Postmodern Architecture

Abstract

The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postmodern thought far exceeds the use of the term postmodern in architectural discourse. Modern architecture—with its utopian aspirations, functional rationality, technological determinism, and aesthetic purism—is understood by postmodern thought as a primary expression of the general search for a metaphysics of certainty and universality, which rejects traditional spatial hierarchies and seeks to establish a new homogeneous and continuous space. In practice, the creation of this new space entails the erasure and replacement of old buildings and city fabric as well as old subjectivities and sensibilities. Against the principles of erasure and replacement, a post-modern ethos in architecture emerged in the years just after World War II with a pars destruens, which criticizes the modern movement’s objective and subjective ambitions, and a pars construens which calls for an embrace of heterogeneity and recombination, accommodation, local identity, “vernacular” building, humanistic sensibilities, and disciplinary traditions. A renewed interest in architecture theory accompanied the new architecture; indeed, postmodern architecture was born in the academy and was developed in journals. New epistemological tools, including structuralism and semiotics, helped provide a theoretical infrastructure. Historians and others outside the profession played key roles in the theorization of postmodern architecture. Drawings became important as an experimental tool as well as a means of representation. The development of theory in the United States and Europe enabled the specification of different trends within postmodern architecture—for example, rationalism versus realism, structuralism versus phenomenology, historicism versus deconstructivism, and avant-garde versus neo-avant-garde. Corollary examples and regional inflections can be found in other countries, but most followed Euro-American models. Meanwhile, the larger currents of postmodern thought flowed through post-structuralist theories of language. Inevitably postmodern architecture also developed a post-structuralist dimension. The embrace of post-structuralist theory eventually precipitated the end of historicist postmodernism, though it is arguable that postmodern thought continues to frame recent architectural production.