Tectonics - Leong Jiang Ling 1001436853

"An original venue that would do justice to the infinite diversity of cultures".

Structure made the ornament, but is ornament made structure? Both can't live without each other, just like a spoon can't without a fork. If a person can eat with a spoon, then what the use of a fork? A fork can't function as a fork if it doesn't exist from the beginning. An ornament just like a fork, it exists from the beginning but disappearing in the future, so can a person really live without a fork, an ornament?

Sculptures, fancy scrollwork, bargeboard, arches, and verandahs all lend historic building that indefinable quality called "character". You will know it when you see it. An ornament brings its history, character, the meaning of the building. A building won't appear its character if nothing was shown of its facade. A building doesn't even moving around or telling you by "words"? I mean, a building doesn't have a mouth.

A role of an ornament, I would like to say, a mouth. A mouth that can speak the language of a building, and architecture. An ornament can tell a story of a building if a building has its characteristics, just a person who can express its feeling, tell its story. 

In Paris, there is a museum called musée du quai Branly by Jean Nouvel. It is a building that rich in ornament, and well express its characteristic. In this design, Nouvel took into account the criticisms of the neighbors who had blocked the Mitterrand project. The main building is designed to appear lower than the building around it and is largely screened from the view by its gardens. 

He proposed "a singular architecture for a singular object." Everything is curved, fluid, transparent and mysterious, to serve the institution's primary mission: to build bridges between cultures, to incite curiosity and to meet expectations of different audiences.

Perched on stilts, docked on the banks of the River Seine, it is a complex yet welcoming structure built on five levels, similar to a long footbridge. Suspended multi-coloured boxes are inlaid into the facades, offer more intimate exhibition spaces inside the museum.

In his design, the boxes are the most interesting part of this museum because it is not a simple decoration but an ornament that brings its characteristic and aesthetic expression. Its ornament is to bring color to the environment and make people more interest to it and even bring people more approach to it.

Ornament playing an important role in architecture today as architecture today can't without it. If this world without ornament, it will be a boring world.