Postmodernism - A step further

Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi

Postmodernism is the philosophical direction that develops as a critique of postmodernity through a critique of modernism. Postmodernism is an eclectic, colourful style of architecture and the decorative arts that appeared from the late 1970s and continues in some form today.

James R. Thompson Center, Chicago

Features of postmodernist architecture

~ Bright colours

~ Playfulness

~ Classical Motifs

~ Variety of material and shapes

Another feature is a concern for subjective human experience rather than rational or objective criteria as a determinant of the building form. Aalto’s public spaces, for example, use a variety of materials and non-rectilinear form to guide users through the building. Materials respond to the hand, light is used to guide and suggest movement, and it is even said (Kenneth Frampton) that Aalto understood the difference sounds coming from flooring materials and utilised these to distinguish different parts of the building.

Modernism Vs. Postmodernism

Modernism is a perpetual declaration: "Man is this! Life is that! Society is the other!" etc. Postmodernism is the same problems and the same issues, but in a questioning, not a declaratory mode : "Man is this? Life is that? Society is the other? etc". Since the realization of modernist projects was often so cataclysmic: e.g. again the Holocaust, nukes etc, postmodernism attacked them at their root: claims to Truth.

Wexner Center for the Arts

What I have gathered is that, Postmodernism defends an architecture full of signs and symbols that can communicate cultural values. Postmodernism is a reaction to homogeneity and tediousness by praising difference and striving to produce buildings that are sensitive to the context within which they are built.

"Postmodernism is, of course, the dead end from which hauntology starts - but one of its role is to denaturalise what postmodernism has taken for granted, to conceive of postmodernism as a condition in the sense of a sickness."

- Mark Fisher

Hope you like the reading. Stay tuned for more!