TO REMEMBER POSTMODERNISM
Extra Curricular - Manchester School Of Architecture, 01/2018
Léa-Catherine Szacka
Postmodern architecture is coming of age. With
many of the buildings built over this period at
risk of demolition, new means for understanding
the relevance of this eclectic style are needed and
some architects and architecture historians are
trying today to give this movement a new life,
to defend its reputation and to find its merits.
Many postmodern buildings in Britain are final-
ly reaching 30 years old, meaning that they can
be considered for listing by Historic England,
the public body that looks after England’s histo-
ric environment. In the US also, the future of
postmodern landmarks hangs in the balance, from
Helmut Jahn’s Thompson Center in Chicago to
Philip Johnson’s AT&T building in New York.
TWO NEW PERSPECTIVES ON
POSTMODERNISM
Two books have been published very recently on
British Postmodernism. Post-Modern Buildings in
Britain by Geraint Franklin and Elain Harwood is
reassessing Pomo’s merits, tracing its history and
celebrating some of its best examples – from civic
and commercial buildings and housing estates to
landscape design (Tucker, 2017). Franklin and
Harwood (2017) state that ‘the built works of
British Postmodernism, always in the minority,
are today fast disappearing – hence this book. But
the post-modern movement’s guiding principles
and strategies – chief among them pluralism, con-
text, narrative and subversion – have never been
more relevant to contemporary architecture’
(p.20). This book focuses on building a heritage of
postmodern architecture born in Britain and it’s
written by two architecture historians: Harwood
is a specialist in post-war architecture at Historic
England who has been tasked with researching
‘this most slippery and divisive of styles for a
forthcoming raft of listings to be announced next
year’ (Wainwright, 2017).
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The other book published later in December
2017 is conceived as a guide to raise awareness
about the movement. Revisiting Postmodernism
aims to define the way Postmodernism influen-
ces architectural practices today and to renovate
interest and participation. It is written by two ar-
chitects, Terry Farrell (born in 1938) on one side,
a pioneer in postmodern architecture in Britain,
and Adam Nathaniel Furman (born in 1982) on
the other, which analyses the movement afresh,
through the lens of the twenty-first century.
‘No other British architect is more closely asso-
ciated with the movement’s rise and fall than Sir
Terry Farrell’ says Wainwright (2017). He played
a key role in the early days of a movement that has
sliced architectural discourse down the middle.
Adam Nathaniel Furman, the younger co-author,
represents one of the most interesting legacies of
the movement today. He created The Postmodern
Society on Facebook a couple of years ago and his
projects are deeply influenced by the postmodern
principles of pluralist eclectic references and,
most of all, fun and color.
THE DEFINITION OF POSTMODERNISM IN
ARCHITECTURE
‘But what exactly is the Postmodern? Is it possible
to give a single definition to such a paradoxical
and irritating word? I feel that it is indeed pos-
sible’ (Portoghesi, 1983). For Paolo Portoghesi
the strength contained in that word lies in the
fact that it defines a period more than a style. Or,
more concisely, an ensemble of styles arisen as the
strongest reaction to the modern movement, so
heterogeneously formed at the beginning of the
19th century.
One of the most important traits of Postmo-
dernism is its unrivalled plurality. Every object,
every building that originated in that period had
to express a certain singularity, characterized by
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 a peculiar narrative, in constant relation to its
context.
In 1980 Venice hosted the first architectural
exhibition of the Biennale, called The Presence of
the Past and curated by Portoghesi. He laid out
the Arsenale’s historic rope works as the Strada
Novissima, a concourse in which 20 architects
(none of whom were British) designed façades
that demonstrated the richness and variety of
new ideas emerging under the general heading of
post-modernism. The Strada Novissima followed
the success of another three-dimensional exhibit,
when in November 1979 Aldo Rossi had floated a
temporary theatre on a barge, Il Teatro del Mondo
(The Theatre of the World), around the Venice
archipelago.
It was clear by that time the importance of the
‘plurality of propositions’ expressed by the cur-
rent architectural approach, not a single unified
style as the one modernists adhered to (Szacka,
2011). That’s why it really seemed difficult at that
time to put all the architectures built from 1960s
to 1990s, full of different historic architectural
references and meanings, together under the
same label.
The postmodern way of thinking is reflected in
urbanism too; Stuart Cohen and Colin Rowe de-
scribed architecture and urban design as a collage
of shapes and ideas, and in Collage City, an article
that led in 1978 to an eponymous book with Fred
Koetter, the English-born Rowe argued for urban
design based on fragmentation, ‘bricolage’ and a
variety of meanings to secure this diversity.
Like A. Rossi in L’Architettura della Città, Colin
Rowe tries to elaborate a city theory between
the extremes of the traditional city (the historic
town) and modern architecture cities.
Adopting the figure ground as a tool to read
the urban structure, to analyze the relationships
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between solids and voids, Rowe promulgates a
city that claims to be in its ability to collide pacifi-
cally, to create contrasts by admitting a continuity
that is based on both events and history. A city
that not only grows continuously with itself but
also accepts an image of itself in fragments, rather
than in full.
“I think the PoMo label has been too rigidly
seen as a style”, says Farrell. “I never adhered to
that. My work was more freestyle and eclectic”.
For him the most enduring legacy of the era is
urbanistic rather than stylistic. He recalls the lack
of identity found in modernist buildings, where
there isn’t a sense of context to how places are
planned (Wainwright 2017).
Farrell talks about choice: the reaction to the cer-
tainty celebrated by Modernism, that allowed it
to persist despite its obvious failings, is a celebra-
tion of uncertainty and plurality as well.
In ‘Revisiting Postmodernism’ he gives us a per-
sonal perspective on many of the events happened
after the Second World War: major changes in cul-
ture and in politics in the world, the development
of a common global culture influenced by techno-
logy and new means of production and living. He
was used to observe and live in the consequences
of the war: the reactions to it are the symbols that
he remembers the most, often translated in huge
cultural swings, as the coexistence of different
-isms before their respective decline: communi-
sm, fascism, socialism. He’s living in a period of
passage, and this is reflected in every aspect of
society.
It’s when Farrell begins to design a house with
Charles Jencks that he starts to be aware that ‘the
broad cultural influences were beginning to be
claimed or driven or made into a style to whi-
ch there was a whole new set of rules’ (Farrell,
2017). Again for him the essence of Postmoderni-
sm was a way of seeing and thinking and was not
a new style, but rather the maturation of an old
one.
‘Post-modern architecture can be defined by
its relationship with modernism’ (Franklin &
Harwood, 2017). With the simple use of a hyphen
between the words ‘post’ and ‘modern’ throu-
ghout Post-modern Buildings in Britain, Franklin
& Harwood emphasize the nature of reaction to
Modernism that had in fact spread in all the arts,
not just in architecture.
In this book, it is clearly stated the fact that Post-
modernism had different results in every country,
highlighting the situation in the United States, in
Italy, in Switzerland, in Austria, in Japan and then
of course in Britain.
The two architecture historians say that the most
distinctive strand originated right in the United
States where Louis Kahn provided an important
bridge between modernists and postmodernists.
Kahn’s design choices on the separated position of
service areas informed the tech movement and his
adoption of bold geometric shapes and monu-
mentality fused modern and ancient traditions.
Moreover, in the United States in 1966 Kahn’s
assistant at the University of Philadelphia, Robert
Venturi, published Complexity and Contradiction
in Architecture. The book demonstrated, through
countless examples, an approach to understan-
ding architectural composition and complexity,
and the resulting richness and interest. He made
a case for ‘the difficult whole’ rather than the
diagrammatic forms popular at the time, and in-
cluded examples of his own work to demonstrate
the possible application of the techniques illustra-
ted within.
We then follow the development of the postmo-
dern movement with Charles Moore, another
prominent figure in the period and his referencing
Greek temples and Roman domestic architecture.
While in Italy Postmodernism directly derives
from Italian modernism, and therefore consists
in ‘seeking not to add to modernism but to strip
classicism back to its essence’, in Austria there
was a strong connection to America thanks to
Hans Hollein, that in his early works combined
irony, symbolism and a sensuous materiality
(Franklin & Harwood, 2017).
A key in the developing of a strong Postmoder-
nism in Britain is played by the Architectural
Association (AA) in London, that from 1971 to
1990 is directed by Alvin Boyarsky who aimed
at an international focus, and also coincides with
upheavals in architectural publishing: Architectu-
ral Design, directed by the publisher Andreas
Papadakis from 1975, was often based around
postmodernism; the Architectural Review; the
Architects’ Journal, that led the discourse around
British buildings; Blueprint in 1983, with links
to furniture and product design; and also Archi-
tecture Today, launched in 1989. Britain embraces
both tradititions of Postmodernism, the emphasis
placed on ornament and image in the United
States and the inheritance of the city, particularly
important in Europe.
As summarised by Franklin & Hardwood (2017):
‘British post-modernism remained more con-
textual than that of other countries, strong in
its references not only to classicism but also to
Dutch brick traditions, Art Deco, the English Arts
and Crafts Movement and the Vienna Secession’
(p.16).
POSTMODERN HOUSING
The constant relation that we find between the
way of living and architecture itself seems to me
the most interesting example to analyse when
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 taking into account Postmodernism as a reaction
to Modernism. ‘Modern architecture died in
St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972, at 3.32pm
(or thereabouts).’ These are the words of Char-
les Jencks referring to the Pruitt-Igoe housing
development, an idealistic post-war housing
project demolished after less than 20 years after
its completion.
Both private and public housing have been one of
the most debated arguments against the modern
movement, when habitations seemed limited to
be ‘grey tower blocks trembling in windswept
solitude’. Modernist public housing derives from
a period where the notion of living tends to be
characterized and ruled to satisfy the high de-
mand of construction subsequent to the war and
to the increase of population.
‘I experienced first-hand the difference between
factory-made (Modernist, Fordist) and hand-ma-
de (traditional, vernacular) houses’ (Farrell,
2017). With his family, he lived in a steel-framed
prefabricated house lightweight and highly effi-
cient, as well as in a traditional-style brick house.
There’s a huge difference between these two
examples, one being well planned but ‘stigmatised
as a temporary pre-fab’ and the other one bearing
old traditions but missing efficiency and lightness.
‘Post-modern Buildings in Britain’ provides a
detailed study on housing in Britain, and the way
it was fundamental at that time of reconstruction
(after the II World War), when even utopian-like
towns were developed and built in Britain.
As Franklin & Harwood say (2017): ‘nowhere was
modernism deemed to have failed so comple-
tely in Britain as in the realm of public housing’
(p.24).
The firs example of postmodern public housing
in Britain is Highgate New Town by Bill Forrest
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and Oscar Palacio, built in 1978-81. The project
was initially characterized by a modernist inspi-
red cladding made of asbestos cement panels,
but then it was redesigned with brick walls and
pitched roofs by the same architects after a vote
by the London Borough of Camden in 1976. The-
re was a huge development of public housing in
Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, parti-
cularly in London, and housing associations grew
rapidly as well, thanks to the support brought by
the Housing Corporation under the Housing Act
of 1974.
St Mark’s Road Housing, Kensington (1977-
79) by Jeremy and Fenella Dixon is depicted as
‘the model for new rented housing’ (Franklin &
Harwood, 2017). The whole project is a reinter-
pretation of the suburban London terraced house
but divided vertically, informed by the postmo-
dern idea of irony and reference. But it’s not
overtly Postmodern according to Terry Farrell in
Revisiting Postmodernism, as it is more historicist
and contextual: ‘they gave back dignity to social
housing’ (Farrell, 2017: p35).
Many housing buildings were born in this period
in London and began to acquire those characteri-
stics that make Postmodernism in Britain a style
of its own: most of these derived from typical
models of British vernacular architecture such as
early Victorian villas, but were joined by external
references that ranged from famous artists’ work
such as Mondrian to absolute shapes resembling
childhood toys.
Outside London this housing redevelopment
came later. James Gowan is one of the few archi-
tects that built public housing in the late 1970s
outside London. Glasgow born, he has been in a
seven-year partnership with James Stirling that
led to the design and completion of the Engine-
ering Building at the University of Leicester in
1963, considered the first postmodernist building
in Britain. ‘It represented a violent shift away
from the prevailing functionalist doctrines of the
postwar era, instead celebrating dynamic structu-
ral feats and forceful geometries, in what became
known as the engineering style’ (Wainwright,
2015).
The housing complex that Gowan designed is
located at East Hanningfield. It is a project full
of character but also came out in a more for-
mal style than the architectures from the same
period: every unit is characterized by mono-pitch
tiled roofs with round windows on the front, in
some way returning to the geometric forms of
architects such as Kahn and Wright. The project
was also influenced by Dutch design: Franklin &
Harwood (2017) claim that it ‘turned up by clas-
sical proportions and a nod to Palladio’s Villa Val-
marana, where round windows serve as capitals in
the implied order of the simple façade’ (p.28).
Another building built in 1982 by James Gowan
is the Greenbank House at Chester for Chaim
Schreiber, that resembles a traditional suburban
chalet, as it was requested to have the function
of pied-à-terre suitable for meetings too. The
structure plays an important role in the design
of the building, as the roof is set on pilotis and a
steel frame, directly referencing a modern type
of construction. However, the round window
on the gable that sits on the steel frame makes it
dramatic and poetic at the same time, making it a
‘Palladian country house in miniature’ (Franklin
% Harwood, 2017: p36).
The private house is really one of the greatest
opportunities for individual architectural expres-
sion. The Thematic House designed by Charles
Jencks with Terry Farrell is another example of
that. It stands into the panorama of postmodern
housing as another manifesto, following the much
controversially acclaimed Vanna Venturi house,
designed by Robert Venturi over the course of six
years. It’s around the same time it took to desi-
gn and build the Thematic House, a polemic on
symbolic architecture and a true representation of
British Postmodernism.
The house marked Terry Farrell’s experience of
Postmodernism as a style. Farrell speaks about
the art of the possible, as this project was for him
an evolving cultural experience: first, because its
design was filled with so much experimentation
that it became unclear for them what the eventual
product might be; second, because Charles Jencks
wanted to use it as an example for his own wri-
tings and publications. The process of the design
was in fact aided by Jencks, who constantly put
his narrative onto it and, in some cases, was part
of a direct collaboration (Farrell, 2017).
WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM NOW?
In 2011 at the Victoria and Albert Museum takes
place one of the first in-depth survey of art, desi-
gn and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s: ‘Post-
modernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990’.
Postmodernism, an era that defies definition, is
depicted in the exhibition as a multifaceted style
that ranged from pop architecture to bold design,
from the cheapest decoration to the most expen-
sive furniture. In fact, when we talk about post-
modernism we can’t always talk about style. The
movement destroyed every established idea about
style and it brought freedom to art and design,
for the aim of replacing a homogenous idiom with
a plurality of competing ideas and styles.
Adam Nathaniel Furman in Revisiting Postmo-
dernism addresses the birth of Postmodernism as
a desperate reaction to a narrow and prescriptive
orthodoxy. Architects at the time were given a
driving mission, and some of them just rebelled
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 to it, because they ‘were looking to explore a
richer architectural language’ (Furman, 2017:
p123).
In fact, the most important characteristic of the
various strands that constituted International
Style was a rejection of the past, and even more
important, of a contextual approach to design.
Orthodox Modernism is seen like an edifice that
was progressively broke down by figures that
‘questioned its rejection of the past, attacked its
blindness towards tradition, context and local cul-
tures’ in the aim of returning to a more complex
kind of design, defined by diversity and plurality.
Thanks to Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Giancarlo de
Carlo and Ralph Erskine, there has been a new
consideration of regional identities. History and
tradition would now be considered along with
technology, and soon there would be a return to
the individual, the arbitrary, the eclectic.
Furman takes Italy as an example. He sees in its
modernity a continuous and progressive change
to postmodernity. Before the Second World War
the architectural scene was extremely vibrant
there, thanks to the Rationalists rooted in Italian
tradition and Classicists with the development of
new expressions of historical forms.
The dialogue between the two led to a mixing
of styles, creating hybrids that contained an
outstanding modernity paired with the rhythm
and aesthetic of Classicism. An example of that
is without doubts the Palazzo dei Congressi in
Rome by Adalberto Libera, that brought back to
architecture the political means and intention of
the past under Fascism (Furman, 2017).
There’s still, in Italy, a way of thinking that direct-
ly the derives from Mannerism. Borromini and
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Bernini already did what architects were doing
in the postwar years. They distorted Classicism,
made it completely new and irreverent, they used
historical references and exaggerated classical ele-
ments in what is called Baroque. There’s a strong
connection between Postmodernism and Baro-
que. I would say that the only notable difference
that exist between them is the clients.
Are we still dealing with a postmodern way of
living, and therefore designing?
Adam Nathaniel Furman writes (Furman, 2017):
‘The stylistic, symbolic and aesthetic richness
which was implied in the pluralism of the approa-
ch’s first decades has been lost, with the incorpo-
ration of history only ever involving a set of very
constrained referents’ (p:191).
Perhaps the legacy of Postmodernism lays in the
present. In the recent years there has already been
a revivalism around Postmodernism. We don’t see
it just in product and furniture design, but also in
architecture. Surely it has to do with technology
and communication, as in the past it was just be-
ginning to take over the world. We recognize pop
in the windows of many stores, we see revivals
everywhere nowadays. We live in a society that
has been driven by communication and diversity
over the past 50 years or so, and we can no longer
know which style we are adhering to. It is a world
of individualism and plurality.
Today’s postmodernism, if we can still call it like
this, derives from the notion of Postmodernism as
a new approach to Modernism: no longer a direct
opposition, but a juxtaposition of technology,
form and function.
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