Ornament und Verbrechen

People like the style of older things. They like to carry these styles over to new technologies, and materials, where they just don't fit. As Ayn Rand pointed out in The Fountainhead Everyone then was trying to make a wood or cement column look like a greek column which from it's nature was intended to be carved from stone. As Adolf Loos implies in Ornament und Verbrechen a farmer who cannot afford more than straw chairs, should not pretend that his straw s mahogany, but be proud of it for what it is, and use the straw in the most fitting way for it's own characteristics.

But people still like old styles from an emotional point of view. It is comforting not to have something too new. So how do you keep this emotional attachment, and still make new advances in design that follow the new advances in material, but still attract the attention of the history loving public. Perhaps the best way is to understand the reasoning behind the previous styles you are tempted to imitate, what was is about them that the people so loved? How could those characteristics be carried over without carying over the exact visual ornamental style? How could those characteristics be built into the new innovations?

By using emotions and goals to communicate a visual style, rather than the exact visual characteristics, one will see that there are many ways to express these characteristics without copying the "look and feel" of the old pieces.

However, better than copying the motives, new motives should be searched out. What will hit the nerve of the modern person in a new way? If the old goals fulfilled certain parts of the societies wants, what kind of wants are there today, and how can they be fulfilled in a new way?