Once omnipresent – found in every culture, on every material, across all social strata – ornamentation was banished during industrialization’s crisis of historicism, when eclectic style collages erased symbolic reference points and decoration became a “crime”. Yet ornamentation predates civilization itself: Paleolithic peoples, as Wilhelm Worringer argues, used abstract patterns to bridge the gap between self and nature, finding inner calm in rhythmic embellishment. Its primal purpose was twofold: to organize and to enliven – creating visual “noise” that arrests the eye and satisfies our deep appetite for aesthetic stimuli.

Critics like Adolf Loos condemned such visual pleasure as a vestige of base drives, championing a stripped-down modernity. Hannes Meyer, in turn, rejected ornamentation on social grounds – mass production should serve public need, not luxury. Yet as prosperity rose, so did a renewed craving for distinction. Anti-functionalist movements flaunted decoration to subvert utility – only to be reproached for their excess and lack of an authentic design language.

Now imagine functionalism and anti-functionalism having a baby: a constructive stimuli, a form of ornamentation that marries those opposite poles. This research exposes the bias in the mantra “form follows function” by reframing ornamentation as a functionalist–antifunctionalist hybrid. It traces the debate from William Hogarth’s moral critiques and Henry van de Velde’s pursuit of harmonious form, through Hermann Muthesius’s craft-industry synthesis and Theodor W. Adorno’s mass-culture critique, to Ettore Sottsass’s postmodern exuberance and Alessandro Mendini’s ironic lyricism. After weighing those historical arguments, it defines constructive stimuli via ornamental connections: here, joints and interfaces become design highlights while remaining integral to the structure – proving that stimuli can be constructive.

The full paper is available in German upon request.