When the Panama Canal was nearing completion, there was talk of adding decoration, and a group of artists and sculptors was sent to look at the locks. They came back with a report. The entire project had been designed to be purely functional with no attention to decoration. Adding any decoration would be superfluous and would make it look worse. So, no stone lions or fluted columns or brass eagles or obelisks. Just the huge masses of poured concrete and steel, and the whitewashed control buildings with tan tile roofs. They still look good after a century of operation.
In Victorian England, utility buildings had rather elaborate designs. Abbey Mills Pumping Station is one of the most elaborate, but a lot of 19th and early 20th century utility buildings have a lot more style than those built today.
Roger Scruton's thoughts on beauty renewed my interest in decoration.
His argument that stuck with me is that what we value as the most beautiful things in nature such as meadow flowers and birds of paradise, is due to their decoration. Decoration's purpose is to seduce you. It is in decoration that we experience beauty, lust and love. Decoration is a path to the heights of human experience so we should take it seriously and not carelessly dismiss it.
I have never heard someone say the panama canal is beautiful. No image or emotion comes to mind besides the will of humanity to cut through a continent for money.
