Resume. It is investigated in the paper how the Décor returned to modern architecture, but a transformed one. The material expression of décor – ornament has migrated from its traditional meaning to the form and structural frame of the building and has grown in scale to occupy its entire mass. The building took over the role of ornament as a means of communication.

The rejection of ornament, and then its return to architecture, was preceded by the debate on whether architecture can convey the meaning. It was modernism that rejected décor but as it has become evident that even a refusal by modernist abstraction to convey any meaning did not relieve it from the burden of a signifier, the decor has come back.

Today, ornaments have grown, and, with minor exemptions, the content of their narratives have diminished. They no longer carry socially important meaning. However, in Georgia this process went differently: in the beginning of the current century, a politically charged decor was still applied directly onto the buildings.

The new urban squares discussed in this thesis, the corner-tower type of houses and fake reconstructions indicate that the applied decor was given a semiotic meaning to be a symbol of a reformed Georgia and to attract tourists to a falsified cultural heritage. In addition, in Georgia there has also been a postmodern recognition of a signifier role of architecture, hence the décor-cum-building was widely accepted as a universal conveyor of the meaning.