decorated objects run the risk of falling foul of taste. Some percentage of the population may simply not like it. Or tastes may change.

But simple, functional objects are timeless. There's nothing to dislike, as long as they remain functional.

This also extends to the web.

Make a beautiful website and you'll attract a crowd of detractors lamenting your use of custom web fonts and JavaScript animations. Only a plain website with minimal styling is allowed. These detractors will make quite sensible arguments about how you're wasting precious bandwidth and opening users up to security vulnerabilities with your divergence from a stock-standard HTML file, but I think there's something more at play here -- a kind of aesthetic tribalism. A religion that states that there's only one way to build for the web, and that's with a payload of less than 1kb. Developers who care about beauty have become the enemy of our people, and they must not be allowed to take any ground.

Here is my attempt to explain it...

Stylish design and appreciation thereof requires having some well-developed taste and also requires that most or almost all users belong to the same cultural tradition. Otherwise it will produce interiors or worse, cities that are a hodgepodge of kitsch creations. There has to be a lowest common denominator of "good ornament" that nearly everyone accepts as such.

With mass urbanisation resulting in majority of city population being low class, and with multiculturalism resulting in a large fraction of city population belonging to different cultures, the lowest common denominator has become, well, really low. Ah, there's also that desegregation thing.

My hypothesis as to why this is relates to how products over time seem to all converge on inoffensive sensibility and mediocre homogeneity.

The more mass-produced something is or generalized use-case something has, the more important it is for the item to meet every single need. Of course, one of those needs is that the physical appearance of the item needs to match or blend in with the aesthetic of its final location. Not all older, crafted pieces match, and to choose one commits you a particular style. Once you’ve decided on that, the cost to change is significant.

So how do you meet all needs? Design something inoffensive, bland, and sensible.

Author seems to ignore the point regarding effect of industrialization. Industrialization did lower cost of goods and services all together but the relative cost depends on buying power.

Perhaps a simple explanation comes from looking at this from the eye of the producer and seller of such objects. They produce plates in 20 different patterns for example, and find some sell out, some sell half, some don't sell at all. So the producer is now out the cost of the ones that don't sell. They can concentrate on the patterns that sell better, but there is probably always some uncertainty in which patterns will sell the best. If they produce one reasonable unpatterned plate no one will reject it because of the pattern, so perhaps patternless or extremely simple-patterned objects result in more profit. If you're in the fashion or a fad-linked business then patterns matter, but otherwise complexity would seem to invite rejection since personal tastes vary widely and probably become more finicky as patterns get more elaborate. There is a lot of clothing in the US that is simply destroyed every year when it doesn't sell. It takes time and effort to find out which patterns people like each year.

I would posit another option: mass manufacture improved the profitability of things manufactured at scale. The bigger the scale, the lower the cost.

As such, the least expensive things will always appeal to the greatest number of people.

Plain things are things that most people find acceptable. Ornate (or even just highly stylised) things are things that some will love and some will hate. It's just things being made that are "least polarising".

> 1916 [...] 1800s [...] 1910

Two ideas to consider or at least try to rule-out:

1. Some of the outdoor decor level may depend on transportation patterns. The more people are driving themselves, the less they can notice or appreciate nice lamp-posts etc.

2. A "luxurious" pattern only works when it's hard to make. When it's easy to make, it loses the cachet and then nobody wants it.

That is not the case everywhere, in some countries they are well designed as is the case in Denmark, I was in a short visit but I liked them and took several photos of the way they embedded solar into new ones, older ones are also classic in function and design https://www.flickr.com/photos/scotialight/4131556661 and here https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/business/energy-environme...

The legendary industrial designer Raymond Loewy stated this same problem in reverse at the beginning of his career in the 1920s (from his auto Never Leave We'll Enough Alone):

> Ugliness of color, of mass, of detail. Spoiled by a lot of applied "art" .. it used to be called gingerbread (now we call it schmaltz.) What's more, all this corn was expensive ...

> Why couldn't what used to be called the "machine age" generate simple, straightforward products and contribute a little beauty to the world?

He goes on to state in his opinion modern Euorpean car design and "motormania" effectively destroyed the industrial ornamentation pastiche he called "decalcomania."

Whole book is delightful.

As for the office? That's an easy one.

Yes, looking at that office building from 1910 is pleasurable.

However, using that office building from 1910 kinda sucks.

Your electrical outlets are generally terrible and in weird places. Your toilets are tiny and cramped. Those marble floors and steps are a terrible slip hazard with even a tiny amount of water on them. The AC and heating are generally unreliable and probably noisy because they are individual to a window or office rather than central. Elevators are probably various levels of functional. etc.

Something built in the last 20 years with that kind of style would be quite pleasant. Something actually from 1910? Not so much.

While I agree that the generational change is definitely there, I think the author's first example (street lights at San Francisco) is not a good example because it's the result of a different trend:

Americans no longer believe that a public space should be nicely maintained. Especially San Francisco. Its street is where you meet homeless tents, feces on pavement, the smell of weeds, people walking around with their asscracks visible. It's no longer a nice place, and whether we like or not, fewer people believe we should spend money to make it feel more pleasant.

Which is pretty sad, because once it gets bad enough, it basically becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

Just a random thing I remembered reading this: Red Dot design award for Philips LED Street Light [1].

"low-cost", "thought-through functionality", "easy to install", "low maintenance costs", "highly durable and wear resistant", "exudes an air of elegance that gives it a timeless appearance"

Maybe the order of things they mention here tells something about our priorities? Aesthetics comes last in the list (but it is still there).

[1] https://www.red-dot.org/project/lumistreet-33931

It’s the Home Depot effect. Most “remodel” homes end up with the same thing… but honestly its hard to find stuff that fits then intersection of availability/looks/cost, and most important, a sense of taste.

In the past, decoration was much more expensive than plain objects. A craftsman would have to spend extra time adding this (e.g., paint some pattern on a plate). So such objects would be a true signal of your wealth. Nowadays, decorated stuff costs almost the same to produce. It's now only an indication that you have a really old tast for style.

There might be even a reverse factor: fake products. In my eyes, golden stuff always looks cheap. If someone in my bubble would suddenly wear a golden watch, we'd make fun why they got it from some guy on the street for five bucks.

I think the main reason is cost / time

How long would it take to make beautiful lamp posts, and what would it cost, if they had to be as detailed as back then, but produce the same amount of them as needed today?

Of course, with the rise of 3D printing and such, we may be able to return to it, without it increasing costs too much. I hope.

Personally im mostly tired of the lack of color. Everything these days is made in shades of grey. Metal, concrete and glass.

I think that dipping into the history of design (both industrial design and architecture) go a long way to explaining the general trends.

It is important to also distinguish between minimalist design (motivated by aesthetic and philosophical choices) and utilitarian artefacts such as streetlights. The latter may be informed more directly by minimizing total cost and may not have ever had some creative input from a designer.

The modern streetlights are quite a bit different in function and design goals. They are quite extended over the road, which has engineering challenges, and are made with different materials.

Most importantly, nobody wants to pay for them to be decorated, especially when the labor to do so is far more expensive than in the past.

Even if the labor components of fabrication were identical, his preferred streetlight has a lot more metal in it. Going by the catalogs, the ornamental ones are up to 5x costlier than the basic model. Even if it were only slightly more expensive, a city has to maintain thousands of them.

Two factors not mentioned for the decline of "fancy":

1. Which fancy? Matching, even eclectically is more complicated if things are not simple.

2. We have our attention focused less on our IRL things and more toward the ideas, digital tools, and people that hold our attention.

It would be interesting to see if timing for the decline of decoration is associated with the increase in the number of objects people possess and also the rise of alternative visual stimulation in the form of tv and then internet.

One more simple explanation: today everyone drives. Ornate designs are a distraction and will worsen driving safety. If there's nothing attractive to look at, drivers look at the road, which is what they are supposed to do.

This is just the US, people still are building with luxury in other places. Sure some of the younger upper class prefers gray everything but there are a lot that appreciate craftsmanship and design

I think it’s likely that the explanation is that the state space of ornamented things is larger. So, if you sell ornamented things, your market for each version is smaller.

Sometime in future someone might post an article titled same “Why is simple design so rare in recent work?” But with a completely different perspective.

> The second is a much more recent streetlight not far from my house

OK, but neon streetlights 50 years ago were not much more decorated than that.

When talking about public spaces, I'm certain that the big reason is corruption of the financial sort.

At least in my part of the world, the local government is in charge of public works. Be it streetlights, walkways, fountains, signs, roads or whatever. They do these things via public tenders and its always about the lowest bidder. "For X amount of money we need a walkway from here to here."

In most of the cases the winner is secretly decided in advance, work gets eventually done and the public get the walkway. Everything included in that walkway will be of the poorest quality, badly finished, crude, and ugly.

You may say: "Oh but it was cheap at least, so many of those public works can be done". Wrong! Its super expensive, kickbacks eat most of it. No wonder the politicians (both local and state wide) and their friends live like kings.

A bit paradoxically, when talking about buildings done with public money like schools, museums, hospitals, gov buildings etc, those usually look like from an architect's wet dream and I don't think many countries can/want to match that. The reason still is corruption. An eg kindergarden made today costs ridiculous amounts of money and "needs" an architectural studio with renown so they come up with a design which is usually very expensive. The building gets built as cheap as possible, and no amount of money is saved for future maintenance.

First they came for the decoration, then they came for the colour.

Article about ornament not mentioning A. Loos? :slowclaps:

The rich have made it fashionable to want ugly things as a means of second or third order virtue signaling. The masses follow without batting an eye.

The author is partly right on the right that it was a cultural response to war.

Here's a relevant excerpt from the book Dutch Graphic Design, A century of innovation. (2006. P. 76-81).

"De Stijl was one of many critical intellectual responses to the calamity of World War I. [...] This aim was implicit in De Stijl's first manifesto, published in 1918:

'There is an old and a new awareness of time. The old is based on the individual. The new is based on the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal is manifesting itself in the World War as well as in contemporary art.... The war is destroying the old world with its contents; the dominance of the individual in every sector.'

In 1921 a similar sentiment followed in the fourth volume of De Stijl:

'For Europe there is no longer any way out. Centralization and property, spiritual and material individualism was the foundation of the old Europe. In that it has caged itself. It is falling to pieces. We observe this calmly. We would not want to help even if we could. We do not want to extend the life of this old prostitute.'

De Stijl advocated an idealistic goal to liberate art from nonessential and outdated qualities such as subject matter, naturalism, subjectivity, and decoration. Its diverse advocates rejected outright what they saw as the sentimentalism and degeneration of the nineteenth century. They expressed a desire for a new rational art that better suited the modern world, a 'collective impersonal style.... destined, they felt, for adoption by architects and designers of the machine age." They were not, however, a 'lost generation'; instead they enthusiastically espoused a new industry-based culture. In order to meet the needs of a new epoch, the members of De Stijl advocated a revision of old understandings of beauty which had been based solely on craft. They realized that twentieth-century technology could be utilized to create a union of art and industry. In October 1917 Van Doesburg wrote in the first issue of De Stijl:

'It is the endeavor of this small magazine to make a contribution toward the development of a new consciousness of beauty. It desires to make modern man receptive to what is new in the plastic arts. It desires, as opposed to anarchy and confusion, the 'modern baroque, to establish a mature style based on pure relationship of the spirit of the age and expressive means. It desires to combine in itself contemporary ideas on the new plasticity, which, although fundamentally the same, developed independently from one another.'"

Similar thoughts were shared in most artistic and other cultural movements of the time. However, how this managed to be so successful is rarely analysed. My hypothesis is this: these kinds of anti-ornament movements were advocated by both socialist and capitalists. For socialists mass-produced functional goods meant that everyone could have equal amounts of decent quality stuff. For capitalists it meant the opportunity to increase the surplus value of goods when productive time wasn't "wasted" on inefficient ornamentation.

For both—socialists and capitalists—ornamentation was an obstacle. They wanted a complete cultural shift, where by devaluing tradition, craft and ornamentation, people could br untied from their locality like their home, village, town etc., and thus much easier relocated to new industrial areas (like big cities). Mass produced goods meant that you could move and simply buy fresh new things (because they were cheap). It also meant that you weren't attached to your things (like you would if you spent time on crafting them yourself), so it didn't matter if they were beautiful, they just had to work.

Because it's expensive.

Possibly the first time I've seen this subject brought up without lamenting the degeneracy of society or other fascist dogwhistles. Nice. It is an interesting question if you can avoid that temptation.