I want to study how functionality took a back seat in Postmodernism.

The architects of the Modernism ideology used the concept of “Less is more”,
“form follow function” and “start from zero”, they believed that ornaments are
surplus and non-functional.. When people begin to get bored with the glass box
thing and seem to think that its unwelcoming and unpleasant, this is how the
postmodernism begun. The idea of Postmodernism in architecture began as a
response to the lack of strong features and failed Utopianism of the Modern
movement. The postmodern architects tried to rediscover the expressive and
symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had been abandoned by
the modern style. They believed in “Function follows Form”.Robert Charles
Venturi, jr. coined the maxim "Less is a bore" as antidote to Mies van der Rohe's
famous modernist dictum "Less is more“. The importance of form is perhaps one
of the most debated subjects in contemporary architectural discourse.

The post-modernists emphasized the nature of architectural forms as cultural

signifiers. Their work relied on re-interpreting the architecture in ways that
created symbolic associations with the past. Their main focus was to symbolize
and ornament the structure. Their theories were based on complexity where
form does not follow function, rather function follows form. The architects of the
post-modern times gave more preference to the form of the structure and thus
the functionality of the structure took a back seat.

One such example was the Portland Building by Michael Graves which is a 15-
story municipal office building. The building features tiny windows, which were
meant to also evoke the body – or "one window, one worker," as he said in his
1982 lecture – were immediately criticised by occupants as too small, leaving the
interior dark and uninviting. "Perhaps they were too small, but that was the
intention," Graves conceded in the League talk. Even the interiors were not
functional according to the office workers. Another example is “The duck and
decorated shed” in which the form of the structure is in the shape of duck ,which
the architect did to fulfil the “humour” principle of post modernism, which
eventually resulted in degrading the functionality as the structure had no
windows to it. Thus it is seen that the functionality took a back seat in
Postmodernism.