100 years after the announcement of Adolf Loos`"Ornament and Crime", "Re-Sampling Ornament", an exibition of the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel attemps from 1 June to 21 September 2008 to trace the redux ornament in contemporary architecture.

The Ornament as a creative instrument of architecture has been negated for decades. The modernity strictly declined the decadence and extravagance of the mass produced ornament. However the ornament seemed to appear more frequently  in architecture during the last 10 years, what is mainly due to new construction- and production processes, like CNC milling- and laser techniques, which reduce the fabrication costs.

The new understanding of architectural ornaments is mainly controled by its ancient acquisition to nature. Contemporary architects like Toyo Ito and Hitoshi Abe try to translate and abstract nature in order to create architectural mataphors for Japanese buisiness buildings.

"RE-Sampling Ornament" refers to known architecs like Toyo Ito, Barkow Leibinger, Hild und K, OMA & 2x4, Francic Soler, et cetera.

Oliver Domeisen from the Architectural Association in London tries with his analyses of the historical and current use of ornament in architecture to enrich the assortment of contemporary architectural examples with historical terminologies and acquisitions.

Swiss Architecture Museum SAM 
June 1  to September 21 2008

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