JCJ Architecture Lecture Series Kick Off Oct. 13

The Department of Architecture cordially invites all University faculty, staff, and students to the first event of the JCJ Architecture Fall 2021 Architecture Lecture Series today at 4 p.m. in Wilde Auditorium. Masks and social distancing will be enforced.

Misha Semënov, AIA, LEED AP, Senior Architect and Kassandra (Has) Leiva, Architectural Designer of Centerbrook Architects and Planners (Centerbrook, Conn.,) will be presenting on, “Deciphering the Spiral: An Introduction to the Timeless Language of Ornament.” 

For millennia, humans have used ornament to imbue their environments and objects with a sense of rhythm, visual complexity, and cosmological significance. Although modernism attempted to banish ornament from the architectural toolkit, this expulsion was predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of ornament as lacking “function.” Even today, architects who claim to understand ornament, like Farshid Moussavi, author of The Function of Ornament, describe its task as the mere production of “affect.” In reality, a historical survey of ornament in cultures around the world reveals it to be a language with a deeper social and physiological function, one that mediates between the objects it adorns, the viewers it addresses, and the cosmos. 

In this lecture, Kas and Misha will introduce the basic syntax of ornament, starting with the fundamental geometric rules that generate it and covering the ways in which patterns are repeated and transformed to create decorative fields with a sense of rhythm, life, and beauty. Using the Victorian-era encyclopedias of ornament as our catalogs, we will share research that demonstrates how ornament across world cultures consistently utilizes a fundamental visual grammar to construct a system of meaning while maintaining culturally-specific keys and registers. 

Please note: lectures this semester will be both in-person and remote. Please reference upcoming UNotes announcements for specific event offerings. 

Any questions, please email cetacomm@hartford.edu.