By Carsten Ruhl

Siegfried Kracauer’s texts are a widely investigated field of sociology and media studies. It is less well known that Kracauer was a graduate architect, practised during World War I and was awarded his PhD after writing a thesis in 1915 in the field of architectural history. After the war, Kracauer published numerous critiques with a special focus on the architectural developments of the time. They document an interest in architectural phenomena ranging from a reflection on his own experiences to a general perspective on the subjectivity of the modern architect, as well as more universal social phenomena. This essay, Kracauer’s Architecture. The Ornamental Nature of the New Capitalist Order, claims that the lack of ornamentation in modern architecture can be grasped as an ornamental concept of the new social order of capitalism.