POST-MODERN
ARCHITECTURE
Malathe G M Hamid, PhD., M.Arch, BSc.
29/4/2024
Lecture contents:
• Definitions
• Motives for Postmodern architecture
• Failures of Modernism.
• A comparison
• Example of: The new interest in history
• Example of: A renewed Concern for urbanism
• The Evolutionary Tree of Post-Modernism
• The Post-Modern debate
What is Modern • The term “Modern” refers to something that is of its
Architecture? time, and perhaps even up-to-the-minute and
fashionable.
• In Architecture, “Modern” came to refer to a
particular approach by a group of architects who
sought to reject:
• Historical precedent
• Ornaments and considered them as outdated,
• New aesthetic based on Rational approaches
adopted from the new materials such as
reinforced concrete , steel frames, and glass.
LESS is MORE
Mies Van Der Rohe
Post-Modern • An architecture that it is doubly coded, one-half Modern
Architecture
and one-half something else (usually traditional building) in its
attempt to communicate with the public, meanings and
symbols that were lost in Modern architecture.
No 1 Poultry, London, by James Stirling
DES 4101
Definitions • Postmodern: an architecture that was
professionally based and popular as well
as one that was based on new techniques
and old patterns.
• The observable fact was that architects as various as
Ralph Erskine, Robert Venturi, Lucien Kroll, the
Krier brothers, and Team Ten had all departed from
Modernism and set off in different directions that
kept a trace of their common departure.
The term was first used in a title of
an article published in 1945 called "The
post-modern house" . It was not used
until Jenck’s own writing on the subject,
which started in 1975.
Postmodernism • Postmodernism has the essential double meaning: the
continuation of Modernism as well as historical
has the essential references. Hence, it combines between new/old.
double coding • There are compelling reasons for these opposite
pairings:
1. Post-Modern architects were trained by Modernists,
and are committed to using contemporary
technology as well as facing current social reality.
2. These commitments are enough to distinguish them
from revivalists or traditionalists, as this creates their
hybrid language.
3. Yet all the creators who could be called Postmodern
keep something of a modern sensibility, whether this
is irony, parody, displacement, complexity,
eclecticism, realism, or any number of contemporary
tactics and goals.
Discuss: • Modern architecture had failed to remain credible partly because
it did not communicate effectively with its ultimate users and
partly because it did not make effective links with the city and
What are the history.
failures of • Instead of improving the human condition, modernism has
contributed to its impoverishment.
Modernism? • Modernism has been blamed for the destruction of the city as the
(Architecture and Planning) historic city was threatened by economic forces.
• The rationality of Modernism is viewed doubtfully as a naive
optimism; there is no longer any faith in the idea of progress.
• The functionalism of the aesthetics of the machine, had resulted
in rejecting old-fashioned symbols, human needs, interests,
sentiments, values, that must be given full play in every
complete.
• Modernism encompasses a romantic individualism which valued
buildings that stand out rather than fit in their surrounding
context.
• The main motive for Postmodern architecture is obviously
the social failure of Modern architecture, its
What are the main mythical "death" announced by critics such as Charles
Jencks.
motives for • In 1972, many slab blocks of housing were intentionally
Postmodern blown up at Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis. By the mid-1970s,
architecture
these explosions were becoming a quite frequent method
of dealing with the failures of Modernist building methods:
cheap fabrication,
lack of personal "defensible" space, and:
the alienating housing estate.
The "death" of modern architecture and its ideology of
progress, offering technical solutions to social problems,
was seen by everyone in a vivid way.
Pruitt-Igoe housing, St.Louis 1952-55, Minoru
Yamasaki
A Comparison
Modernism Post-Modernism
Enlightenment rationalism Sceptical distrust of human
rational abilities.
Denial of tradition Respect for tradition.
A universal functionalist style An eclectic aesthetic.
Prohibition of ornament and Recognition of the importance
symbolism of ornament and symbol.
A romantic individualism which A contextualism which values
valued buildings that stand out buildings that attend to their
rather than fit in surroundings.
A desire for grand and An incremental approach to
totalitarian solutions to urban the solution of urban problems.
problems.
Post-Modernism
A new interest in history A renewed Concern for
and communication urbanism in the 1960s
• Radical Eclecticism • Contextualism
• Symbolic Architecture • Participatory architecture
• Ornament • Critical Regionalism
• Vernacular
• (Post-Modern Classicism)
9 Major Architects
LE
VENTURI HOLLEIN ROSSI STIRLING KOOLHASS LIBSKIND GEHRY EISENMAN
CORBUSIER
Example of: The new interest
in history
• The most notable use of the double coding
in architecture is James Stirling's addition
to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.
• "We live in a complex world where we
cannot deny either the past and
conventional beauty, nor the present
and current technical and social
reality“.
• They say "we are beautiful like the
Acropolis or Pantheon, but we are also
based on concrete technology and
deceit.“
James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, Neue
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart , 1977
Acropolis, Athens
• One can sit on these false ruins and contemplate the truth
of our lost innocence: that we live in an age that can build
with beautiful, expressive masonry as long as we make it
skin deep and hang it on a steel skeleton.
• A Modernist would, of course, deny himself and use this
pleasure for a number of reasons: "truth to materials,"
"logical consistency," "straightforwardness," "simplicity"
• To signify the permanent nature of the
museum, he has used traditional and
classical forms including an Egyptian
cornice, an open-air Pantheon, and
segmental arches.
• These are beautiful in a modest and
conventional way, but they are not
revivalist either because of small
distortions, or because of the use of a
Modern material, such as reinforced
concrete.
James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, Stuttgart
,Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart 1977
Pantheon
Rome
• These forms and colours are reminiscent of De Stijl,
that is typically a Modern language, but they are
collaged onto the traditional background.
• The pluralism that is so often called on to justify
Postmodernism is here a tangible reality.
• Can you expand on that?
Discussion • In your opinion
• Do you think postmodernism is original and
avoids cultural clichés or it is a form of a
counter-culture that engages our own
mainstream cultures with new technologies
based on deceit?
• هل تعتقد أن ما بعد الحداثة أصلية وتتجنب الكليشيهات الثقافية أم أنها شكل من أشكال
الثقافة المضادة التي تُشرك ثقافاتنا السائدة بتقنيات جديدة قائمة على الخداع؟
Ideological and social • It is not only a matter of style
intentions of Post-
• It is about the symbolic intentions and
Modern Architecture
morality.
• Writings of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott
Brown, Christian Norberg-Schultz, or Charles
Jencks, all highlight the constant notion of
pluralism, the idea that the architect must
design for different "taste cultures" .
• If the architect follows these hints, they will
lead him towards an eclectic style, but the
trace of the pluralism will and should remain.
Example of: A renewed
Concern for urbanism
• Leon Krier believed that the city should be designed
around the physical capabilities of the human body
(walkability, accessibility, legibility…).
• In his schemes for the reconstruction of cities such as
Berlin and Washington, D.C., he shows how the
destroyed fabric of the historic city could be repaired
and how a traditional set of well-scaled spaces could be
added to these cores.
• His nostalgia, was very positive and creative because it
shows what a modern city might be if built with
traditional streets, arcades, lakes, and squares.
• The drawings reflected his urban philosophies, and laid
the political groundwork for New Urbanism.
3
The Evolutionary • The diagram shows that it is a movement that
Tree of Post- starts roughly in the I960s as a set of plural
Modernism departures from Modernism to Pluralism,
both philosophical and stylistic.
• To classify anything as complex as an
architectural movement, one has to use many
definers: in distinguishing Postmodernism
from Modern and Late Modern architecture,
Jencks has used thirty definers.
• These definers revolve around, the
differences over symbolism, ornament,
humour, technology, and the relation of the
architect to existing and past cultures.
THE POSTMODERN • As Foster (1985) observes, there are really two distinct
DEBATE types of postmodernism (p. xii) "a Postmodernism of
resistance and a Postmodernism of reaction.“
A. Postmodernism of reaction is strictly a
matter of style.
• But again this was strictly a formal superiority, devoid
of any critical consideration of content.
• This kind of postmodernism has been criticized as
“An instrumental pastiche" (Foster, 1985, xii),
“Do-it- yourself history" (Huxtable, 1980, 26),
“Cardboard scenography" (Frampton, 1982, 76)
Postmodern kitsch in Atlanta with its arbitrary architectural elements,
is typical of reactionary postmodernism
Team Disney Building, USA, 1986, by Michael Graves
M2 Building, Japan, 1991, by Kengo Kuma
THE POSTMODERN B. Postmodernism of resistance:
DEBATE Avoids the nonsense about fake Greek, fake Roman…..
And adopts things that reflect very positively the place
where they're being built “a very powerful sense
of regionalism”
• Frampton (1985) calls this trend critical regionalism
• Critical regionalism is a critical approach to
architecture and planning. It recognizes the
importance of context, but this recognition is not
limited to the acknowledgement of existing
architectural forms.
• It also appreciates the significance of local culture, social
institutions, techniques, climate, topography. The critical
regionalist is aware of universal techniques, but does not try
to apply them arbitrarily, without respect to local conditions
References and • https://www.archdaily.com/785082/spotlight-leon-krier
links • Bourassa, S. C., (1989) POSTMODERNISM IN
ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING: WHAT KIND OF
STYLE? . Journal of Architectural and Planning
Research , Winter, 1989, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 289-304.
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209
5263518300530
