Best known for New York’s Central Park luminaires (1982), the ornamentation at Rice University’s Baker Hall in Houston (1997), and his work on Yale University’s Bass Library entrance pavilion and Sterling Memorial Library stairwell entrance (2007), the sculptor Kent Bloomer (b. 1935) has not only influenced the discussion around ornament in contemporary architectural practice, but has inspired developments in a range of disciplines that include history, music, art, philosophy, and biology. With a retrospective look at Bloomer’s work as a point of departure, scholars from a variety of different fields explore his contributions to the history of ornament as both a social and an artistic phenomenon. Through the lens of Bloomer’s groundbreaking oeuvre, this volume reorients the discourse of ornament from a contentious vestige of modernity toward its active relationship to architecture, landscape, urbanism, and a sense of place.
