Language Of Postmodern Architecture

[Heike Fallago]

Imagine walls disappearing from buildings; imagine the fascination that gripped several architects when glass slowly replaced several building materials such as stone and ballast. Imagine the sight of roofs that were no longer roofs and how they appeared to the communities around them. This movement in architecture and a shift in design is what Jencks describes as post-modern architecture. This is in his book titled The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. The book was published in 1977.

Charles Jencks was born in Baltimore in New England. Initially a student of literature, he shifted his focus to architecture and landscape design where he has made a mark for himself. He has become a force to reckon with in the architectural field. He is well-known to students of architecture and practitioners in this field. This architectural icon subscribes to the opinion that modern architecture is dead. Through the use of several illustrations, he explains his viewpoint and the intricacies involved in architecture during this period. He also explained why, according to him, several architects and their creations championed the so called death of modern architecture.

What Jencks drives at in this point is that architecture directly or indirectly determines the success of the environment around it. This building- regardless of the good intentions when building it in the modern architecture era- resulted in a translation of its features, a development that harmed the immediate environment. The changing society viewed in it a harbor for crime; a fortified castle with several rooms high in the sky.

The architect in many occasions was both the builder and the user of their creation. Their way of life was hence manifested in the structural outlook of what they came up with. This particular design in architecture has persisted over several generations. However, it has diminished to a few personal homes situated away from the urban centers in contemporary society.

Several other factors which influenced this type of design included capital and its restricted availability. The architect in this scenario worked slowly and carefully, accounting personally for each and every detail of the creation to the user who was in most cases a close individual and invariably the user of the building. According to Jencks (1977), all these factors culminated in an architecture that was well understood by the client and which was created in a language that was shared by all members of their immediate community.

The architecture undertaken today contrasts sharply with what the latter method entailed. For starters, Jencks (1977) proposes the issue of economics as a contributor to current architectural trends. Jencks (1977) explains that,

The other difference that Jencks (1977) draws between the two forms of design is the intentions of the architects working on the buildings. The modern and post-modern trends found in hotels entail designs that either solve a problem or simply make more money for the investor. However, architects in the past had similar ambitions but the results of their work were not the same.

Countries had ceased colonizing other countries and their focus was in building their own structures. Urbanization was taking place at a very high rate and architects around the world no longer had the luxury of sharing a close relationship with the client. The idea of a building with emotion was a written expression rather than a practiced profession.

Buildings such as the Seagram Building in New York and Lake Shore Drive Housing in Chicago are classical examples. These buildings addressed every concern relevant to the contractors and their clients at that time. The question of why houses looked like offices at that time was never raised nor addressed because to this generation of architects, predominantly huge and robust buildings was what the society needed and that is what they gave them.

In addition to Mies, Jencks illustrates the works of several other artists. These are artists such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Owings and Merrill, Phillip Jonson, and Ulrich Franzen. He explains that while all these artists had striking forms of architecture, a similar pattern of erratic signification is evident in their works. Unintended imaging can be seen in almost all of their works.

Jencks (1977) however advances his view of the modern architects and their progressive creations in a new form of attack. He explains that several architects of this modern era abandoned their call for social utopiasm and instead opted to building for an established commercial society. Modern architecture- earlier viewed as a call to morality and social transformation- found itself being changed by the society, albeit slowly. The scholar says that

Jencks is directly referring to the development in architecture that seemed to benefit several people in society. Knox (1985) describes a somewhat similar trend in an abstract manner. The writer refers to the most notable form of architecture while indirectly alluding to the idea that several individuals in the society were deemed fit for such architectural designs. According to him, the best belongs to the best principle.

Postmodern architecture has constantly drifted away from the practices of modern designers. This is from the creativity entailed in the design of the curves and emotions illustrated in each and every inch of the structure. While the arguments raised by Jencks are very critical and slightly demeaning to the modern regime of architects, it can be said that the views he expresses are agreeable to many.

However, the modern regime of architecture and the various advancements associated with the era served a useful purpose in teaching and modeling the post modern architect. The trends, having been criticized, serve as base templates for education to many upcoming architects in this era. It can also be said that the modern architect gave birth to the improved post-modern architect.

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Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the late 1950s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism, new classical architecture, and deconstructivism.[1] However, some buildings built after this period are still considered postmodern.[2]

Postmodern architecture emerged in the late 1950s as a reaction against the perceived shortcomings of modern architecture, particularly its rigid doctrines, its uniformity, its lack of ornament, and its habit of ignoring the history and culture of the cities where it appeared. In 1966, Venturi formalized the movement in his book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Venturi summarized the kind of architecture he wanted to see replace modernism:

I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. ... I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. ... I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure", compromising rather than "clean" ... accommodating rather than excluding. ... I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. ... I prefer "both-and" to "either-or", black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. ... An architecture of complexity and contradiction must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion.[3]

In Italy at about the same time, a similar revolt against strict modernism was being launched by the architect Aldo Rossi, who criticized the rebuilding of Italian cities and buildings destroyed during the war in the modernist style, which had had no relation to the architectural history, original street plans, or culture of the cities. Rossi insisted that cities be rebuilt in ways that preserved their historical fabric and local traditions. Similar ideas were and projects were put forward at the Venice Biennale in 1980. The call for a post-modern style was joined by Christian de Portzamparc in France and Ricardo Bofill in Spain, and in Japan by Arata Isozaki.[6]

The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley blends in with both the neo-Renaissance architecture of the Berkeley campus and with picturesque early 20th century wooden residential architecture in the neighboring Berkeley Hills.

In 1995, he constructed a postmodern gatehouse pavilion for his residence, Glass House. The gatehouse, called "Da Monstra", is 23 feet high, made of gunite, or concrete shot from a hose, colored gray and red. It is a piece of sculptural architecture with no right angles and very few straight lines, a predecessor of the sculptural contemporary architecture of the 21st century.[10]

Pelli was named one of the ten most influential living American Architects by the American Institute of Architects in 1991. In 1995, he was awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.[12][15] In May 2004, Pelli was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Minnesota Duluth where he designed Weber Music Hall.[26] In 2005, Pelli was honored with the Connecticut Architecture Foundation's Distinguished Leadership Award.[27]

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