Postmodern phenomenon and contemporary cultural shifts

Postmodern Architecture

What formal and spatial qualities characterize postmodern architecture? What is the relationship of postmodern architecture and classicism? How does this relate to the socio-political context within which postmodern architecture developed?

Postmodern architecture, as its name suggests, and like so many aesthetic movements in general, arose as a reaction to the expressive sensibility of the previous generation. Postmodernists revolted against the ideals of modernist architecture, and the modernists' insistence that architecture must be functional and respond to the needs of the common man and woman. "The first, and still the most common, understanding of the term [postmodernism] refers to the tendency that rejects the formal and social constituents of the modern movement and embraces a broader formal language, which is frequently figurative and historically eclectic" (McLeod 25).

The new postmodernists derided the formulaic genre of the preceding generations of architects, which they felt had produced buildings that were "monotonous" ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture," 2007). The new critics despised modernism's uniform, linear lines, its consistency of shape, its "glass skyscrapers" that were "based on an efficiency of construction fostered by capitalist speculation ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture," 2007). Modernism argued for architecture's politicization, an end to its "formal isolation" and for an expansion of architecture's role to address social problems. Postmodern critics of the early 1970s felt that elitism and individual expression were superior values to modernist's embrace of a populism that had really degenerated into a routinized corporate regime (McLeod 27).

The new architects wished to inject the individualistic vision of the architect that might fly in the face of the specific function of the building, or the dominant popular aesthetic. As the political impetus of the time was to reject capitalism's pandering to the demands of the masses, the 1970s upsurge of postmodernism celebrated what was not standardized like a commercial artifact. Postmodernism took up the idea that surfaces were important, and that an obsession with depth of meaning and form was passe by reintroducing older elements of architecture that were purely non-functional on the outside, purely to delight the eye.

Perhaps the most striking formal and spatial qualities and characteristics of postmodern architecture is its lack of cohesion in all of the qualities of form and style. The outside and the inside of the building may be in apparent conflict, or come from different periods. Curves and sharp angles may occur in unexpected places. Pastiche is the dominant motif. Postmodern architects, in contrast to the uniformity of modernism and its clean lines, created architectural structures "absent of references to historical signs and codes. Architects ignored material and technical specificity of site, place, or environment... divorcing historical forms from their contexts" ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture, 2007).

Yet perhaps in this there is some shades of classicism in postmodern architecture -- or at least neo-classicism and its embrace of an earlier era, that of Greek and Roman formality, and its transformation and appropriation of those forms in different uses. It is individualistic, and non-standardized. Postmodernist architecture returns to the classicist loves of the facade, and ornamentation. Some postmodern architects embraced the ideal of aggressively ahistoricial, apolitical architecture, stating that: "architecture had no representative political significance when separated from its function," in short, the age-old notion of art for art's sake ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture, 2007). Humor is often characteristic of the postmodern spirit, using "cultural fragments and allusions....in an ebullient melange of styles," such in with Portland Building in Orin which the application of swags, exaggerated cornices, and garish colors stands as an inside joke on a preconceived populism ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture, 2007). The modernist Frank Lloyd Wright's sparse and clear lines, and insistence that form follow function, was turned upside-down in the postmodern aesthetic. From now on, form and function would be divorced, or even be at odds. Architectural historian Charles Jenks praises the radical eclecticism of the new movement although he takes a more measured view of the purpose of architecture, suggesting that taste and function often do have a role in many postmodern constructions.

The composite, collage, 'anything goes' approach of postmodernism has caused some critics to deny that it is a style at all, merely a broad statement applied to architecture since the 1970s, continuing through today. How can postmodernism be a style if it is no style at all? Because it arose during the historic preservation movement and embraces the old, not the new, it merely seems to feed off of the old rather than make a new contribution to the architectural cannon (Paradis, 2003). However, even postmodernism's critics admit that it would be difficult to mistake a postmodern structure for a historic structure of another era. Rather than showing one period, or reviving a period style from the past, postmodernism often exaggerates the past, and "does not necessarily try to replicate historic styles as did the period styles, but instead makes fun of it, using a wide variety of historic forms, simplifying and mixing them into an unorganized, illogical jumble of a building" (Paradis, 2003).

Rather than structures that rise organically from the ground, postmodern structures seem to be grafted onto the ground, without rhyme or reason. They may contain fixtures and artifices that appear real or functional, but in fact are not. Such jarring surfaces, apparent 'ugliness' and nostalgia for an admittedly false past in postmodern architecture that revolutionized and opened up the field from the formula of modernism has had a negative as well as a positive effect -- it has resulted in a tendency for it to be depoliticized, or even reactionary in its ideological orientation, despite the fact that it arose during a radical period of world history, where seismic changes were occurring in the social structure of America and the world.