Digital Billboards, Skyscraping Videos: Let’s Not Cover Our Cities In Screens

–Analysis–

PARIS — Since it was challenged by architect Adolf Loos in 1910 and rejected by the CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) a few years later, decoration has become taboo in architecture. Les Trente Glorieuses, a 30-year period of economic growth in France between 1945 and 1975, definitively confirmed the superficiality and the end of a language intrinsically linked to architecture, which captures and tells the story of an era. 

For the past 10 years, the same ingredients have been constantly used in new architectural projects: wood, trees, winter gardens. So, is this the mark of our era, that of the digital revolution, on our built landscape?

It must be said that after years of decorative frugality, strict energy standards and budgetary constraints, those involved in building cities have almost forgotten what makes, and will continue to make, architecture speak: ornament. 

After a brief resurgence during postmodernism, bordering on the burlesque, an attempt to rehabilitate architectural ornamentation took place in the 1990s and 2000s, with the rise of digital technology in architectural firms. This return was limited to the facades, based primarily on computer-generated geometric patterns.

From unadorned facades to multi-screen ones?

Today, you only have to open an architecture magazine to see that most new facades are white, devoid of any trace of ornament, except for a few winter gardens or rooftop plantings. Common architectural production is depleting and tells fewer stories. This can be justified by several factors: modesty, cost reduction, globalized style or a certain civility toward an increasingly complex urban context. 

Yet we are living in a time of profound upheaval for society, which affects architecture. The dematerialization of the world and the exponential digitization of human relationships, stories, and images place architecture — the ultimate materialization of the world — in the face of fierce competition.

Where, yesterday, we learned to read a facade, today it becomes a giant screen, pouring out its images. 

Facades are now evolving in the multi-screen era. Some architects, from Las Vegas to Paris, are experimenting with the fusion of building and screen. Where, yesterday, we learned to read a facade, today it becomes a giant screen, pouring out its images. 

Reinventing the place of ornament

But do we really want to immerse ourselves in a “screen city” after having managed to lift our heads from our smartphones? These attempts — a little too literal — do not regenerate the richness of the possible interactions between the city and its inhabitants, through the vector of ornament.

The proponents of functional modernity at the beginning of the 20th century — following the footsteps of Adolf Loos, who condemned ornamentation as “morally degenerate” and opposing “progress” — conceived modern architecture as a reaction to the ornate, a costly medium for language and meaning. 

Others, with more agility, were able to take advantage of the technological advances of their time to reinvent the place of ornament in architecture. This is notably the case of Louis Sullivan, the inventor of skyscrapers, who successfully reconciled new construction techniques with ornamentation, thus demonstrating that innovative architecture could remain expressive.

The narrative of architecture

Today, we are experiencing the revolutions of artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They will profoundly change our relationship with the world, and therefore with the city and architecture. In the coming years, we may see a proliferation of evolving facades generated by ChatGPT or observe the emergence of truly empty, yet well-designed interior spaces in our Apple Vision. It’s even possible that we’ll soon be living in homes built by 3D concrete printers, whose plans will be drawn by AI.

Ornamentation is not limited to an aesthetic dimension; it bears witness to and tells the story of an era, for contemporaries and future generations.

This makes obvious the crucial need to reclaim architectural ornament, this language of matter, this act of civilization — even more so if we approach it with a contemporary sensibility. Thus, architecture will once again assert itself as a lever for improving the living environment, reinforcing its role as “public interest,” as defined by our laws. 

Ornamentation is not limited to an aesthetic dimension; it bears witness to and tells the story of an era, for contemporaries and future generations. Between the “urbanovernacular” style — which has become tacitly mandatory to win a competition — and the surrender of architectural language to artificial intelligence, we must collectively refocus, reinvest and update the narrative that architecture tells through ornamentation.