Postmodern Architecture and The Media: An Introduction: Véronique Patteeuw and Léa-Catherine Szacka

POSTMODERN
ARCHITECTURE
AND THE MEDIA:
AN INTRODUCTION
VÉRONIQUE PATTEEUW and LÉA-CATHERINE SZACKA
Instead of building the buildings – we didn’t have the time nor the money – we
built the façades and we took the message through because it was amplified by
the media, just in the same way as Johnson’s AT&T building became a media
event.
CHARLES JENCKS, 20091
Recalling the Strada Novissima, centrepiece of the First International Architecture

Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Charles Jencks emphatically highlights the
Copyright © 2018. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. All rights reserved.
importance of the relationship between postmodern architecture and media.

Postmodern architecture was ‘amplified by the media’ and books were an
important vehicle for the set of ideas aimed at debunking the supremacy of
orthodox modernism. Indeed, postmodern architecture was constructed on a
series of ideas developed partly – through a series of epoch-making books: Robert
Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and Aldo Rossi’s The
Architecture of the City (both 1966), as well as Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown
and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972) and Jencks’s The Language of
Post-Modern Architecture (1977) are well-known examples of seminal publications
that launched postmodern architecture onto the world scene.2 Yet exhibitions such
as the 1975 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) show The Architecture of the École
des Beaux-Arts, the 1978 Roma Interrotta or the 1980 International Architecture
Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Presence of the Past, also played a key role
in proclaiming a new sensibility in architecture, and this before most postmodern
buildings saw the light of day. Less emphasized, but equally crucial, was the role
Patteeuw, V., & Szacka, L. (Eds.). (2018). Mediated messages : Periodicals, exhibitions and the shaping of postmodern
architecture. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Created from uva on 2020-06-29 14:39:50.
architecture periodicals such as Architectural Design (AD), Perspecta, Domus
and archithese played in the shaping and disseminating of postmodern ideas and
aesthetics. In an attempt to fill these discernible gaps in the history of the genesis of
postmodern architecture, this book explores periodicals and exhibitions as genres,
and in particular their productive and creative relationship with architecture.
While in the modern era architecture was communicated, constructed and
sustained by media,3 in the postmodern era the relationship between media and
architecture extended beyond publicity and circulation and became intrinsic.
Media preceded and/or amplified architectural work and occupied a productive
role. This particular constellation had a defining influence on architecture: not
because of new or previously unseen media attention to architecture, but because
architecture became, within that specific period, extremely media conscious,
defining itself, to a large extent, in relation to the media. In this book we argue that,
between the 1960s and the 1990s, and parallel to the exploration of new directions
in reaction to modernism, architecture and the media mutually sustained each
other to such an extent that they became intertwined. In other words, only because
of its primary dependence on images – over constructed reality – did architecture
FIGURE I.1 Installation view of the exhibition ‘The Architecture of the École des Beaux-
Arts’. MoMA, NY, October 29, 1975 - January 4, 1976. New York, Museum of Modern
Art (MoMA). Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.
Photographer: David Allison (copyright The Museum of Modern Art, NY). Acc. n.: IN111.7.
© 2018. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.
2 MEDIATED MESSAGES
become fully postmodern within the space of the media, and particularly through
architecture exhibitions and periodicals.4
This volume gathers work, mainly produced in the context of two international
conference sessions held in 2014,5 by a wide range of scholars from Europe,
America and Australia. Through twelve essays, each unpacking a specific case
study highlighting the intertwined relationship of media and architecture, it offers
a wide-ranging investigation into the role played by exhibitions and periodicals
in shaping postmodern architecture. As varied in its geographical and temporal
scope as it is, this body of work elaborates one main hypothesis: exhibitions and
periodicals critically shaped postmodern architecture through a series of opposite
forces. As we know, the premises of postmodern architecture lie, in large part, in its
paradoxical nature: the ‘both/and’ instead of the ‘or’, complexity and contradiction
instead of unity and minimalism, and the tension between a local approach and
an ever-expanding architecture culture. Although the apparently unresolvable
question of postmodernism’s definition remains caught in this antagonism, these
forces might also create a productive tension in architectural work and within
discourse itself.
Reinhold Martin pointed out that postmodern architecture was largely defined
in terms of its representation rather than its materialization: ‘The relation between
cultural forms and historical truth was problematized in architecture largely by
way of experiments with representation.’6 In light of the important visual, textual
and built production by architects from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, one could
demonstrate that the space of production of postmodern architecture is as much
inside buildings as in conveyers of its forms of representation such as exhibitions
and periodicals. By looking primarily at those two media, the contributors to
this book highlight and analyse the constitutive and opposite forces at play in
postmodern architecture. These are no longer understood as isolated productions,
but as agents shaping buildings and discourses.
Postmodernism’s paradoxical nature

What do we mean by postmodern architecture and, more generally, by the term
‘postmodernism’? Almost every piece of literature on and about postmodernism
starts by acknowledging the difficulty (or impossibility) of finding a universal
definition for the term. Most authors start from postmodernism’s negative
relationship to modernism and understand it as a critique. As such, while
postmodernity describes the emergence of new forms of social and economic
organization, roughly since the end of the Second World War and in reaction to the
modernization that characterized the early years of the century (with the growth of
the industry, the rise of the mass market, and the accelerations in automation, travel
POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 3

and mass communication), postmodernism designates a number of developments
in the arts and in culture in reference to the various forms of modernism that
flourished in Europe in the first half of the century. Yet the form and nature of
these developments have been the object of multiple and often paradoxical
understandings: postmodernism is, as such, a disputed notion. According to
philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, postmodernism emerges and is made real with the collapse of universal
metanarratives that had, in modernity, represented progress. Instead of a single
narrative carrying out the development of the human being, Lyotard proposes a
multiplicity of different and local stories that can no longer be summarized. For
theorist Fredric Jameson, postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism, ‘the
logic of informational, hyper-technological and global society which progressively
took shape after the end of the reconstruction period during the 1950s’.7 Differently,
French sociologist Jean Baudrillard defines the postmodern world as one in which
experience and reality are codified and mediated to such a point that they have
become inseparable. And, for anthropologist David Harvey, on the other hand,
postmodernity brings about an undermining of the very forms of social and
political organization that had supplanted traditional forms in modernity.8
If postmodernism manifested itself in almost every artistic form and area of
cultural practice, its emergence made its clearest and strongest appearance in
those areas in which modernism had previously been visibly defended: literature,
the visual arts and, most importantly, architecture.9 In the field of architecture,
postmodernism has taken different forms and colours, rendering – here as well – the
precise definition of what it is somehow hard to pinpoint: ‘from the abstract idea of
space and form, towards new notions of history and theory,’10 ‘historical continuity
rather than rupture,’11 the unity of theory and practice, the desire for architecture
to communicate, satisfying the cultural demand for symbolism, etc. For Jencks
this shift is a move from the elite to the masses: ‘Modern architecture suffered
from elitism. Post-Modernism is trying to get over that elitism not by dropping
it, but rather by extending the language of architecture in many different ways –
into the vernacular, towards tradition and the commercial slang of the street.’12 As
such, what might be called central to the many definitions of postmodernism is a
refusal of the value of aesthetic autonomy and the shift in attitude accompanied
by a new preference for complexity over purity, plurality over stylistic integrity,
and contingency or connectedness over separateness. While the definitions or
interpretations of the term ‘postmodern’ remain open to multiple understandings,
in this book we apply it to an architecture that defines itself through the space of
the media, and, while the selection of case studies for this book is not exhaustive,
it constitutes a representative sample of the different contexts for the emergence of
postmodern architecture and the multiple roles exhibitions and periodicals played
in relation to it.
4 MEDIATED MESSAGES
The essays included in this volume scrutinize the relation between the
architecture media and architectural production in a threefold way. As hypothetical
spaces, exhibitions and periodicals have provided an alternative to the built
project, exploring a new spatial and visual culture. As discursive platforms they
have enhanced transatlantic or pan-European encounters. Finally, as critical
practices they have contributed to the extension of the role of the architect
beyond its traditional boundaries and functioned as vehicles for disciplinary
debate. Following these axes, a number of key questions are addressed: How has
postmodernism manifested itself, beyond built form, by way of words, discourse
and images? What might have been, in turn, the particular impact of these
words, discourses and images on the built production? How is the intertwined
relationship between media and architecture manifested in the postmodern era?
What was the role of exhibitions and periodicals in proposing a new spatial and
visual culture? To what extent are periodicals and exhibitions a response to the end
of the ‘grand narrative’? Did these media offer an alternative to the building site,
allowing the architect to experiment beyond the traditional boundaries of his or
her profession? And how did these media contribute to what is understood today
as alternative readings of architecture history? By addressing this set of questions,
the present volume hopes to offer new perspectives on the multifaceted role of
media as incubators for postmodern architecture.
In order to fully grasp the ways in which periodicals and exhibitions have
contributed to shaping postmodern architecture, we extend the postmodern
period beyond its ‘traditional’ temporal boundaries. In The Language of Post-
Modern Architecture, Jencks asserts that modern architecture died on 15 July
1972, with the demolition of Minoru Yamasaki’s Pruitt-Igoe housing complex.
This book, however, explicitly goes back to the early 1960s in order to apprehend
some of the forces at the origin of postmodernism’s construction in the field of
architecture. By doing so, it highlights and refers, directly or indirectly, to several

episodes, prior to 1972, that were no less crucial in understanding postmodern
architecture’s embryological phase. For example, the appointment, in 1956,
of Arthur Drexler as the MoMA’s Director of the Department of Architecture
and Design; the founding, in 1964, of the Academy Bookshop in Holland
Street, London, by Cypriot-born British entrepreneur Andreas Papadakis, later
expanding, in 1968, into the publishing house Academy Editions; the creation,
in 1967, of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), which acted
as a major instigator of American postmodernism; the publication, concurrently
with the 1968 worldwide movement of protest against established regimes, of
Hans Hollein’s now famous ‘Alles ist Architektur’; or the arrival, in 1971, of Alvin
Boyarsky as director of the Architectural Association (AA) in London. Together,
these foundational events constitute a field within which architecture and media
had productive encounters.

FIGURE I.2 Box C1 of the IAUS archives at the Canadian Center for Architecture,
photograph by Véronique Patteeuw, 2010.
Researching the recent past

In the last few years, postmodernism has moved from a much-hated and
forgotten (not to say shameful) episode in history to an era at the forefront of
popular expression, critical examination and artistic production, as a renewed

interest in the period has manifested itself both in academic circles and cultural
institutions. A major breakthrough occurred in 2011, when the Victoria and
Albert Museum (V&A) in London, with Postmodernism: Style and Subversion,
1970–1990,13 dedicated a blockbuster exhibition to the period and/or style
known as postmodernism. Since then, many other museums in Europe have
turned their gaze to either a branch of postmodernism or to major personalities
of the movement. In 2012, the Centre Pompidou presented La Tendenza: Italian
Architecture 1965–1985,14 a show occupying 600 square metres of the Paris
museum and displaying drawings and models from the Pompidou collection.15 In
2014, four major shows were held: Mission: Postmodern – Heinrich Klotz and the
Wunderkammer DAM16 at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, two
exhibitions celebrating the 80th anniversary of the birth of the Viennese architect
Hans Hollein,17 and TRA/BETWEEN Arte e Architettura. Roma Interrotta18 at the
MAXXI museum in Rome.
6 MEDIATED MESSAGES
Paired with this new awareness emanating from cultural institutions, the
academic world slowly extended the borders of what is called ‘history’ to include
events occurring in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The number of conferences on
the topic – such as the ETH symposium ‘Re-Framing Identities. Architecture’s
Turn to History 1970–1990’,19 ‘The Architecture of Deregulation Postmodernism,
Politics and the Built Environment in Europe, 1975–1995’ held at the KTH
in Stockholm,20 and ‘Theory’s History: Challenges in the Historiography of
Architecture Knowledge 196X–199X’21 at the KU Leuven – as well as the
quantity of masters and PhD investigations focusing on this era are exponentially
increasing, from in-depth studies of Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour Learning
from Las Vegas22 and Eisenman’s Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies23
to research on Alvin Boyarsky’s role at the AA in London24 and the 1980 Venice
Architecture Biennale.25 These and other examples underline a renewed interest
in the postmodern period and signify the need to open up the academic debate
on recent history.
Parallel to the current interest in the years 1960 to 1990, a critical and
historical reassessment of the postmodern period has occurred, giving rise
to a number of publications, each tackling a particular aspect of postmodern
architecture. With Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism Again,
Reinhold Martin offers a historical reinterpretation of postmodernism as
discursive formation rather than mere style. Not a history of postmodernism
but a historical reinterpretation of some of its major themes, Utopia’s Ghost
analyses a series of objects and events, buildings, projects and texts, looking
both at the social content and at the architectural implications of each project.
Emmanuel Petit, on the other hand, insists on ‘irony’ as one of major tropes
of postmodernism, while Jorge Otero-Pailos, in Architecture’s Historical Turn,
looks at postmodernism through the lens of phenomenology. Other books
offer a collection of previously published texts: Architecture on the Edges

of Postmodernism is a collection of articles by Robert A.M. Stern, while The
Postmodern Reader, re-edited by Charles Jencks in 2010, gathers writings by
architects, historians, philosophers and other thinkers.26
Addressing both the important actors and their cultural productions through the
specific lens of media, this volume proposes cross-readings of the period. As such,
we hope a complementary perspective on postmodern architecture will emerge.
Postmodern exhibitions and periodicals

as objects of study
Today, architecture is studied and understood far beyond the built object:
architecture as represented in the press, television, advertisements, books and, of

course, periodicals and exhibitions; in other words, architecture as described in
words and images, rather than as mere built explorations. Not only has the object
of study changed, but equally the way we write and contribute to architecture
history has been altered: exhibitions and periodicals play, indeed, an essential
role in the rewriting of architecture history. Introducing narratives, fostering
economic development and propaganda, and creating extended networks of
communication, they have served as launch pads for new trends that, in turn,
constructed histories. Architecture historian Jean-Louis Cohen sees exhibitions as
events that can have an impact on the institutionalization of a given movement or
style. And, according to Barry Bergdoll, architecture on display is a ‘medium for
historical research’27 as exhibitions are becoming tools and places for dissemination,
as are books, magazines and other media. Indeed, for Bergdoll, ‘curatorship is a
different kind of authorship’,28 and even if exhibitions are ephemeral ‘their impact
is proving increasingly consequential in the changing face of our discipline’.29
But what distinguishes exhibitions and periodicals from other media? Were they
privileged forms of communication in the postmodern decades? And what was
their relationship to architecture?
Both exhibitions and periodicals are characterized by their ephemeral nature.
While most exhibitions only last for a few months, each issue of a periodical is
quickly replaced by the next. As such, both media represent temporary spaces
related to a particular moment in time. And, while exhibitions and periodicals
do have constraints, they act as hypothetical spaces in which the architect is not
confronted with the reality of the architectural project, the client or the budget. As
such, exhibitions and periodicals provide spaces of exploration where new ideas can
be tested and reality can be questioned. In his writing on architecture exhibitions,
architecture historian Florian Kossak approached the nature of the fine line that
separates the real from the ideal. Yet for Kossak, the ideal is seen as an experimental
practice, a sort of rehearsal for the real, a ‘real before the real’; in short, a laboratory. In
‘Exhibiting Architecture: the Installation as Laboratory for Emerging Architecture’,
he ‘portray[s] the architecture exhibition as an integral part of the production of
architecture’.30 For Kossak, if the exhibition is ‘productive’ it will provide a testing
ground for the architects, allow investigation, acknowledge uncertainty and critique,
and, maybe, permit the contamination of architectural praxis by other disciplines.31
Another intrinsic characteristic of exhibitions and periodicals is the possibility
of a sequence. Both media have the potential to expand beyond the singular
occurrence of one event or one issue. It is the very idea of the repetition of the
same approach throughout time or space that renders exhibitions and periodicals
more effective than other media, allowing them to react, to explore, to test and
to reiterate. While an exhibition can travel and be presented in a more-or-less
adapted form at different venues, the periodical can repeat the same theme within
a series of consecutive issues. As such, they are not only privileged witnesses of
their times but enable the active shaping of debates, movements and projects.
8 MEDIATED MESSAGES
Third, exhibitions and periodicals allow alternative roles for the architect. In
fact, architects often take up the part of curator or editor-in-chief, assessing the
collection of elements assembled or created, and accompanying it by a (critical)
statement. In her PhD thesis on the 1931 German Building Exhibition (and its
architecture section The Dwelling of Our Time), Wallis Miller argued that Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, by being the curator of his own shows, ‘blurred the distinction
between the content of the display and the context he created for it’.32 Indeed it
is often in an exhibition or in a periodical that architecture is experienced in a
renewed way, through the specific proposal of the curator/editor. Or, as argued in
OASE’s 2012 special issue on exhibitions: ‘Architecture must indeed be curated –
not as with art to cure it of its open-endedness or ambiguity, but of its matter-of-fact
nature, its inconspicuous state, and of the fact that, as Walter Benjamin concisely
expressed in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”,
it is experienced “in a state of distraction”.’33
Finally, exhibitions and periodicals are also often group endeavours. As such,
the architect/curator and the architect/editor create a platform for debate and
exchange, enabling cultural transfers as well as the construction and elaboration of
an alternative discourse on architecture.34 In that sense, exhibitions and periodicals
play a role that might extend beyond a specific place or time. The network created
through and by these media might have repercussions on other, more extended
spheres of the architecture profession.
As exhibitions and periodicals are transient and fleeing objects, how can
one study them? Exhibitions are difficult to grasp and to remember; the only
widely accessible traces of their existence are the exhibition catalogues, which
are generally produced before the opening of the exhibition and therefore rarely
constitute an accurate testimony of the event. Other vestiges and fragments are
the exhibition views found in personal or institutional archives. As for periodicals,
if they continue to exist as objects – kept in libraries around the world, put in
circulation through online markets or held in personal collections – they, unlike
books, are the product of a very specific time, situated in the frantic rhythm of
their successive issues. If one is interested in architecture media, and specifically
in exhibitions and periodicals, as objects of study, should one adopt the classical
methods of architecture history, explore methods used by media theory or propose
a research method specific to the relationship between these two media?
When approaching architecture journals and exhibitions, one examines
specific curatorial approaches or particular editorial takes, inscribed within
a given period and context. As such, one is able to grasp the contribution of
these media to and within the history of architecture. Recent scholarship has
shown, however, an interest in the examination of these media both as form and
content, scrutinizing their discourse and narratives but also their materiality,
their visual references, their graphic design and their architecture. Exhibitions
and/or periodicals are thus considered as a prism through which we look at

the world as well as objects of study in themselves. Following this approach,
the methodology proposed in this volume is hybrid and largely based on the
method of cross-reading different contents: an analysis of the ideas set out
by the exhibitions and/or periodicals juxtaposed with an examination of the
textual, iconographic, graphic and material manifestations. Textual elements
are joined with or compared with iconographic studies; curatorial or editorial
statements are combined with graphic and material proposals. If discourse is a
‘written development on a certain theme, conducted in a methodical manner’,
an attempt is made to widen the concept to iconography, graphic design and
materiality. Deconstructing the journal or the exhibition into its constituent
elements enables us to reconstruct the position of the editors/curators and to
capture the production of their positions within the editorial/curatorial space.
Swiss historian Jacques Gubler defended a similar approach in his analysis of
avant-garde magazines.35 By crossing the content with the form, the editorial
policy with the materiality and the social distinction with the graphic design,
Gubler drew an identity chart of eighty-five avant-garde magazines and, as such,
of their architects/editors. Likewise, combining the material and formal aspects
with the ideas they convey, the essays in this book aim to understand exhibitions
and periodicals as places of production, and therefore the editorial and curatorial
activities of the architects involved as practices in architecture.36
If the characteristics outlined above are, however, not specific to the postmodern
era – architects have always met and exchanged ideas through the platforms
offered by exhibitions and periodicals – what defines exhibitions and periodicals
in the postmodern period? In other words, is there such a thing as a postmodern
journal or exhibition, as opposed to a modern one? And to what extent were the
postmodern media fundamental to the development of postmodern architecture?
First, it can be said that exhibitions and periodicals are part of systems of
communication, ruled and framed by institutions and media interfaces. These systems
were amplified from the late 1970s onwards, by the creation of a certain number of
key institutions and the expansion of others.37 In this context, architecture as a form
of cultural production became more intimately tied up with the media of periodicals
and exhibitions. The exhibition ceased to be merely an act of representation, a
translation within the gallery walls, or a 1:1 scale mock-up of an architecture that
existed elsewhere or was meant to exist in a near future. It could be argued that
postmodern architecture was precisely constructed and defined by this system of
communication, through the relentless act of exhibiting, publishing and editing.
Second, in the postmodern period architecture media were influenced by the
rise of the popular media. As Jean Baudrillard argued, the difference between real
and unreal is no longer relevant in the postmodern period: simulacra became
reality. As such, the medium is no longer a representation of reality but becomes
(the place of) reality itself. To a certain extent, the same can be said of postmodern
architecture. If in the modern period the media had played an important role
10 MEDIATED MESSAGES
for architecture’s becoming, in the postmodern period they become intertwined:
mediatization of postmodern architecture has contributed to the becoming of
postmodern architecture, blurring the boundaries between content and container.
In other words, in the cases we are looking at here, studying the media no longer
means studying an alternative space, maybe subordinate to the act of building.
Postmodern architects (such as Massimo Scolari or Aldo Rossi) often choose to
put emphasis on the representation, arguing for architecture’s artistic autonomy.
Hence the publication of the building precedes its realization, causing a shift in the
role of the medium: from the space of the representation of a project towards the
space of production of the project itself.
Third, the shift in the relation between real and unreal is also linked to the
changing status of the architectural drawing, as it occurred from the 1970s
onwards. Heralded by the 1975 The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts
MoMA exhibition, the new interest in architectural drawings influenced the
way architecture was exhibited, and gave rise to new networks of architecture
galleries, collectors and institutions, following the rules of the art market, and the
multiplication of ‘international architecture periodicals and specialist architecture
publishers’. As explained by Jordan Kauffman, ‘these networks were integral to
the emergence of architectural drawings as primary objects of interest, as they
shifted the general perception of architectural drawings from useful objects to
aesthetic ones’.38 Accompanied by the supremacy of the image as a surrogate for
the building, this tendency influenced the way architecture was communicated to
the public as well as the way architects represented their work.
Fourth, the strong yet complex relationship between postmodern architecture
and media is also affected by a triple crisis: the ideological crisis related to the demise
of the Modern Movement - with capitals was paralleled by a professional crisis due
to the fragmentation of the architect’s professional identity and the subsequent
loss of faith and legitimacy. Within this context, architecture education faced an
equally important crisis. From Paris to Milan and Rome, students questioned the
rigidity and dogmatism of their pedagogical systems. Stuck between the imposed
models of their teachers and their aspirations towards disciplinary renewal,
young architects explored diverse forms of emancipation. As such, they used
the architecture media not only as tools of propaganda but as instruments of
self-education. Architecture exhibitions and periodicals enabled them to gather
information, construct their positions and elaborate new paradigms.
A series of opposite forces

The authors in this volume explore the spaces of the architecture exhibitions and
periodicals as instruments or devices, both embedded in and alternative to the

built reality. In doing so they argue that media are producing or constructing
postmodern architecture. Addressing the plurality of the visual content – from pop
to vernacular and from the eclectic to the subversive – they all observe exhibitions
and periodicals as testing grounds, relating the premises of postmodern architecture
to the emergence of a new architecture culture. Four major tensions are addressed
and serve to define the four sections of the book: the tension between visual and
material culture; the tension between core and periphery and the consequent
construction of national versions of postmodernism through media; the tension
between architectural practices and discourses; and, finally, the tension between
the elite and the general public, through the institutionalization of postmodernism.
Part I. Postmodern Architecture’s Pursuit of a New

Spatial and Visual Culture: Architecture as Image
Versus Image as Architecture
From handmade productions to professional journals, the relationship that links
postmodern architecture to the media is situated in the tension between content
and form; in other words, between architecture and its representation. Indeed, in
periodicals, but also in exhibitions of the mid-1960s and 1970s, the image plays
a vital role. The ‘Fantastic architecture’39 issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui had
already displayed in 1962 the intertwined relationship between architecture and
image. If some of the presented projects were realized – such as the structures
habitacles by André Bloc – most others remained utopic proposals of a future to
come. All believe, however, in the power of the image as a means to design. Facing
the entangled relationship between architecture and its image, several architects
adopted editorial or curatorial strategies that shaped the postmodern discourse
and built production. This section focuses on the following questions. What was
the relationship between form and content in magazines and exhibitions from the
1960s to the 1980s and how did these two aspects of the medium sustain each
other? It is often asserted that the postmodern period ushered in the shift from
architecture as space and constructed reality to architecture as image. As such, was
architecture reduced to mere image, relegating spatial concerns to the background?
And, if so, what was the role of provocation, irony and fantasy in these magazines?
In 1965, and up to 1970, Hans Hollein took on the editorship of Bau magazine,
a periodical that was, up to that date, a rather conventional publication run by the
Austrian Architectural Institute. Through twenty-four different issues, Hollein’s
Bau illustrated, among other things, the struggle of Austria’s post-war generation of
architects for new definitions in architecture beyond function. In her contribution
to this book, Eva Branscome shows how, during those years, Bau functioned as an
experimental platform and a testing ground for new ideas. Indeed, using paratextual
elements and non-architectural images, Hollein proposed, through the journal, an
ambiguous editorial programme. The now-famous 1968 Alles ist Architektur issue can
be seen as a paradigm in its presentation of ‘everything as architecture’ – or, in other
words, in its proposal of architecture reduced to mere experience. By examining the
iconographic processes of collage, montage, juxtaposition and the uncanny in Bau,
Branscome explores the particularly postmodern relation between architecture and
image through Hollein’s ‘manipulated views’ on Austrian architecture.
A second example of an architect with editorial and curatorial ambitions is
Polish-Canadian architect/educator Alvin Boyarsky. Boyarsky’s arrival at the AA
in 1971, and his role as the school’s director from 1971 to 1990, opens up new
perspectives on the entanglement between (the production of) images and the
emergence of postmodern architecture. As Igor Marjanović highlights in his essay
‘Serial Postmodernity: Architectural Association Publications in the 1980s’, the
design studios at the AA focused on the production of exhibitions and drawings
as pedagogical tools. Its exhibitions programme, launched in the 1980s, presenting
work by Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk. Coop Himmelblau and James Wines but
also Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Cook and Bernard Tschumi, opened
up a generation to ‘paper architecture’ and cultivated the drawing, not only as a
form of representation but as architecture in itself. In his contribution, Marjanović
explores the new role given to the architectural drawing, both as instrumental
to design and as its own project. He examines the influence of these exhibited
and disseminated drawings as pedagogical models for postmodern discourse,
architecture education and production.
On the other side of the Atlantic, a parallel tension occurred when, in 1979,
the MoMA in New York organized the exhibition Transformations in Modern
Architecture. With this exhibition, and by the presentation of 400 buildings
(almost entirely) through black-and-white photography, Arthur Drexler
emphasized postmodern architecture’s diversity, plurality and eclecticism. In his
essay ‘“I Decline to be a Missionary:” Late-Modern Mirrors and Transformations
in Modern Architecture’, Michael Kubo explains how the curatorial tactics

employed by the MoMA were essential in shaping postmodernism’s
representation in the media and to the masses. The displacement from a modern
unified ‘universal style’ towards an eclectic juxtaposition of images, proposed by
one and the same institution, offered postmodernism its pluralist character. But
it also achieved an important reduction: the buildings previously documented
by plans, sections and models were now abridged and flattened into a single
iconic representation.
Part II. International Postmodernisms:

Micro-narratives and their Contribution to
Architecture
Jean-François Lyotard’s 1979 thesis on the incredulity towards metanarratives
concerned the status of knowledge in postmodern society. Yet the end of the

Enlightenment’s sense of unity also translated into the rise of national identity
and the affirmation, after the hegemony of the so-called International Style, of
particularities within the global phenomenon of postmodern architecture. Defining
the postmodern as ‘that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus
of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the
unattainable’,40 Lyotard even went as far as underlining the richness of plurality,
populism and eclecticism, the specificity of the local and the particular. The tension
between the local and the global can be read within architecture periodicals that
were both reporting on the international discourse and, in some cases, trying to
pinpoint a parochial and particular postmodern reality in projects, buildings and
theory. In the same way, some national cultural institutions have tried to play a
role in the definition of local traditions and ramifications within postmodernism.
So in an era in which architecture itself becomes more and more international as
a result of cheap air travel (with the introduction of the Boeing 747 in the 1970s)
and consequent cultural transfers, postmodern architects are still anchored in
local (regional or national) contexts. The second section of this volume addresses
the following questions: how did, in the postmodern period, exhibitions and
periodicals contribute to the blossoming of local micro-narratives in architecture?
In his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan
speaks of the ‘global village’,41 which eclipses both spatial and critical distance. In
this context, were exhibitions and magazines able to widely disseminate national
narratives to the newborn global (and, to a certain extent, Western-driven)
architecture culture? What role did exhibitions and periodicals play in cultural
transfers during the postmodern period? Can we speak of local interpretations of
architecture’s ambitions leading to national versions of postmodernism? And are
the architecture media enhancing these micro-narratives or, on the contrary, are
they distributing them and enhancing cultural transfers? Each essay in this section
emphasizes national versions of postmodernism and their relation to the more

global architecture discourse of that time.
In the 1960s, Finnish architect Reima Pietilä developed a particular kind
of national postmodernism focusing on the relation between architecture and
landscape, on the synergy between verbal and visual communication, integrating the
uniqueness of Finnish nature, culture and language. This Finnish postmodernism
was consolidated through a series of exhibitions organized by Pietilä between 1961
and 1974 as well as in the periodicals Le Carré Bleu and the Finnish Architectural
Review. In ‘Reima Pietilä’s (Postmodern) Morphologies’, her contribution to this
volume, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen shows how Pietilä brought – with his particular
approach – postmodernism to Finland while shaping postmodern architecture with
a specific Finnish contribution. In her essay, Pelkonen interrogates Pietilä’s use of
the exhibitions and periodicals in a dual perspective: were they testing grounds for
the national (or Scandinavian) elaboration of postmodern architecture or were they,
conversely, used to disseminate postmodern architecture on an international level?
Irina Davidovici proposes a second case study relevant to these questions in
her paper on the Swiss journal archithese. If Switzerland always had an ambiguous
relationship to postmodernism, Davidovici argues that the issues of archithese
published in 1975 and 1976 were the place of the elaboration and diffusion of
a specific postmodern architectural thinking, through the concept of realism.
Contributions from Martin Steinmann, Bruno Reichlin, Venturi and Scott Brown,
Aldo Rossi, Alan Colquhoun, and Giorgio Grassi were typical of the editorial
policy of the periodical, which focused on theoretical and cultural transfers
between Switzerland, Italy and the United States. In her analysis of archithese’s
‘realism’ issues, Davidovici underlines the important inclusion of both European
and American influences on Swiss architecture discourse, and their elaborated
continuity of modern narratives. As such, the ‘realism’ issues of archithese
characterize a specific, Swiss postmodernism, related to the specific local context
where it emerged.
In ‘Alessandro Mendini, Domus and the Postmodern Vision (1979–1985)’,
Silvia Micheli examines the production of the Milanese architecture magazine in
a period in which, under the direction of Mendini, the journal became an active
laboratory for the production and presentation of postmodern ideas. As Micheli
argues, in the pages of Domus, postmodernism was not seen as a trend, but rather
as a method of work consisting in the use of history as a ‘store’ from which to pull
out inspiration. As such, the magazines promoted an understanding of design
culture as constituted of fragments, parts and details, leading to a formalist
architectural approach. Through his editorship of Domus and his involvement
in Studio Alchimia, Mendini was able to introduce a change in Italian design
culture, pushing it towards a specific Italian understanding of postmodernism.
Part III. Postmodern Architects as Thinkers:

Bridging Theory and Practice

Although postmodern architecture is most often defined in its relationship
to popular culture and the vernacular as well as its reaching out to a broader
public, another characteristic of the movement is an intrinsic, complex and vital
relationship between architecture and theory. In the postmodern period architects
theorized their practice, wrote for journals, joined exhibitions and established
history and theory programmes at important American universities. As such,
architects emphasized not only their capacities as builders but also as writers,
thinkers and theorists. This theoretical turn was mainly played out in periodicals,
publications and exhibitions.42 Eisenman and Tschumi wrote extensively on their
deconstructivist approaches, architecture readers proposed new perspectives on
the built space, and architects used the media as spaces for the critical or discursive
elaboration of their practice. This third section explores the rise of architecture

theory in the postmodern period and the role of periodicals and exhibitions in
this perspective.
In the particular context of Australia, two periodicals played an important
role in the formation of an Australian debate on postmodern architecture and
architecture theory: the Melbourne-based journal Transition (1979–2000) and
Architecture Australia. Both journals were positioned at the periphery of the
international architecture debate but pursued the task of mediating the increased
identification of architecture with architecture discourse. In his chapter, Andrew
Leach argues that, at a crucial moment in the internationalization of architecture
culture and mobility, both journals functioned as vehicles in the margins. While
he elaborates on the extreme dissociation between architecture theory and
architectural practice at that time, Leach underlines the crucial role both journals
played in the theoretical impetus on postmodern architecture in Australia.
Architecture magazines and journals were important spaces for the
dissemination of postmodern ideologies. As such Perspecta, the student-run
journal of the Yale School of Architecture, offers a second case study for this
section. Perspecta played a crucial role in the 1960s, publishing essays by Charles
Moore, Philip Johnson, James Stirling and Vincent Scully that proved seminal to
the emergence of postmodern architecture. In ‘Charles Moore’s Perspecta Essays:
Towards Postmodern Eclecticism’, Patricia Morton focuses on three essays written
by Charles Moore for Perspecta in 1960, 1965 and 1967 in which he introduces
postmodern eclecticism, documents pop culture inspirations and argues for a new
architecture based on commercial, historical and high culture referents. Morton
analyses the significance of these three consecutive essays, wondering if they can be
seen as a sequential stream of thought that Moore developed while working on his
architectural projects. She also assesses what perspectives can be drawn between
the theoretical stance Moore took towards such issues as history, vernacular and
eclecticism in his writing and his architectural approach in projects.

A third perspective on the relationship between theory and practice is offered
by Elizabeth Keslacy with an examination of four issues of the English magazine
Architectural Design, all devoted to the theme of classicism. Classicism, as a
historical style in which the past was being interpreted, formed a model for new
design strategies. In her comparative analysis of the various forms of a return to
the classical in AD, Keslacy discloses the consequences of style’s ‘linguicization’
and how the new postmodern subject was constructed by it. In doing so, she
confronts the magazine by asking: Can we analyse AD’s classicism issues as an
educational project, as a means for the architect to educate him- or herself or
a reading device? Could we relate AD to postmodernism’s re-engagement with
history? By addressing these questions, Keslacy shows how, in the 1980s, AD
mirrored the changing roles of the architect as writer and the architect as reader.
Stéphanie Dadour, on the other hand, considers the case of essay collections
published in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and the way this specific
editorial format dealt with concepts of gender, sexuality and race. In her essay,
Dadour argues that this format elicits a postmodern reading as it privileges a
diversity of concepts, methods, contexts of enunciation and, as such, problematizes
points where modern certainties seem at an impasse. She notes the co-existence
of the proliferation of the essay collection and the emergence of a theoretical
turn in the field of architecture. While this turn urged architects to redefine
the representation of their role and discipline, it fostered the creation of a new
figure: that of the theorist intended to, she writes, ‘deconstruct the foundations of
architecture’.
Part IV. Postmodern Architecture and the Institution:

Between the Elite and the Public
Postmodernism went hand in hand with the mass media: by bridging high and
low culture, it rendered architecture more accessible to the masses, and turned it
into a consumable good via glossy magazines, television and advertisements. At
the same time, with the invention of the Pritzker Prize in 1979 and the entry of
architecture at the Venice Biennale the very same year, the star architect was born.
Postmodern architecture – it seems – is caught in a tension between populism
and elitism, between the masses and the isolated star. In this last section, we
examine the increased institutionalization of architecture and the intertwined
relationship between postmodern architecture and the public. Looking at the
postmodern era, can we speak of a more global diffusion of architecture through
its institutions? What were the specific roles played by architecture institutions
such as the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, the Institut
Français d’Architecture (IFA) in Paris and the Netherlands Architecture Institute
(NAI) in Rotterdam, all emerging in the late 1970s or early 1980s? Finally, could
we say that, with postmodernism, the focus of the media has changed from mere
communication to entertainment and spectacle?
With ‘Institutionalizing Postmodernism: Reconceiving the Journal and the
Exhibition at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in 1976’, Kim Förster
offers a first case study for this section. His essay discusses the role of the Institute
for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) (1967–1985) in the architecture culture
of the 1970s. As an educational and cultural facility, and as a network of scholars
and research fellows, the IAUS had a huge impact on architecture education
and debate, competing both with the museum and academia. But the IAUS also
represented a ‘functional elite’; it not only launched many careers, but coined,
according to the cultural logic of postmodernism, a celebrity culture and the
current star system in architecture. Förster examines the IAUS in its production
of architecture knowledge through publications and exhibitions. The postmodern
narrative as elaborated on the American East Coast and in its self-legitimizing
objectives had a major influence on architecture discourse on both sides of the

Atlantic. The IAUS installed – as Förster argues – a postmodern architectural
discursive form.
Daniela Fabricius presents a second example with an in-depth perspective on
Revision der Moderne, the first exhibition of German architecture historian and
curator Heinrich Klotz, and the first on postmodernism in Germany, opened in
1984 at the German Architecture Museum (Deutsches Architekturmuseum:
DAM). Klotz’s role and that of the German Architecture Museum is fundamental
in understanding postmodern architecture’s conflicting attitudes towards media.
Embracing both popular culture and architecture’s autonomy, Heinrich Klotz framed
and exhibited postmodern architecture while exposing its paradoxical nature.
This last essay emphasizes the immaterial aspect of postmodern societies
‘moving towards a dematerialized culture characterized by simulacra, information
and codes, and away from a culture of authenticity, materiality and authorship’.43
And it is, in a sense, this immateriality of postmodern architecture that we would
like here to unpack, through the study of ephemeral yet very material objects of
study: the walls of the exhibitions and the pages of the periodicals.
Notes
1 Charles Jencks, interview with Léa-Catherine Szacka and Eva Branscome, London, 16
February 2009.
2 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1966); Aldo Rossi, L’architettura della citta/The Architecture of the City
(Padova: Marsilio, 1966); Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour,
Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972); Charles Jencks, The
Language of Post-Modern Architecture (London: Academy Editions, 1977).
3 See for example, Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass
Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
4 ‘In her Privacy and Publicity, Beatriz Colomina proposes a similar relationship for
the modern era, but arguing that, in the case of modern architecture, media radically
displace the traditional sense of space and subjectivity.’ Colomina, Privacy and Publici.
5 Respectively the 67th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians
(SAH) in Austin, Texas, and the Third European Architecture History Network
(EAHN) meeting in Turin.
6 Reinhold Martin, Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism Again (Minneapolis:
University of Minnessota Press, 2010), xv.
7 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, first edition in French 1979);
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke
University Press, 1992); Dom Holdaway and Filippo Trentin, eds, Rome, Postmodern
Narratives of a Cityscape (Warwick: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).
8 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural
Change (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991).
9 Michael Payne, ed., A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 1997), 428–432.
10 Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen, The SAGE Handbook of
Architectural Theory (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi: Sage, 2012), 137.
11 Jorge Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of
Postmodernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xi.
12 Charles Jencks, The Langage of Post-modern Architecture, 3rd revised and enlarged
edition (London: Academy Edition, 1981, first edition 1977), 8.
13 This was a show curated by Jane Pavitt and Glenn Adamson which was on view at the
V&A from September 2011 to January 2012 and toured afterwards to Zurich for its
Swiss edition.
14 This was curated by Frédéric Migayrou and on display at the Centre Pompidou from
20 June to 10 September 2012.
15 About the work of Rossi, and the Tendenza in general, Jencks writes: ‘On the positive
side, Rossi has contributed to the growing concern for the role of monuments in
perpetuating, even defining, historical memory and the image of the city – key
ideas for Post-Modernism in coming to terms with the collective, or public realm
in architecture. Without a clear insistence on public symbolism – and this means
monumental, permanent gestures that self-consciously articulate certain values – the
image of the city becomes inchoate, the architecture evasive. But negatively, Rossi
fails to understand how symbolism works, why cities and ordinary people have a
perfect right to go on calling his architecture fascist even when he sees and intends it
as recalling Lombardy farmhouses and the memories from his childhood.’ Jencks, The
Language of Post-Modern Architecture, 91.
16 At Frankfurt’s Deutsches Architekturmuseum in from 10 May to 19 October 2014.
17 The exhibition HOLLEIN was organized at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) in
Vienna, from 25 June to 5 October 2014 and the exhibition Hans Hollein: Everything
is Architecture at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach from 12 April to 28
September 2014.
18 Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and organized at the Fondazione MAXXI in Rome
from 17 April to 21 September 2014.
19 10–12 September 2015, ETH, gta (Institute for the History and Theory of
Architecture), Zurich, Switzerland.
20 ‘The Architecture of Deregulation Postmodernism, Politics and the Built
Environment in Europe, 1975–1995’, 10–12 March 2016, School of Architecture KTH,
Stockholm, Sweden.
21 8–10 February 2017, KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium.
22 See, for example, Valéry Didelon, La Controverse Learning from Las Vegas (Paris:
Mardaga, 2011) and Martino Stierli, Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror: The City in
Theory, Photography, and Film (Las Vegas: Getty Publications, 2013).

23 See Kim Förster, ‘The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York (1967–
1985). A Cultural Project in the Field of Architecture’ (PhD dissertation, Department
of Architecture (D-ARCH), ETH Zurich/Switzerland, 2011); see also Diana Agrest’s
The Making of an Avant-Garde: IAUS 1967–1984, 2012. See also: https://www.
makingofanavantgarde.com/the-film/
24 See Igor Marjanović, Drawing Ambience, Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural
Association (Chicago: University of Chicago Press/RISD Museum, 2015); Irene
Sunwoo, ‘Between the “Well-Laid Table” and the “Marketplace”: Alvin Boyarsky’s
Experiments’, in Architectural Pedagogy (PhD dissertation, Princeton University,
School of Architecture, 2013).
25 See Léa-Catherine Szacka, Exhibiting the Postmodern: the 1980 Venice Architecture
Biennale (Venice: Marsilio, 2016).
26 Emmanuel Petit, Irony; or, The Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Robert A.M. Stern (author) and Cynthia
Davidson (editor), Architecture on the Edge of Postmodernism: Collected Essays,
1964–1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); Charles Jencks, ed., The
Post-Modern Reader, 2nd edition (London: Wiley, 2010).
27 Barry Bergdoll, ‘Curating History’, The Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 57, 3 (1998), 257–366, 257.
28 Bergdoll, ‘Curating History’, 257.
29 Bergdoll, ‘Curating History’, 366.
30 Florian Kossak, ‘Exhibiting Architecture: the Installation as Laboratory for Emerging
Architecture’, in Sarah Chaplin and Alexandra Stara, Curating Architecture and the
City (London: Routledge, 2009), 117.
31 Kossak, ‘Exhibiting Architecture’.
32 Wallis Miller, ‘Mies and Exhibitions’, in Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, eds, Mies
in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001), 338.
33 Christophe Van Gerrewey, Tom Vandeputte and Véronique Patteeuw, ‘The Exhibition
as Productive Space’, in OASE#88 Exhibitions: Showing and Producing Architecture

(Rotterdam: NAi publishers, 2012), 1.
34 OASE#88 Exhibitions.
35 Vittorio Gregotti and Jacques Gubler, eds, ‘Architettura nelle riviste d’avanguardia/
Architecture in the Avant-Garde Magazines’, Rassegna IV, 12 (December 1982), 4–88.
36 Hélène Jannière and France Van Laethem, ‘Essai méthodologique: les revues, source
ou objet de l’histoire de l’architecture?’, in Hélène Jannière, France Van Laethem and
Alexis Sornin, eds, Revues d’architecture dans les années 1960–1970 (Montréal: IRHA,
Institut de Recherche en Histoire de l’Architecture, 2008), 60–61.
37 For example, in 1979 Phyllis Lambert created the Canadian Center for Architecture
(CCA) in Montreal while the Venice Biennale created the architecture sector of the
institution and the Max Protetch Gallery in New York started exhibiting architecture
drawings; also in 1979, Heinrich Klotz founded the German Architecture Museum
(Deutsches Architekturmuseum: DAM) in Frankfurt, which opened to the public
in 1984; the Netherland Architecture Institute in Rotterdam was created a few years
later, in 1988.
38 Jordan Kauffmann, ‘Architecture in the Art Market: The Max Protetch Gallery’,
Journal of Architecture Education 70, 2 (2016), 257–268, 257.
39 ‘Architectures fantastiques/Fantastic architecture’, Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 102
(June–July 1962).
40 Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?’ in Charles
Jencks, ed., The Post-modern Reader (London: Academy Edition, 1992), 148.
41 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1964; reprinted London: Routledge, 2008)
42 Véronique Patteeuw, Architectes sans architecture (PhD dissertation, ENSA Paris-
Malaquais, 2016); Jean-Louis Cohen, La coupure entre architectes et intellectuels, ou les
enseignements de l’italophilie (Bruxelles: Mardaga, 2015).
43 Daniela Fabricius, ‘Image, Medium, Artefact: Heinrich Klotz and the Postmodern
Architecture Museum’, in this volume.


Postmodern Architecture and The Media: An Introduction: Véronique Patteeuw and Léa-Catherine Szacka

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Postmodern Architecture and The Media: An Introduction: Véronique Patteeuw and Léa-Catherine Szacka

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

POSTMODERN

Recalling the Strada Novissima, centrepiece of the First International Architecture

importance of the relationship between postmodern architecture and media.

but as agents shaping buildings and discourses.

Postmodernism’s paradoxical nature

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 3

architecture. By doing so, it highlights and refers, directly or indirectly, to several

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 5

Researching the recent past

popular expression, critical examination and artistic production, as a renewed

offer a collection of previously published texts: Architecture on the Edges

Postmodern exhibitions and periodicals

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 7

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 9

A series of opposite forces

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 11

Part I. Postmodern Architecture’s Pursuit of a New

in Modern Architecture’, Michael Kubo explains how the curatorial tactics

Part II. International Postmodernisms:

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 13

emphasizes national versions of postmodernism and their relation to the more

Part III. Postmodern Architects as Thinkers:

Bridging Theory and Practice

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 15

eclecticism in his writing and his architectural approach in projects.

Part IV. Postmodern Architecture and the Institution:

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 17

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 19

as Productive Space’, in OASE#88 Exhibitions: Showing and Producing Architecture

POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE MEDIA 21

You might also like