Review: The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture and Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990

Abstract

The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture Sir John Soane's Museum, London 16 May–27 August 2018 Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich 24 March–2 September 2018 Recent years have seen British architecture of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s attract growing interest. The buildings of this period are becoming old enough to be the subjects of proposals for substantial remodeling or demolition, and so some of the key debates in contemporary British architectural conservation are concerned with them. At the same time, historians are increasingly keen to look beyond the trente glorieuses of the postwar British welfare state (i.e., 1945–75), which coincided with the high-water mark of modern architecture and planning. How were the architectural and urban principles of the previous three decades challenged and refined during the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s? Two complementary exhibitions mounted in 2018 explored this question, one showcasing the postmodern revival of historic forms and urban principles, and the other examining so-called high-tech architecture, which celebrated structural engineering and the use of mechanical services, fusing modernist enthusiasm for contemporary technology and flexible planning with an interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century engineering accomplishments. The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture , presented at Sir John Soane's Museum in London, was curated by Owen Hopkins, who had previously curated exhibitions dealing with subjects ranging from the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor to that of Alison and Peter Smithson. The show took place principally in the museum's two temporary exhibition galleries, but it began in the adjacent Yellow Drawing Room. There, items from the permanent collection were juxtaposed with those brought in temporarily for the show. One of the giant yellow “egg cups” from the roofline of Terry Farrell's 1983 TV-am headquarters building in London echoed the color of the room, into which were brought chairs by Charles Jencks and others, while the painter Carl Laubin's dramatic depiction of Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones's reworking of the Royal Opera …