Post-Modernism

“ Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral

language of orthodox Modern architecture.” – Robert Venturi

Outline

Introduction• “Less is A Bore”Robert Venturi• “Learning From Las Vegas”• The Duck and the Decorated ShedThe Architects of Post-Modernism and their

Works

Breaking the Box of Modernism

The monolith of Modernism began to show hairline cracks after WWII.

Architects surveyed the field and found the zeal, conviction and utopian vision of the pioneering Modernists waning. The Seagram Building

Mies Van Der Rohe, 1958

The Reaction to Modernism, 1950s-1970sPostmodern architecture

began as an international style whose first examples are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture.

1000 de La Gauchetière, Montréal, Lemay & Associates architects, 1992

The Emergence of Post-Modernism

• 1960s - the emergence of Post-Modernism, a way of thinking of architecture that is quite different from the approach of International Style designers.

• “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, Robert Venturi, 1966 made the case for non-straightforward architecture and glorified Baroque architecture.

Mies Van de Rohe “Less is more “Robert Venturi “Less is a bore”

Robert Venturi’s Vision

I like elements which are hybrid rather than ‘pure’, compromising rather than ‘clean’, distorted rather than ‘straightforward’, ambiguous rather than ‘articulated’, perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as ‘interesting’, conventional rather than ‘designed’, accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitor and proclaim the duality.

Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, Pennsylvania, 1962

In this modest dwelling, Venturi combined simplicity of external form with complexity of interior layout, and conventional symbols and elements with contradictory arrangements.The house was constructed with intentional formal architectural, historical and aesthetic contradictions.

Farnsworth House, IllinoisMies Van Der Rohe

1951

The Duck and the Decorated Shed

The terms “duck” and “decorated shed” were codified in the 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, his wife Denise Scott Brown, and their friend Steven Izenour. The book argues that there are two distinctly different types of buildings and that all buildings can be classified as one or the other.

Duck-shaped roadside building, Eastern Long Island, used to sell ducks and eggs.

‘Wit, ornament and reference’

Postmodernity in architecture is generally thought to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism.

City Hall, Mississauga, Canada , 1987

The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics:

•styles collide•form is adopted for its own sake•new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building—often maintaining meaning in literature, poetry and art—but which had been abandoned by the modern movement.

Modernism=Post Modernism• Modernist architects may regard

postmodern buildings as vulgar, associated with a populist ethic, and sharing the design elements of shopping malls andmay cluttered with "gew-gaws". ..

• This contrast was exemplified in the juxtaposition of the "whites" against the "grays," in which the "whites" were seeking to continue (or revive) the modernist tradition of purism and clarity, ...

The divergence in opinions comes down to a difference in goals: modernism is rooted in minimal and true use of material as well as absence of ornament...

• ...while Postmodern architects may regard many modern buildings as soulless and bland, overly simplistic and abstract.

• ...while the "grays" were embracing a more multifaceted cultural vision, seen in Robert Venturi's statement rejecting the "black or white" world view of modernism in favor of "black and white and sometimes gray."

• ... While postmodernism is a rejection of strict rules set by the early modernists and seeks meaning and expression in the use of building techniques, forms, and stylistic references.

The ‘Post-Modern’ Architects

• Philip Johnson• Charles Moore• Michael Graves• Robert A.M. Stern• James Stirling• Frank Gehry• Robert Venturi

Philip Johnson

Left: Pazzi Chapel, Brunelleschi, Florence, 1441

No 20th C architect has received more attention for his historicism than Philip Johnson, nor has any architect practiced or indeed lived longer than he has.

In 1984, Johnson took the center of Post-Modernist age, with his AT&T Headquarters in New York City.

At its base is a giant Serliana, which has been compared by some to the facade of Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel, and at its crown a broken pediment, which has been compared to a grandfather’s clock or 18th C highboy.

AT&T Building, New York 1984

With this building and its references to architectural styles of the past, Philip Johnson broke completely with the Miesian tradition. In fact, his client had said emphatically that the company did not want another glass box.

Philip Johnson and John Burgee, American Telephone and Telegraph Headquarters, New York, 1984.

The Miesian Tradition

Philip Johnson

Bank of America Center, Houston, John Burgee and Philip Johnson, 1984 combines architecture elements of pre-WWII skyscrapers with elements of modern aesthetics.

Charles Moore, 1933

The Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans (1975-79) consists of a flamboyant, wildly Ne0-Classical, neon-outlined, scenographic backdrop for a contour map of Italy set in a pool of water that is demarcated by concentric rings of marble paving. It is much spectacle as architecture.

Piazza d’ Italia, 1979

Charles Moore brought to Post-Modernism a gentle but studied playfulness that made his buildings immediately accessible to the public and professionals alike. Moore took pleasure in historical allusions, but with large doses of whimsy.

Michael Graves, 1934

Graves describes his work as ‘figurative’, with the figural elements traceable to ‘classical and anthropomorphic sources’.

The Portland Building in Portland, Oregon (1980) is replete with quotations from the classical language: the temples on the roof (never built), the giant keystone beneath them, the pair of fluted pilasters of indeterminate order, and the tiered stylobate at street level.

The Portland Building in Portland, Oregon (1980)

The Portland Building, Oregon, 1984

Graves was also a force in reintroducing color into 20th c architecture, as here with the green base, terracotta-colored columns, and tan flanking walls punctured by square windows.

Swan and Dolphin Hotel, Michael GravesDisneyworld, Orlando, Florida, 1987

Michael Graves Projects, 1980s

A Private Residence

Top:

Celebration Florida Fire Station

St Coletta School, Washington D.C., 2006

Various products for commercial outlets

Michael Graves

Robert A.M. Stern (b 1939)

Disney’s Newport Bay Club, 1992.Disney's Newport Bay Club is a hotel situated at the Disneyland Paris. It was

designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern and styled after archetypal New England architecture with its white clapboard exterior, porches, woodwork and nautical memorabilia. Its name was derived from the town of Newport, Rhode

Island.

Post-Modernism defined by Robert Stern: contextualism, allusionism, and ornamentalism.

Contextualism refers to connections between the building and its setting as Post-Modernist architects attempt to link their buildings to established patterns, geometries, and possibilities for future growth, rather than conceiving each design as an isolated object in the landscape, as many would argue that Modernists did.

Robert Stern Projects

One of the entrances to the Walt Disney World Casting Center, across the road from Downtown Disney. The architectural design is by Robert Stern, with its castle-like influences and Mickey Mouse shapes.

Stern has written at length about classicism, calling it the “fulcrum about which architectural discourse balances” and has built in a variety of traditional styles.

Residence, Edgartown.

Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany 1984Stirling’s Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany contains a host of historical allusions, and responds to its site in a fashion somewhere between the search for a genus loci, or peculiar character of the place, and literal deconstruction.

Stirling made the rotonda a sculptural garden and part of a public walkway designed in homage to an established pedestrian path through the site. As for the allusions, Stirling used Greek or Roman pediments to Egyptian cavetto cornices to displaced stonework.

James Stirling (1926-1992)

James Stirling Projects

Cambridge Faculty of History, England1968

The Biological Science Library, University of California, Irvine, 1994

Team Disney Building, Arato Isozaki, 1990

Education City Convention Centre, Qatar by Arata IsozakiUnder Construction

The conceptual design of the centre was developed to incorporate a large “Sidra tree” has very strong roots, which allow it to flourish in the harsh climate of the desert. The tree is a symbol of strength and growth, serving as an icon to the people of Qatar as well as the emblem of the Qatar Foundation.

Frank Gehry, (b1929)

Frank Gehry has succeeded in having a host of designs that would seem destined to remain as models or conceptual drawings actually built. Early in his career he realized that he often preferred buildings in an incomplete state of construction to the finished products. While most would have left it at that, Gehry started to design new buildings that seemed frozen in a state of becoming.

Above: Frank Gehry Residence, 1978

Team Disney Administration Building, California, 1995

Seen from the freeway, its flat, quilted metal facade appears to be quite conventional, its regularity broken only by slight offsets in the stacking of windows and the mottled colored scheme.

To the rear however, the buildings massing becomes curvilinear, warped, even delusional, as canary-yellow walls bend, lean forward, and lean back, their canopies equally disfigured, as if a result of a recent seismic event.

Team Disney Burbank, California, 1991.

Michael Graves designed the building, which features large figures of the dwarves from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on its facade acting as caryatids.

National Nederlander, “Fred and Ginger”, Praque (1997)

Here, within a historic context, Gehry took movement as his theme for a corner building that twists and projects in space with an energy expressive of the opening up of Eastern Europe since

the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Gehry, National Nederlander, “Fred and Ginger”, Praque (1997)

The entrance tower of concrete columns bundled in glass seem to sway as if part of an urban choreography in step with the surrounding buildings and space, hence the “Fred and Ginger” nickname. The result, though idiosyncratic, is surprisingly contextual, acknowledging adjacent medieval towers and Baroque facades and domes.

Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997)

This museum has aroused a kind of popular and critical interest equalled by few other 20th c constructions. His exhilarating structure replaced dock facilities on a site adjacent to the Nervion river in a gritty manufacturing city. Out of a four mass blossom “pleated petals” of titanium attached to a steel frame. The museum acts as a mirror, reflecting and absorbing the city, reflecting and absorbing itself. Giving off a metallic luminescence, it hovers and shimmers at the end of a hard-edged urban vistas.

Gehry began to explode buildings, breaking them up into discrete volumes in a way that to some, reflects the fragmentation in modern

society.

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997)

Toronto Entertainment Center, Under Construction

UTS Campus, SydneyUnder Construction

FIN