Simultaneous Double Notions: Mannerist Elements in Contemporary Architecture

Abstract

There is no complete description of either the term “mannerism” or its associated features. Contradiction, paradox, and ambiguity may have been the terms most referential for mannerism since the 1950s, but this article poses a unification of opposites as another important feature, specific to modern and contemporary architecture. We analyse three series of works by Andrea Palladio against another three pairs of opposing concepts—absence versus presence, frontality versus foreshortening, and grid versus assemblage. An analysis of each pair of concepts using commonly accepted examples from late twentieth-century architecture, following Venturi in the way of “both-and,” allows us to argue how this merging of opposites in the same element, blends into, and participates in both characterisations. The pairings of opposites maintain their features, becoming simultaneous complementary characters. These mannerist characterisations are less common in current architecture, but they can, we claim, be easily detected in various recent projects.