The wall deception repeatedly proposed by Theo van Doesburg
does not constitute an original contribution of Neoplasticism. One need only recall the optical-illusionistic prophecies of celebrated mural frescoes, where illusion served as a threshold between imagination and perceptual reality. If the walls of the past were adorned with perspectival visions and trompe-l’œil effects, then the only plausible motivation in favor of Neoplasticism might be ornament itself.

Surfaces that “ask to be animated” articulate a specific and quantifiable demand. The architectural need for ornament divides façades into two broad categories: ornament of architecture and ornament for architecture. A third position emerges when architecture becomes ornament in itself, a dilation of the architectural concept that presupposes the will to unify the two terms.

Historically, there have been moments when architecture and ornament coincided, their definitional boundaries conditioned by mutual conceptual interplay. In such cases, the distinction between the two dissolves, and unity manifests in one of its guises—spontaneous, unlimited, and indivisible.

Ornament, often misunderstood by modernist discourse, may be related to time in two distinct directions: one aligned with mimesis, the other with the superimposition of multiple “beats” that compose a rhythm tied to temporal action. More precisely, one might speak of an architecture of ornament, a peripheral yet structurally essential layer of the built form.

The historical crisis of ornament has repositioned the architectural linguistic system as a site of innovation. Within the planimetric optics of avant-garde culture, ornament becomes a point of tension, placing cultural components in antithetical relation. Even Art Nouveau (Liberty), born of material flexion and rhythmic undulation, centered its poetics on ornament, an element that, in the final analysis, became structural.

The celebrated curves of Alvar Aalto represent a natural derivation of this lineage, affirming the exaltation of Nature as a rediscovered locus of human being, a place where ornament and architecture converge in organic resonance.

From "Design of New Words"
The Aesthetics of Ornament by Filippo Lo Presti 1989