POSTMODERNISM

Postmodern architecture (or ‘pomo’), is an architectural style that emerged as a reaction

against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, which
appeared in the late 1960s and continues in some form today as well.

The aims of Postmodernism began with its reaction to Modernism; it tries to address the
limitations of its predecessor. The list of aims is extended to include communicating
ideas with the public often in a then humorous or witty way. Often, the communication is
done by quoting extensively from past architectural styles, often many at once. In
breaking away from modernism, it also strives to produce buildings that are sensitive to
the context within which they are built.

The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott
Brown and Robert Venturi in their 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
and deconstructivism.

Postmodernism’s emergence was a direct response to the rise of art movements like
modernism, a style that discouraged the use of historical reference in architecture. As
modernism grew in popularity, notable structures in major cities underwent extensive
renovations. This often resulted in historic buildings being demolished and replaced with
stilted versions that held little regard for the artistic characterizations of surrounding
buildings.

Origin:
The Postmodernist movement is often seen (especially in the USA) as an American
movement, starting in America around the 1960s–1970s and then spreading to Europe
and the rest of the world, to remain right through to the present. In the 1960s, architects
began fighting back against the demise of history and culture that they saw taking place
in areas such as New York and Chicago.

As explained by couple Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi in their book, Learning
from Las Vegas, “Postmodern artists created an eclectic movement that fully
represented the constantly changing landscape of today’s modern world”. In place of
the functional doctrines of modernism, Venturi proposed giving primary emphasis to the
façade, incorporating historical elements, a subtle use of unusual materials and
historical allusions, and the use of fragmentation and modulations to make the building
interesting. They urged architects to take into consideration and to celebrate the existing
architecture and follow their own styles.
The book was instrumental in opening readers' eyes to new ways of thinking about
buildings, as it drew from the entire history of architecture—both high-style and
vernacular, both historic and modern—and In response to Mies van der Rohe's famous
maxim "Less is more", Venturi responded, to "Less is a bore’’. Venturi cited the
examples of his wife’s and his own buildings, Guild House, in Philadelphia, as examples
of a new style that welcomed variety and historical references, without returning to
academic revival of old styles.

While postmodern buildings were meant to serve a function—as with modernism—

postmodernism encouraged creativity and strayed from the rigid rules of modern ideals
that dictated simplicity, abstraction, and simple shapes. By mixing a variety of
architectural motifs and elements from the Arts and Crafts movement, classicism,
neoclassicism, and many other architectural styles, postmodern architecture looked to
create buildings that not only honored their local history, but had a unique visual appeal
as well.

Features of Postmodernism:
Structural Form and Ornamentation: In postmodernism, form of a structure
wasn’t necessarily organic, but was created with much ardor and details. Rather than
plain boxes, squares and rectangles as seen in that of modern architecture, structures
had meaning to them and use of different elements from classical to traditions. The
structures were usually made of separate building units, all of them being different and
in contrast with each other. The usage of slight ornamentation in the facades of
buildings can be seen throughout postmodernism with use of traditional materials like
bricks, glass, stone and wood.

Portland Public Service Building by Micheal Graves

Continuum between Past and Present: In postmodernism, continuation of
the ideologies and themes from the past can be seen. For modern architecture, there is
a positive break from the past, whereas in postmodernism, there is parody and
nostalgia. It is almost like half bits of classical references combined with modern
technology and ideas. There is a return to content and playing with images of the past,
rather than looking for pure forms.

Piazza D’Italia by Charles Moore

Double Coding: Double coding is conveying different meaning at the same time.
Postmodern architecture is a language that depends on double understanding, rather
than irony. The objective of this concept was to satisfy both peers and the public
through a combination of the past and present style in a synthetic fashion.

AT and T building by Philip Johnson

Contextualism: The term suggests an architecture that responds to its
surroundings by respecting what is already there. Postmodern architects tried to create
structures that both fit into and extend the urban context, reuse such contexts like the
street, arcade and piazza, yet acknowledge to the new technologies and means, rather
than conceiving each design as an isolated object in the landscape.

Guild House Robert Venturi

Contradiction and Complexity: In direct response to the stifling techniques of

modern design—including simplistic design and geometric shapes, postmodernism was
a contradiction of all the movements that came before it—borrowing inspiration from a
wide range of cultures and design elements to create work that had never been seen
before. In the case of the Humana Building in Louisville, Kentucky, designer Michael
Graves integrated techniques from a variety of movements to make a statement about
preserving history, while encouraging a progressive approach to design.
Complexity can be used to describe all postmodern works, as the integration of a variety
of colors, textures, shapes, and themes construct the framework of these unique
buildings. Complexity was used to pivot away from the uniformity of modernism and
establish a new style of design.

Humana Building
Asymmetry: Asymmetry was a pillar of the postmodern movement because of its
ability to capture attention and create unique buildings that stood out. Sloping pillars,
walls, and contrasting structures were commonplace in postmodern works and offered
new perspective on what it meant to be a functional building. The juxtaposition of these
angles and lines captivated audiences and helped establish postmodernism as a
movement to watch. The Groninger Museum showcases this asymmetry through its use
of varying shapes, colors, and mediums throughout each of its three main pavilions.

Groninger Museum

Fragmentation: Postmodern architects were known for creating fragmented

buildings that, while still connected as one building, took on the appearance of several
different buildings that served various functions. This is epitomized by the Guggenheim
Museum Bilbao, as titanium, the medium used to create this work, changes color
depending on the surrounding light. This helped bring new life to the building depending
on the time of day that the structure is viewed, offering a totally different aesthetic in
daylight than in the evening.

The Guggenheim Museum

Anthropomorphism: Anthropomorphism, or personification, is attribution of
human form or other characteristics. In Classical architecture, this principle was revised
and used extensively and seriously in terms of ratios and forms. Postmodernism also
tends to follow this concept but mixed along with its humor and wit. To clash the basic
boxes of modernism and to follow their own imagination, many architects took human
body as a source of inspiration and derived many building facades which depicted the
principle. Many postmodern architects incorporate ornaments and mouldings suggestive
of humans

. The Dancing House

Humor and camp: Both humor and camp, an ironic movement of gaudy art that
was perceived as beautiful, were used interchangeably throughout the postmodern era,
particularly in the United States. And while the postmodern movement began as a
rebellion against the rigidity of modernism, camp postmodern work took rebellion to new
levels. Theatrical buildings, like Hotel Dolphin (1987) in the Walt Disney World Resort
in Orlando, Florida, were famous for their use of humor and overindulgence. By
reaching the extremes of what a building could look like, camp architects challenged
formality and encouraged creativity in new construction and design.

Hotel Dolphin, Florida

Elements of Postmodernism:

Columns: In postmodernism, use of columns came back into existence. In modern

architecture, the traditional column was treated as a cylindrical pipe form, replaced by
other technological means like cantilevers or masked completely by curtain wall
facades. The revival of the column was an aesthetic rather than a technological or
functional necessity, supporting the irony of postmodernism.

Ironic columns of Lawrence hall, Williams college.

Color: Color is an important element in many postmodern buildings; to give the

façades variety and personality, colored glass is sometimes used, or ceramic tiles, or
stone. The buildings of Mexican architect Luis Barragan offer bright sunlight colors that
give life to the forms.

Luis Barrangan Casa Estudio

Gable roof: Building element that typifies the explorations of Postmodernism is the
traditional gable roof, in place of the iconic flat roof of modern architecture. Gable roof
being functional, was rarely used in modern architecture, however postmodern
architects encouraged and widely used traditional gable roofs with their own additions
and subtractions. For instance, in Vanna Venturi house, Robert Venturi breaks the
gable in the middle, denying the functionality of form.

Vanna Venturi House

Arches: Arches are another reference to historical elements, widely used in

postmodern architecture. Postmodernism utilizes abstracted historical elements to
present them in both familiar and unusual ways. Instead of simple post- and beam
construction, arches were employed in humorous ways. For example, entrance of AT
and T building by Philip Johnson, the geometry of arches is indicative of both return of
classical forms and desire to break free from modernism’s characteristic orthogonality.

AT and T building
Ornaments and Mouldings: Rejecting the pure plain forms of modern
architecture, postmodern architects tend to follow vision of their own utopia.
Postmodernism has also been described as neo-eclectic, where ornaments returned to
the facades. For instance, postmodern architecture feature plurality, metaphor and
parody and Harold’s Washington Library, with its exaggerated ornament and references
to Chicago buildings clearly illustrate these ideas.

Ornamentation detail of Harold Washington Museum

Trompe L’oell: Trompe L’oeil is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create
optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. This element of
antiquity was also used in many post modernist projects. This technique was used by
architects for creating illusions in the facades and interiors.

Kala Academy, Goa

Robert Venturi:
Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an
American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates,
and one of the major postmodern architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together
with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, Venturi paved the way for postmodern
architecture, encouraging architects to follow their own ideas and not be chained down
by ideal pure forms of modernism.

Venturi is also known for having coined the maxim "Less is a bore", a postmodern
antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more". Venturi's
buildings typically juxtapose architectural systems, elements and aims, to acknowledge
the conflicts often inherent in a project or site. This "inclusive" approach contrasted with
the typical modernist effort to resolve and unify all factors in a complete and rigidly
structured—and possibly less functional and more simplistic—work of art.

The diverse range of buildings of Venturi's early career offered surprising alternatives to
then current architectural practice, with "impure" forms (such as the North Penn Visiting
Nurses Headquarters), apparently casual asymmetries (as at the Vanna Venturi
House), and pop-style super graphics and geometries (for instance, the Lieb House).

Robert Venturi followed contextualism in his architecture, for instance The Guild House
was designed to recall the traditional row Philadelphia row houses, thus designed to fit
in its context. Venturi”s works can be called Mannerist work of Modernism, for example
in Vanna Venturi house, he takes the flat plane and simple modern volumes and distorts
them.

‘When the modern masters’ of architectural strength; lay in consistency, ours should be
in diversity’, by this, Venturi shows theories behind his works, that is based on variety
and diversity of architectural language, rather than consistency and originality. He is for
an architecture that promotes richness and ambiguity over unity and clarity,
contradiction and redundancy over harmony and simplicity.

Continuum between past and present is displayed in his works. He uses elements from
the past and applied them in his design, slightly or ironically. In his book on complexity
and contradiction in architecture, Venturi established the historical precedent as a major
source for postmodernism. He uses historical lessons rather than exploring the past. He
is sensitive to the environment by his study of classicizing past. In this sense, he is
against modern architecture which ignores the environment and focuses of planary and
purity of the form against all.

In his architectural design Venturi was influenced by early masters such

as Michelangelo and Palladio, and modern masters including Le Corbusier, Alvar
Aalto, Louis Kahn and Eero Sarrinen.
Works -
▪ Vanna Venturi House:
Located in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania on a flat site isolated by surrounding trees,
Venturi designed and built the Vanna Venturi house for his mother between 1962 and
1964. In testing his beliefs on complexity and contradiction (for which he also wrote the
book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture), Venturi went through six fully
worked-out versions of the house which slowly became known as the first example
of Postmodern architecture.

It incorporates many of the devices used by Modernist architects like Mies van der
Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, from horizontal ribbon windows, to a simplistic rendered
facade. But Venturi chose to also include ornament in the design – something his
Modernist peers had shunned. By reintroducing elements traditionally associated with
houses – from a gabled roof to an arch-framed entrance – but stripping them of their
original functions, he laid the foundations for the entire postmodern movement.
However, these traditional elements were applied in unconventional ways. Firstly, the
gable has a vertical opening in its centre, and is located on the long rather than the
short side of the building, completely distorting its scale. There is also no matching
gable at the back – the element is purely decorative. A square opening creates a
sheltered doorway in the centre of the facade, yet the door itself stands to one side.
There is also an arch that serves no purpose.

Façade

The interior is centered round the fireplace, the hearth of the home, but still Venturi's
design is a "generic" house with unusual twists. The plan contains only five functional
rooms, and on the outside it relates to public scale, seeming much larger than it actually
is. The "generic" fireplace is actually placed next to a stair that competes with the
fireplace to be the core of the house. The fireplace is void, the stair is solid and both
vertical elements contort in shape to make room for the other.

Ground Floor Plan

Upon entering there is the main living space. Also located on the first floor due to a
request from Venturi's mother are the kitchen and the bedroom. The second floor
contains another bedroom, storage space, and a terrace.

First Floor Plan

In order to create more contradiction and complexity, Venturi experimented with scale.
Inside the house certain elements are "too big," such as the size of the fireplace and the
height of the mantel compared to the size of the room. Doors are wide and low in
height, especially in contrast to the grandness of the entrance space.
In the rear elevation of the house is an oversized lunette window, which follows the
main elements of the exterior that are exaggerated in size. Venturi also minimized
circulation space in the design of the house, so that it consisted of large distinct rooms
with minimum subdivisions between them.

Venturi referred to the exterior as a layering system. The effect intended was to make
the exterior walls both walls and screens. For example, the east glass wall is recessed
in order to form a covered yard screened by the back wall. This same idea is used on a
smaller scale for the bedroom on the other side of the house.
The building was initially painted taupe grey but was later repainted in pale green to
make it analogous to its suburban location.
According to Scott Brown, the exterior was inspired by Michelangelo's Porta Pia in
Rome – another example of a building where the front and back don't relate to one
another.

A manifesto for Postmodern architecture, the Vanna Venturi house is a composition of

rectangular, curvilinear, and diagonal elements coming together (or sometimes
juxtaposing each other) in a way that inarguably creates complexity and contradiction.
 • Guild House:
Guild house is a residential building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, which
is an important and influential work of 20th century architecture. Guild House was the
first major work of Robert Venturi. Along with the Vanna Venturi House, it is considered
to be one of the earliest expressions of postmodern architecture.

The construction for Guild House started in 1960 and it was completed in 1963. This
apartment building for seniors with low incomes was one of the first important works
of Robert Venturi and then mate, John Rauch. The building has become an emblem of
an architectural philosophy that tries to embrace both conventional classical tradition
and “ugly and ordinary” cheaper and social construction.

The front facade respects the line of the street as the urban layout of the city, although
the building is retracted on the sides. Like the ordinary structures in this neighborhood,
its facade offers an economic aspect of red bricks with conventional metal window sash.
In many ways it is an “ordinary” building, for many people even “ugly”. In contrast
construction fits the context, without highlighting between the architecture of the
neighborhood.

The building housing apartments for seniors with low income, was commissioned by
Quaker organization. Guild House represents a conscious rejection of modernist ideals
and was widely cited in the further development of the postmodern movement.

The facade facing the street is anchored by a thick column of black polished granite and
crowned with a large arched window opening in the upstairs common area of the
building. The rear facade is flat.
The massive column of polished granite in the middle of the entrance contrasts with the
white ceramic coating that highlights the main entrance and that includes the name of
the building in large letters covering the first floor balcony. At the time of its construction
the building was crowned with a golden replica of a TV antenna, placed in the center of
the facade, a friendly symbol to the leisure activity of older people who occupied the
building and an ironic variation decorated in classical pediments of the buildings.

This 6 storey building has a symmetrical façade. The entrance to the ground floor is
highlighted with a coating of white bricks, on which 4 pairs of balconies flanked by
square windows open, ending in a large arched window in the top floor for the lounge.
The white bricks also cover the first floor balconies and a string ending on the fifth floor.
The retraction of both ends generates a staggering allows more windows sunny
exposures.
 Ground Floor Plan

Like the facades screen in some medieval cathedrals, this front deceived as to what is
behind, as an example about the masonry slots, at the top, which reveal that the
building is interrupted in this sector.
The interior spaces are defined by intricate mazes of walls that fit the complex and
varied program of an apartment building and the irregular frame allowed by flat slab
construction. There is a maximum internal volume and minimum aisle space, which are
irregular and varied residual space, instead of the usual tunnel.

The building has 91 apartments, mostly with windows that let in outside light and street
views. The top floor contains the living room, indicated by a big lunette window.
The structure of the Guild House was built mainly with dark bricks and flat slabs. The
stepped facade organization allows most units on southwest or southeast facing
windows, giving way to sunshine and views of the street below. The open interior
corridors were designed to create intimate and informal spaces.

The large round column exposed at the entrance on the street facade, accommodates
and emphasizes the large opening on the ground floor, contrasting with the white brick
area coating extends to the second floor.

The central window on the top floor reflects the special room inside the common spatial
configuration and is related to the entry below, increasing the scale and the building on
the street. Its arched shape allow a large opening in the wall while being “a hole”
instead of “empty” of a frame. According to Venturi, the combination of these elements
provide a new and larger scale and express a kind of monumentality.

Sash windows recall the formal language of public housing, thus being “ordinary” by. At
the same time, some of these windows are “normal”, some unusually large, depending
on their relationship to the street. Both the main facade and rear windows were placed
primarily in symmetrical patterns.

The column of black polished granite in the middle of the entrance portal contrasts with
the white ceramic glaze coating. This element and the scale label “Guild House” placed
on the first floor balcony clearly mark the entrance. The balcony railings are perforated
steel plates, on the first floor painted white instead of black to create a continuity of the
surface in this area despite the change in the material, since the coating on the first floor
has made in white glazed bricks.
All these elements, breaking free from the forms of modern architecture, Guild House
became the prominent example of postmodern architecture.
BIBLOGRAPHY:
• The Language of Postmodern Architecture: Charles Jencks.
• Archdaily.com
• The Role of Historical Elements in Postmodernism, by Mary Buchanan
Brush, University of Pennsylvania.
• Structure/ Ornament and the Modern Figuration of Architecture by Anne-
Marie Sankovitch
• Postmodernism from Part I – Theories of international relations by Roland
Bleiker.
• Robert Venturi and His Contribution to Postmodern Architecture, by
Douglas Kahi, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
• Phases of Postmodern Architecture, Contemporary Architecture and
Design by Prof. Saptarshii Kolay, IIT Roorke.
• Postmodern Architecture Theory and Practice, by Khaled Dewidar, The
British University in Egypt.
• Designingbuildings.co.uk
• RIBA Architecture.com
• Heinrich Klotz, ‘The History of Postmodern Architecture’, MIT press,
Cambridge Massachusetts.
• Wikiarquitectura.com
• Dezeen.com
• Biography: Robert Venturi/ pritzkerprize.com
• Twentieth-Century Architecture Part V. The 1960s and 1970s: Questioning
Modern Worlds by Martino Stierli.