The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture: Is It a Substantive or Surface Issue ?

Journal of Recent Activities in Architectural Sciences DOI : https://doi.org/10.46610/JoRAAS.2024.v09i02.001 e-ISSN: 2581-9046, Vol. 9, Issue 2 (July – December, 2024) pp: (1-10) The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture: Is It a Substantive or Surface Issue? Mohammed Akazaf* Professor, Department of Architecture Engineering, The National School of Architecture of Rabat, Morocco * Corresponding Author: m.akazaf@enarabat.ac.ma Received Date: June 20, 2024; Published Date: August 12, 2024 Abstract This article deals with the ambiguity of ornament in architecture, the historical tensions that have characterized its use, and the factors that have led to its return today. In an architectural panorama marked today by the excessive use of parametric and kinetic patterns, many architects, historians and theorists are trying to find a theoretical basis justifying a tendency to an obsession with the patterns. The systematic link between what today adorns the envelopes of parametric architecture projects is made without reference to this history full of tensions. The Grasshopper and Dynamo plug-ins operate excessively in a total break with the thinking of William Morris, John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, Alois Riegl or Alberti. Modernist architecture has made a break that has generated a collective amnesia about the essence and purpose of certain architectural practices, particularly those relating to ornament. The reflection, therefore, engages in a genealogical investigation to trace the intimate relationships that have linked ornament to architecture. It reveals how these positions of rejection and admission have been motivated more by the technical and technological implications and the capitalist desires that carry them than by artistic impulses. Keywords- Architecture, Digital technologies, Ornament, Parametric design, Substantive INTRODUCTION The question of ornament in architecture is problematic and central at the same time; dedicating an article to it may not be enough to cover the depth of its impact on architecture in general and contemporary parametric design in particular. The ornament is a portmanteau word that refers to more than a meaning; it refers to the history and theory of architecture. The lack of precision and ambiguity around key elements in architectural theory, such as ornaments, has always marked debates around architecture to the point that the history of ideas in architecture has become accustomed to semantic wavering to the [1] point where ambiguity and ambivalent message have become a sign of accomplishment of the architectural work. In his reflections on architecture, Philippe Boudon has consistently drawn attention to this reality that flows to this day, as if ambiguity reveals itself as the second nature of architecture. Architects' writings share a certain intermediate status; they are not thus scientific. The fact that [2] their speeches deliver 1 concepts with imprecise contours constitutes a palimpsest of perplexing judgements that becomes much more revealing and instructive about the complexity and dynamic spirit that haunts these notions than if they were fixed for changing situations. The fact that ornament has been invested in the works of several poets, writers, and philosophers in a much-nuanced way indicates its ambiguous character. Victor Hugo, in his novel 93, for example, opposes ornament to force; with a succinct description he makes of the façade of the Tour-Gawain fortress, he delivers a liberating and modern look at the ornament, a look that rhymed with the spirit of the French Revolution of 1793: "From the military point of view, the bridge, let us insist, almost delivered the tower. He embellished and disarmed it; in gaining ornament, she had lost strength [...]" [3]. Charles Baudelaire believes that stupidity is the ornament of beauty, and Friedrich Nietzsche finds that "music is the most beautiful ornament of silence, praise to silence, an apology for silence". Indeed, ornament as a [4] practice, even in architecture, holds a © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture turbulent life that oscillates between stupidity, praise, and apology. The questions around its status in architecture do not date back to modernism; it goes back, at least, to Vitruvius. In a book dedicated exclusively to ornament in architecture, Antoine Picon begins with a series of frontal and striking questions: "What if architecture was ultimately a question of ornament?" And " Ornament may well hold the key to fundamental architectural problems" [5]. The audacity of the first question draws its strength, first of all, from its formulation, which sounds more like a hypothesis or an unexpected answer to a problem so much debated, especially with the perverse and immature use of Loos' words in the face of a context marked by the excessive use of ornament. Should we conclude that architecture is the ornament of construction? [6]. METHODS The method we will adopt for this work is quantitative. Thus, at the beginning of the reflection, it was necessary to inquire about a dry, cold and disembodied look that does not respond to any personal impulse for or against ornament. However, what follows will revisit the different convictions and theories for or against the use of ornament and verify their integrity and arguments in the context of their appearances. Based on a literature review that goes beyond the wake of architectural theory, we have tried to bring together a series of theories and affirmations in a mechanism of opposition, confrontation and dialogic to reveal the nature of contemporary architecture and its relationship to motifs as signs that often express common social concerns. It was also necessary to study how these durability concerns led to the emergence of an architecture marked by kinetic patterns and infinitely variable. This is what systematically combines kinetic facades designed for sustainability with this desire for life. The question of life and death often comes up in the question of ornament, and it was also helpful, at this level, to verify how this need for commemoration and transmission so deep in man often pushes him to leave imprints that testify to his passage on earth. REVIEW Suppose architecture still needs to 2 Mohammed Akazaf* constitute a discipline with universally teachable theories. In that case, it remains a practice conditioned by the economic, political, sociocultural, religious and environmental context. It reflects the signs of consensual pragmatism rather than the principles of a theory with precise contours. As a field of knowledge is covered, architecture can be covered by Gödel's incompleteness theory: Its truths are much broader than demonstrability. It is a discipline responsible for concealing social ugliness and economic greed, and knowledge based on universal truths reserves the role of revealing them. Architecture often operates as a cosmetic product that masks cruel wills. We revere the pyramids and triumphal arches, disregarding the conditions and purposes of their achievements. The systematic link of what currently adorns the envelopes of parametric architecture projects is made without reference to the thought of William Morris, John Ruskin or Gottfried Semper; it is also made without genealogies that link the present to the past and where the commercial and cultural dimension plays a decisive role. The following excerpt leaves no doubt about Adolf Loos' position about ornament: "The terrible damage and the devastation wrought by the awakening of ornament in aesthetic development can be easily got over, because no one, not even a state power, can halt the evolution of humanity! It can only be delayed" [7]. The architecture of modernism developed a whole theory that made ornament a complement, which can be added and subtracted from a building without any loss of meaning. The collective banishment of ornament was, in fact, only the result of a thought trapped in the effects of the technical system of the time: it was necessary to discard all artisanal distinctions capable of hindering mass standardization for mass production. In his text published in 1920, Le Corbusier praised the doctrine of Loos, one of the first to have emphasized the greatness of industry and its contributions to aesthetics. The text published in the journal L'Esprit nouveau affirms: […], Mr. Loos, clear and original mind, began his protests against the futility of such trends. One of the first to have sensed the greatness of industry and its contributions to aesthetics, he had begun to proclaim certain truths that still seem revolutionary or paradoxical today. In his works, unfortunately very little known, he was the precursor of a style that is only being © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved J of Rec. Act. in Arch. Sci. developed today. We publish from him today "Ornament and Crime", which will be followed by "Modern Architecture", […] [8]. For reasons of mass standardization, Taylorists and modernists have always called ornament wasteful and redundant. Until industrialization, decorative elements and ornament were usually made by hand. The architect, builder, artisans and artists were involved according to the complexity of the projects in the design. However, the collaboration on the vital role assigned to ornament was hardly accepted by architects. The French architect of the Renaissance, Philibert Delorme (1514–1570), always complained about the professional misconduct of the artisans in charge of ornament. His complaints currently appear as a sign of the significant involvement and role of ornamental artisans in the composition of buildings [6], a role that the narcissism of architects has always tried to hide. The shared ambition was to completely control the production of the buildings, including the details of the ornamentation, which led the architects to Vol. 9, Issue 2 negotiate with the various partners involved in this conceptual enthusiasm, leading to the final deliverable. The issues underlying these disputes do not differ from current events, although mutation technology poses them differently [6]. The system alignment technician who legitimized the spacing of ornaments in the past is now trying to justify quite the opposite: its return. The technological development in CNC and digital 3D printing has given decoration a different status than that of addition from the moment its introduction proves financially beneficial. Ornament is no longer an additional expense; this undermines justifications based on the traditional Western notion of ornament as a complement and superfluous. Mario Carpo has demonstrated how printing makes details and additions less expensive than if they did not exist in a form [9]. Adolph Loose's theory, when it leans exclusively on economic considerations, no longer finds a basis solid because ornamentation lowers the price of certain parts of the construction under the digital manufacturing paradigm (Fig. 1). Figure 1: The prototype machine makes it possible to manufacture buildings on a 1:1 scale, combining sand and an inorganic binder. Indeed, the ornament resurfaces with digital architecture. Its appearance on facades with double curvatures and even on flat surfaces results from internal tectonics, which gives it a posture quite different from that of superfluous or addition: it becomes principal. In this process of parametric mosaic, the building envelope was employed to achieve this goal, which is the uniqueness of the work, which is one of the conditions of beauty in art, as Hegel points out. The structure penetrates and infiltrates the skin, just like in shell structures, where the skin absorbs most, if not all, of the reticulated 3 structures under stress. This fusion of the skin with the structure is carried out according to the functional and structural requirements. This produces a formal bionic potential identified with the various creatures of fauna and flora. This excessively folded and infinitely variable morphology cannot coexist with any linear or Euclidean rhythm, which puts this architecture in a break with everything that precedes it [5]. A return automatically involves these patterns, textures or mosaics in a historical debate about an ornament that produces reductive and precipitated labels. It must be said that the © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture consequences of modernism and its premeditated break with historical continuity, especially its position against ornament, continue to weigh on the collective conscience of architects and their practice. This return promises to be a collective impulsive revenge against the thought of modernism so much incriminated. We give modernism its audacity and courage in trying to base architecture on other axioms than those that have governed it since Vitruvius and that have freed architecture from historical inertia. Inertia has asphyxiated architectural productions by forcing them to recycle styles and the dictatorship of architectonics for several centuries. Modernism can appear in this perspective as the first sketch of deconstructivism in architecture. However, we reproach it for its immaturity (audacity and immaturity often go hand in hand), its vulnerability to capitalist perversion and its different paradigms of mass production (Taylorism and Fordism, etc.). It was this immaturity that led to the slide into excess, as well as another form of depravity, the depravity that founded Loos' rejection of ornament. If Adolf Loos incriminated ornament, it is for several reasons, although that of the extra, in its connection with economic considerations, that it remains the most exposed. For Loos, from the moment that modern society is at odds with the traditional culture that used ornament as a means of differentiation, the position of ornament radically changes its status, loses its social function and becomes useless. Modern society aimed for freedom, equality, standardization and transparency, values contradicting everything that motivated the ornamental practice of the time [10]. The appearance of these variable and repetitive patterns widely assimilated to ornament on the surface arises from several circumstances where the computer plays a central role. Modernist practice obsessed with transparency has led to massive use of glass that does not possess high performative qualities. Postmodernism has faced a heavy legacy of standardized culture that, when it comes to the use of glass, goes back at least to the Cristal Palace [10]. The momentum of digital design, which coincides with the rise of collective awareness of the environment and the energy concerns that result from it, has led to materiality that is concerned or intelligently conscious, such as 4 Mohammed Akazaf* kinetic architecture or the use of smog-eating whose dynamic behaviour depends on the different needs of thermal, energy or health regulations. Farshid Mousavi and Michael Kubo, in their book dedicated to the function of ornament, tried to give a function to ornament in digital architecture. This essay describes ornament as a destined medium that reveals the invisible forces of internal tectonics that provide the form of a particular texture and adornment. If ambiguities of meaning or indirect analogies find a place in the adornment, the main objective remains to make contemporary culture's invisible forces visible [10]. DISCUSSION The Ornament Between Depth and Surface The ontological definition of these motifs becomes their system of emergence and fabrication in the sense revealed by Aristotle on the nature of things (the thing is its cause: its generative system). The parametric motifs called ornaments become, in this sense, more than inseparable and necessary to the object; they become the object itself. The ornament thus becomes essential for digital architecture and is inseparable from the object. It must be admitted that cataracts are caused by the precipitated impulses of revenge against modernism, and the concern to find a theoretical basis to legitimize the generalized presence of these motifs ends up systematically inscribing them in the chapter on ornament. Are we facing a new form of perversion that comes in the form of a historical reconciliation with the ornament to create new commercial niches for technology? Moreover, suppose an ornament is defined by its superficial and detachable character. How can we qualify these motifs whose emergence comes from within the form and whose removal will leave nothing on specific projects? How can we qualify all this as an ornament? There is a subtle contradiction even in the text of Mousavi and Kubo, which asserts that ornament becomes necessary and inseparable from the object and that its use does not constitute a mask intended to embody specific meanings [10]. Cultural meanings, as was the case with the diaphragm used in the Arab World Institute designed by Jean Nouvel, a purely postmodernist project. The fact that these motifs and patterns do not constitute a cosmetic mask and their intention is not that of decorating © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved J of Rec. Act. in Arch. Sci. puts those on a different register from that of ornament, and their hasty apprehension as an ornament is only the beginning of a reductive perception always suffering from the historical implications around this question. Paul Valéry, by making the character of the philosopher speak in one of these dialogues, affirms: "What is deepest in man is the skin" [11], a quote that has become more widespread under another slightly modified formula, but even more telling, "Nothing is deeper than the surface, the skin ». The skin in digital architecture takes on manifestations in organic textures according to an analogy parallel to nature, thus reviving the Albertian anthropomorphic approach that assimilated the building to human bodies. The inspirations of nature are multiple and varied and trace design trends that take multiple names (organic, bionic, biomimetic, etc.) The richness of fauna and flora provides morphological references to digital architecture, and Homo sapiens remains the only one challenged on the question of effect; it is understood that he remains the first recipient of the architectural message. "Nothing is deeper than the surface" could also take in the architecture of the digital a pathological dimension that refers to the crack, the fracture of acne, the fungus, or emotions such as anger, joy, perversion or effects and metaphors that are only graspable and artistically exploitable by artists. Will digital architecture trigger a new form of humanism? The expectations of ornament go beyond the syntax that underpins architectural writing. In some contemporary architectural productions, the internal tectonics of buildings go beyond the limits of the envelope to structure or even shape the block or neighbourhoods, which gives continuity ranging from architectural detail to urban planning. This is the impact of new design technologies that have allowed for a change in the scale and precision of the architectural object. Through the prisms of Brunelleschi's perspective, Chequerboard urbanism is shaken up in this design paradigm. The hierarchical relationships and scales that linked architecture to Urbanism become reversed: detail commands architecture, and architecture dictates the layout of neighbourhoods. This ambition, which aims to establish a continuum between architecture and urban planning and which is based, among other things, on environmental considerations, comes up against the increasingly cosmopolitan character of societies that are becoming 5 Vol. 9, Issue 2 multicultural and difficult to federate around symbols and icons with meanings that are commonly shareable and desirable. Mousavi and Kubo believe that digital motifs cannot convey a cultural message. This observation may be because the digital artefact becomes distanced from the craftsmanship and manual work through which the effect unfolds. The Impact of Mass Variability on Architectural Posture The first fascination of architecture for digital technologies is linked to the new geometric representation skills allowing the achievement of a new formal aesthetic. Traditional design mechanisms based on Euclidean geometry (symmetry, centrality, repetition, rotation, etc.) are no longer attractive to architects. In the architecture of the digital, Euclid's geometry, despite its usefulness and universality, needs to be updated. The appearance of the computer is to amplify and develop spectacularly all the senses of man. According to Merleau Ponty, the senses represent the ontological flesh of the world; they are our doors that lead us to the many discoveries of the world. Nowadays, human beings' analytical capacity is enhanced, allowing them to reach high levels of scientific awareness. Human thought expresses in writing all the conclusions it draws from its environment; with it, Architecture cannot be considered a writing of civilization (Fig. 1). This is how the shape of architecture became informed through algorithmic simulations. Brick, for example, is beginning to undergo new alignments with the skill and accuracy offered by the parametric. F.O Gehry's projects constitute a somewhat illustrated corpus on this aspect. The digital paradigm breaks with the historical practices customary to the architectural profession. The morphological formations result from a shaping carried out by simulations that correlate the constraints and potentialities of the site with the forms obtained and the plains and voids generated. The shapes are sculpted in a virtual mould under the effects of the most constraining forces of the environment. Under the impact of these movements and flows, the inflexions of the material signify another level of symbolization in architecture that echoes what geography, after millions of years, has given us in terms of the beauty of mountains sculpted under the effects © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture of erosion and as canyons sculpted under the impact of water flow [12] (Fig. 2). Gilbert Simondon opposes form to information, thus establishing a correlation between the two. This correlation makes the form appear as a possibility of information and of making information a condition of form. "It can be said that form, conceived as absolute regularity, both spatial and temporal, is not information but a condition of information; It is what welcomes Mohammed Akazaf* information, the a priori that receives information”. This argumentative sequence reinforces the approach to design based on information derived from parametric data, which becomes a mediation of variability of ornamental motifs that reflect a contextualization faithful to its site in the same way that a coniferous tree reflects snow or mountains (Fig. 3and 4). Figure 2: Generative design obtained with Grasshopper on Autodesk Rhinoceros 3D. 2009 at 7:00 a.m. Posted by Rajaa Issa on May 20 et View Blog, « Custom Select and Bake of Objects Using VB.NET», consult le 2 juin 2021, https://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/bl. Figure 3: Arizona Mountain under the effect of erosion. 6 © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved J of Rec. Act. in Arch. Sci. Vol. 9, Issue 2 Figure 4: Canyon shaped by the flow of water. Differentiation and variation depend on the self-organization processes of information within the confines of manufacturing and assembly. It also depends on the choices of the architect. The whole appears as a manifestation that is both ambiguous and familiar. The scenario chosen is still stabilized on a consensus between the concerns of optimization and those of possible comfort. Digital technology has transferred the sensitivity from man to the inner space and its materiality. This is how architecture has mutated from kinetic status to that of kinaesthetic [12]. The role of the computer is essential in what is perceived as a return to ornament and in recognition of the function of adornment. The capabilities now offered by parametric design have facilitated the dressing of pattern shapes, patterns repetitively according to a continuous variability, creating original textures. This enthusiasm for using these technologies for surface treatment has ended up setting up an architectural practice whose multiple impacts remain challenging to identify and whose meaning of evolution remains difficult to grasp. One of the implications of this conceptual complexity is that the architect's design has become a question of the external envelope. For internal spaces, other skills are constantly solicited given the projects' size and the complexity of the design task. The formal variability operations remain faithful to the theme of folding or "folding" in resonance with the writings of Gille Deleuze. The fold paradigm 7 federates the multiplication of projects based on a single envelope whose surface folds generate the volume. This enthusiasm for digital architecture for the envelope and the folded surface corresponds to A. Picon to 2 arguments that revolve around the new perception of digital architecture and the articulation between the exterior and the interior:  The first arises because the surface or envelope bears the mark of the forming processes more immediately than the volumes. The volumes are frequently defined from the outside, according to opaque and inert appearances, but the surfaces are more meaningful narrative writing supports than volumetric composition (Fig. 5).  The second argument stems from the fact that surfaces have been an opportunity to question the traditional mode of presence of architecture, in particular, the relationship between exterior and interior. Surfaces no longer define space by closing it. They generate it as a series of layers that follow their inflexions [13]. In a series of projects marked by folded structures, it becomes difficult to distinguish the exterior from the finished interior. The relationships that oppose the architectural object to its environment are blurred, producing fading effects that undermine the historical status of urbanism architecture. © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture Mohammed Akazaf* (Source: Michael Fox, ed. Interactive architecture: adaptive world, First edition, Architecture briefs (New York: Princeton Architect) Figure 5: The final appearance of kinetic mashrabiya. Left: The mechanism and scale of the mosaic brought back to man. The reconfiguration of the design operation, which has become reticulated and complex, is increasingly leading professional practices towards specialization. Digital technology merges certain tasks and dissociates others according to the desire of capitalism, which depends on the requirements of the technical system. The massive use of these technologies is not the cause of the reduction of architecture to the enveloping in the eyes of a widespread practice. Still, it remains the amplifier of this perception that was constituted by the sculptural approach of modernism. The other impact consists of recalibration for special definitions, particularly external, internal duality, public, private, or ornament, which plays a role in semiotic marking. The political role assigned to "ornament", particularly the question of symbols, culture and differentiation, makes it essential in this spatial recalibration. Still, the most significant impact of this trend would be opening the discipline to the advanced technologies available to many countries. The fact that these highly technological and expensive experiments are undertaken outside the University makes it out of step with the professional context in which they train architects. On this question of the didactics of the digital project, which becomes associated with an end-to-end technological continuum, many universities are overwhelmed despite the isolated initiatives of some researchers to 8 constitute a didactic framework around the contemporary practice of the project. The attempts of these researchers come up against the professional secrets of large firms that maintain exclusivity for certain procedures as long as they allow them to sell their costly services. The technological leap that architecture has just made, under the aegis of digital, has taken place in private architecture agencies outside the University. In other words, the involvement of technologies and motifs (Ornament) has been invested in a market perspective and not in theory. This change has taken place outside university laboratories, which are, in most cases, either burdened by budgetary restrictions and administrative supporting documents in some countries or composed of groups of researchers who think in all directions under obscure names, consuming their budgets without their activities being conclusive and decisive for the development of the discipline. The text below by Mark Burry, Director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University in Melbourne, manages, despite his apologies, to convey a deep disappointment in the absence of the University in this Battle of architecture with digital. We deliver his text as a generalized letter: “Where has digital design speculation been? The answer is that digital design speculation has always been there but supported more as a counter-culture. Consider how many © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved J of Rec. Act. in Arch. Sci. digital design research centres acquire odd names or unhelpful acronyms, almost provocatively, to obfuscate what happens inside. I apologize to colleagues of the many burgeoning programs worldwide that now support innovative digital design speculation through scripting: "My list is representative of the pool of ambition generally, and the groups listed are relatively well established” [14]. Most research architects have been motivated more by design in architecture than by the many technical specialities applied to design, such as programming and scripting. These technical specialities have dominated computer research in architectural practice, given their involvement in the challenges of research budgets to channel research budgets into technical applications and support for the development of drawing software [14]. For decades, architectural software has strived to mimic the traditional working practice developed by architects over the past two centuries and governed by the drawing board. This development was carried out with the knowledge and sight of the architects without the latter being particularly involved in getting the architectural project out of the rut of traditional design methods. Drawing software appears to be a solution that competes with many historical, cultural, technological, economic, and psychological considerations. For a long time, the word architect was synonymous with technical drawing because it was a difficult mission given the role of communication and the transfer of precise information that a technical plan was supposed to provide. It is time to agree that the concerns about architectural style constituting the dialectic of alternations and historical continuity are dead. These concerns have given way to other ambitions and challenges that make architecture what it is today. By harnessing what technology currently offers at all levels, architecture has redefined itself with other dreams, desires and whims. Today, tools have reversed the axioms of design. It becomes a question of details. Technological development has come a long way, partly conditioned by Moore's Law, which governs the evolution of transistors. Economic and polyptych considerations have been the most decisive market regulation factors supporting this evolution. This common perception of the work of the architect allowed them to extend the inventions already known in the military field since the Second World War to the profession of 9 Vol. 9, Issue 2 the architect. This is how software companies offer what they can develop and sell, and architects buy what is available and what is within their financial and intellectual reach. CONCLUSION Before the advent of modernism, ornament represented a fundamental operating paradigm for design in architecture; the different parts were structured in such a way as to receive it, and the perception around space was not considered as such. Parametric design with the return of what is perceived as an ornament combined with the change in perception around space, such as the obsession with transparency initiated by modernism, delivers buildings of a new posture that remains foreign to architecture as it has been defined in the collective and historical consciousness. The fact that these architectural objects were not designed entirely by architects distanced them from architectural ideals as if architecture were something added to the construction, like a garment or makeup. In the same resonance of Nietzsche and Baudelaire on ornament, we add that architecture under the digital paradigm tries to become just the ornament of a construction that has become more obsessed than ever with technological prowess. The alignment of the technical system that legitimized the distancing of ornament in the past is now attempting with the parametric to justify quite the opposite: its return. The printing and CNC operation have made the involvement of patterns and additions less expensive than their absence in an architectural form. The fact that the ornamental motif, infinitely variable, becomes a culture and a principle of composition of the architectural object makes its design and manufacture of the stakes that closes the technician system from side to side and thus excludes the vast majority of architects. This reality observed today has led to an epistemological shift in the didactics of the project, which is incorporated into other training programs on codes and CNC: this makes the use of ornament in contemporary architecture a fundamental problem. Given these lights, architecture is facing a new form of commercial perversion that tries to legitimize the use of highly technological motifs that thus make the urban landscape full of dissonance and stylistic ruptures to create commercial niches for the benefit of more automation. © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture REFERENCES 1. Kostich-Lefebvre, G. A. (2005). Regio: Leon Battista Alberti and the theory of region in architecture. University of Pennsylvania. https://www.proquest.com/openview/fef6c2 3b8eaf55f6a017464bffcd0254/1?pqorigsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y 2. Boudon, P. (1992). Introduction à l'architecturologie. Dunod. 3. Hugo, V. (1924). Ninety-three (Vol. 9). 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Akazaf, M. (2019). The impact of philosophy and mathematics on the aesthetics of the digital architecture based on parametric design. Journal of Advanced Research in Dynamical and Control Systems, 11, 621-631. CITE THIS ARTICLE Mohammed Akazaf (2024). The Ambiguity of Ornament in Architecture: Is It a Substantive or Surface Issue?, Journal of Recent Activities in Architectural Sciences, 9(2), 1-10. 10 © MAT Journals 2024. All Rights Reserved