Why is Postmodern Architecture so Bizarre?

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My architecture history teacher said the best definition he heard of posmodernism is: to take something that fell into disuse and resignify it. It's a movement that didn't only affect architecture, but all arts. For instance, there's a music channel called postmodern jukebox that plays contemporary songs but with earlier 20th century music styles, like swing. I think the definition hits on the mark.

I get some of the criticisms the postmodernism has of modernism, like the idea that form can't follow function when function changes over time in sometimes unpredictable ways. But I don't think that modernism implies rigidity necessarily, as the function could be an inclusive, multipurpose space. Where I think postmodernism goes off the rails is when it becomes reactionary, or even spiteful, of modernism and does the opposite of everything modernist. When you're just doing the opposite of someone who comes before you, you're still bound by that which you hate/disagree with, just in a different way. I can get behind some of the designs that take modernist foundations and add new twists, such as better integration with the surrounding community, but if you're just going to tack on a curvy facade separate from the superstructure or choose a color because one guy didn't like to use a color, be a sculptor or painter instead. Ok, that was a bit reductionist, but you get it. I think I will always be a modernist at heart. I don't care about historical reference, strict mathematical proportion (or the opposite), the current conversation and counterconversation among architects, just what we can learn from those things to make a more usable and accessible environment.

Hi I'm an American now living in Tbilisi Georgia. This city has a fascinating architectural heritage. And it is being decimated by contemporary buildings. I like in a section called Vake. If I look outside one window I am living next to a large brown office building tipped over at an angle. The outside windows all follow that design, but of course no one inside could possible work at such an angle. Across the street are double corkscrews, twisted rising up 40 or 50 floors, called the Axis Towers. Then down the street is a rather ominous massive, almost Brutalist, Hilton Garden Inn, which seems to be neither a garden nor anything as cozy and an 'inn'. I live in a Stalinist era type of building from 1956, about 7 stories tall and set up as a series of connected buildings surrounding a courtyard. It's certainly not a masterpiece. And it's from an era where overbuilding was the order of the day. ( I do really appreciate the soundproof walls!) Further up the street are several late-Soviet apartment structures which are much too big and have a more totalitarian coldness to them. On the outskirts of the city are very 20+ story tall dark bleak kruschevkas, highly, and by Western standards illegally, modified by their residents, looking strangely patchwork now. And then there are new buildings going up everywhere with nominally Postmodern features, but really just workaday products of bad design and hasty contractors with cheap materials. And this sort of thing is mushrooming everywhere now. And here's the point, I think contemporary construction is literally destroying humanity. Even the kruschevkas seem human by contrast to the blight of soulless buildings being foisted upon us. Starting with folks like Adolf Loos, and moving through what really seems like an elite cult of Modernists and then Postmodernists, it seems that my 1956 tank of Soviet Era building is far more human.. nay even the kruschevkas are far more human, than 85 percent of new buildings since the post-war period. (Not to forget that the materials used in contemporary culture are literally destroying the planet.) To me it seems that nothing in our insane society will change until the architects can build livable conditions again. We have to abandon Postmodern irony, which is just as destructive to human flourishing as Modernism. And one way you can tell the Postmodern is the comic version of Modernism, is that both of them eschew all serious textures but the smooth. I gave a lecture several years back on the loss of natural texture in our flat environments, and moreover I also see the loss of traditional ornamentation, which was a feature of all traditional cultures up through Art Deco, and it's juvenile delinquent child Googie, and then slipped into a coma after the late-Sixties with the phantasmagoria of psychedelic art, which sadly was never incorporated into architecture. So texture, ornamentation, and a human scale have to be rediscovered. I have made a very small step towards rethinking the texture problem by repainting a room in my flat with a highly unorthodox manner. (I made a video of it that you can watch.) Anyway thanks for your discussion. I am coming at these issues through another door. But I appreciate your videos and have subscribed.

There are many bizarre buildings close to me (I live in Rotterdam). The cube houses, the Boijmans Depot, central station, the "Markthal" (Market hall). And there are several others. Some of these are weird but functional, the cube houses are cute but really unpractical.

There's a Frank Geary building in Las Vegas that i finds absolutely fascinating. It's dedicated to mental health professionals, and the shape of the entrance/exit facades reflect this. You enter through his typical crumpled paper awning and exit from a bunch of stacked blocks. Essentially, you go from disorder to order, much like the patients' minds (hopefully). When i was in architecture school, i thought this was the best designed building in the valley, and there's a lot to choose from. Runner ups are the UNLV library and Clark County administrative complex, though the resorts have their own fascinating architectural design of course. I redesigned the El Cortez's entrance and parking/pedestrian access to the Welcome Sign, plus helped move the origin Little Chapel of the West, so I've got a reason to like those

You used a lot of Dutch examples! A lot of them clustered in Rotterdam, a city mostly rebuilt in the 50s to 70s after being bombed during WWII. Then had a bunch of new development from the 90s onward. The latter stuff often a response to the earlier rebuilding: instead of being done cheap and quick it was allowed to be luxurious again. Early plans for the Central Station would have been to make it look like 4 champagne glasses, for example (they eventually landed on a up-side down aluminum food-tray). So you see two responses at the same time: government and project developers wanting more luxurious buildings as a response to the "Architecture Done Cheap" and artists responding to the "boring, grey slabs of stone" with more color, glass and funny shapes. There's a lot of fun to be had for students of architecture and city planning during a visit to Rotterdam.

I like those branches of postmodernism that arent the bizarre messy eclectic collages, typical for 90s. For example many Rossis buildings, some of the latter more regionally oriented postmodernist buildings and so on.

First video of yours I've seen in 6+ months! Great to see another.

My perspective on architecture is based on respecting local traditions and forms of building, and being able to improve them by identifying its biggest strengths and exponentiate them to make them more functional and efficient. Not exact replicas, but not erasing everything and starting from scratch. One could think that this definition fits perfectly with how Postmodern Architecture has been defined, and on the surface it seems to be that way. But when I see what´s usually the final result of the so called Postmodern thought... I just don´t think it is what I am looking for. Instead of taking the best parts of modern and classic forms or architecture, they seem to take the worse, and use them to create something either tasteless and boring or just a big "Look at me!" sign that breaks all harmony and balance with its surroundings. In my head, architecture should be as flexible as possible and adapt to different circumstances. Some buildings can be grandiose and monumental but others need to be more discreet and personal... And all of them need to represent the people who inhabit them. That´s why architects like Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta may be my favorite ones from my country, because they were able to understand the essence of Mexican architecture and translate it into the modern in a very elegant, sophisticated and rational way.

Great to see you back! These videos are fantastic.

Surprised to see the Stata Center in the context of serious architecture that fits purpose and community; as just one example, it took decades to fix some of the basic failures (especially around Boston, the primary task of a building is to keep the weather on the outside not the inside...)

1:38 tbh those apartments there on the right looked sick as hell - I'd definitely live there

Glad to see you're still making videos! And on such a great topic no less.

Great video - excellent primer - I learned a bunch.

What fun to see the U of D's Trabant Center included! I did a mild double take my first time there... I love learning about its context. I live near the University. I attended Hunter College in NYC in the 1980's. But I grew up in Delaware and am happily ensconced here again. Love your content!

fantastic direction you are heading! this is your best video yet!

I've always liked postmodern styles, and growing up in the '80s and '90s I could see why. People just plain got bored with the minimalist modern forms of the '50s and especially '60s, so it was only a matter of time before "extraneous" decoration made a comeback. But I also agree that pretty much any style can be executed well or badly -- and that personal tastes can vary a lot in where the line is for various factors. I've also read (digests of) some of Robert Venturi's and Denise Scott Brown's ideas, about architectural elements often being symbols of other things* -- which is partly why they never really went away in private homes or on retail commercial strips, even at the height of the modernist era. As a note, I like that expression of "revolution" in the sense of "coming back around" -- and add that you're farther down the road once the wheel has revolved, so you're not in the same place as when that bit was on top before. And speaking of coming back around... Modernist styles have been around long enough to see revivals and reinterpretations of their own -- with some postmodern sensibilities incorporated in. Like the Art Deco revival of the '80s, and how it brought glass block into style again through the early '90s. Or how elements of the '50s version of streamlined modern started coming back around in the '90s and '00s, but with more natural wood. Or how some fast food restaurants of the 2010s and '20s -- especially McDonald's and Taco Bell -- mixed in elements of midcentury modern for a more "high style" look to compete with fast-casual restaurants. As for Frank Gehry... I always have liked his work, especially his abstract sculptural metal buildings like the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain or the Weisman Art Museum here in Minneapolis. But I'm also glad it's not everywhere. 🙂 * like how suburban houses had coach lights and columns to evoke prosperity and tradition, or fences and grassy front lawns to evoke larger country estates

Great video! I studied architecture for years and I learned a lot from this. When I was in school in the ‘90s it was just: “Postmodernism is facile and Deconstructivism is profound”. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone draw a through-line from the late work of Le Corbusier to the present. Well done!

Your videos are consistently excellent, and this one is no exception. I still intensely dislike Postmodernist architecture, but at least I now understand the principles behind it.