ornament of function?

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building, 375 Park Avenue, New York City

Seagram building - truely modernist or not? 

Adolf Loos and Mies van der Rohe are true practitioners in modernist architecture. They are engaged in the non-bourgeois ideology, “less is more”, but are not so fond of ornaments (especially Adolf Loos in the book Ornament and Crime that I have responded to in the previous post). Work after work, Mies van der Rohe had been able to successfully execute his intentions into his buildings, whether it is the Farnsworth House in 1951 or the Crown Hall of his modernist institute in Chicago. The true nature of structure and material are always expressed. However, Mies’ Seagram Building is a conflict of his ideals. Mies obviously wanted to stay true to his principles; evidently the Seagram building was probably the only building, which pertained its flat planes without any indentation unlike others in New York, going to the extent of making the window blinds uniform by allowing them at only 3 positions, and adding non-structural I-beams on the outside of the building to show off the hidden. However, those I-beams are dishonest; they are an exaggeration of structure, which are not supposed to be visible on the exterior as bided by the American building codes. This means that the beams are just ornaments, though they look functional, they are not. But like Adolf Loos has mentioned, ornaments are not part of the modernist ideals, why are they there if they cannot function? Can we still say the skyscraper is still a true modernist building? Instead, it might have become more bourgeois than ever.