A famous Austrian Architect, Adolf Loos, with his famous work called “Ornament is Crime” is also a disgrace to some degree. It shouldn’t come to us as a suprise that both Marcel’s Fountain and loos’ writings on ornaments are both in the 1910s, 2-3 years apart from each other. I am a modernist, and always will be one, never will I use an ornament on an exterior or interior composition. But, minimalist, craftsmanship free styles of building was not meant for the mainstream.

People want to somehow add value to their buildings, by doing something to the surfaces of spaces. And since we don’t have the heavily ornamented Palladian style of buildings in the mainstream anymore, the common builder is totally lost. He tries to imitate byproducts of Corbusier’s marseille block or villa savoye, but he does not understand that what corbusier did was to bring the plan to life in his facades. The modern lines he composed is the end product of a long design process which meshes the plan and facade inseparably from each other. No decoration. A wholistic approach. Trying to copy the end product without understanding the process of its creation, produces an architecture of comedy.

Arguably, if the Palladian traditional buildings were not cut off by pop artists and star architects initially in the early and mid 20th centuries, the common builder would have had some set of rules in which to satisfy his ancestral urge to decorate his buildings today.

I am a strong believer that Classical and traditional buildings should be a part of the ecosystem in urban renewal. A city cannot be made from the byproducts of curbu buildings. The horrific urban design proposal he made for the center of Paris also brings an interesting twist to my premise here.

You don’t want Adana builders to plant Eifel towers and compose the buildings facades with utter non sense? Then turn back to tradition and classicism as a source for inspiration. We need more of Palladio not Corbu in our cities.

P.S: I would go so far to say that, if Marcel had not have put that urinal sideways, pop culture wouldn’t have been the way it is. It’s possible that degenerates like Miley Cyrus wouldn’t have been dominating the world of music as of today.