Paolo Portoghesi
What is the Postmodern?
Postmodern is it possible to give a single definition to such a paradoxical and irritating word? I feel that it is indeed possible. But we must first stop thinking of it as a label designating homogeneous and convergent things. Its usefulness lies , rather , 24324v2119y in its having allowed us temporarily to put together and compare different things called modernity.
The Postmodern is a refusal , a rupture , a renouncement , much more than a simple change of direction. To define it poetically , we could borrow the celebrated verses of Montale : 'Do not ask us for the key that cannot open. Only this we can tell you today , what we are not , and what we do not want.' And exactly what many of us do not want anymore today is the antiquated Modern , that set of formulas which , in the second decade of this century , acquired the rigidity and clarity of a sort of statute in which general laws are collected that must be obeyed. This statute has never come up for discussion again , even thought taste has changed more than once since then. Its main article was precisely an annihilation of tradition , the obligation toward renewal , the theology of the new , and difference as an autonomous value.
Architecture was one of the first disciplines to go into crisis when faced with the new needs and desires of postmodern society. The reason for this precociousness is simple. Given its direct incidence on daily life , architecture could not elude the practical verification of its users.
Modern architecture has thus been judged by its natural product : the modern city , the suburbs without quality , the urban environment devoid of collective values that has become an asphalt jungle and a dormitory ; the loss of local character , of the connection with the place : the terrible homologation that has made the outskirts of the cities of the whole world similar to one another , and whose inhabitants have a hard time recognizing an identity of their own.
The architects of the new generations have made the city , the mechanisms of the production and reproduction of the city , their preferred field of study. They have discovered that the perpetual invention of and search for the new at all costs , the breaking off of environmental equilibria , perspective decomposition , abstract volumetric play , and all the ingredients of modern architectural cuisine were equally toxic to the physiological regimen of urban growth. They have discovered that the imitation of types is more important than linguistic invention. They also realize that it is once again necessary to learn modesty and the knowledge of rules and canons produced over centuries of experiences and errors , that the character of a place is a patrimony to use and not to mindlessly squander. A kind of new renaissance is thus being outlined which intends to recover certain aspects of the past , not to interrupt history , but to arrest its paralysis. And whoever objects that we are in a time of economic and moral crisis hardly fit for a renaissance should be reminded that Brunelleschi's and Leonrado's times were just as dark.
As always , when change is desired , the Postmoderns have also been the target of the arrows of the new conservatives , of those guardians of modernity at any cost , who refuse to relinquish their privileges and power. Unable to refute the radical criticism of the tradition of the new , they speak of an incomplete project of modernity that must be continued ; they pretend to ignore the fact that in order to really change the essential premises of the modern project , and not its last consequences , must be debated once more. And they refuse to admit that continuity with the great tradition of modern art lies today more in the courage to break with the past ( which in this case is precisely what was modern yesterday) , than in keeping its surviving traces on ice.
A New Renaissance
Zoroaster wants to lose nothing of humanity's past , and wants to throw everything into the crucible. (Nietzsche).
In architecture , the adjective postmodern found fertile cultural ground , priming a process which started out from criticism and historiography , and finally became the unifying label of a series of trends , theoretical propositions and concrete experiences.
The Postmodern has signalled , therefore , the way out of a movement that had for some time stopped 'moving ahead' , that had transformed itself into a gaudy bazaar of inventions motivated only by personal ambition and by the alibi of technological experimentation. The critics who first put into focus the vast and contradiction phenomenon of an exit from orthodoxy tried to control it by putting it into traditional categories. They also tried to simplify it and make it more comprehensible ; but in the end , the neutrality of a word like postmodern is tantamount to an absurd definition based on difference more than on identity. With regard to didactic simplification , the same critics finally surrendered to pluralism and complexity.
Charles Jencks , the most able of the announcers of this new show , proposed that its specificity can in fact be grasped , since it is the product of architects particularly mindful of the aspects of architecture understood as a language , as a means of communication.
A Postmodern buildings is , if a short definition is needed , one which speaks on at least two levels at once : to other architects and a concerned minority who care about specifically architectural meanings , and to the public at large , or the local inhabitants , who care about other issues concerned with comfort , traditional building and a way of life. Thus Postmodern architecture looks hybrid and , if a visual definition is needed , rather like the front of a classical Greek temple. The latter is a geometric architecture of elegantly fluted columns below , and a riotous billboard of struggling giants above , a pediment painted in deep reds and blues. The architects can read the implicit metaphors and subtle meanings of the column drums , whereas the public can respond to the explicit metaphors and messages of the sculptors. Of course everyone responds somewhat to both codes of meaning , as they do in a Postmodern building , but certainly with different intensity and understanding , and it is this discontinuity in taste cultures which creates both the theoretical base and 'dual-coding' of Postmodernisms.
And since modernity coincides in Western architectural culture with the progressive rigorous detachment from everything traditional , it should be pointed out that in the field of architecture , the postmodern means that explicit , conscious abolition of the dam carefully built around the pure language elaborated in vitro on the basis of the rationalist statute.
The history of architecture of the past thirty years could , therefore , be written as the history of a 'way out' of the Modern Movement according to a direction already experimented by the masters in the last years of their lives , at the beginning of the fifties.
The crisis of theoretical legitimation , which Jean Francois Lyotard calls the ' scarce credibility of the possibility of responding with the hope of the emancipation of Mankind, as in the school of the Enlightenment , of the Spirit , as in the school of German Idealism , or a transparent society ,' has unhinged the fundamental principles of architectural modernity , consisting of a series of equations which have never been verified except thorough insignificant small samples. These are the equations : useful=beautiful , structural thruth=esthetic prestige , and the dogmatic assertions of the functionalist statute : ' form follows function ,' 'architecture must coincide with construction,' 'ornament is crime,' and so on. The truth of architecture as a simple coincidence of appearance and substance contradicts what is greatest and most lasting among the architectural institutions , from the Greek temple to the cathedral ; and even what the Modern Movement built under the banner of truth often has its worth in an 'appearance' that has little to do with constructive truth. The great moral tale that hoped to grasp the human aspect of architecture , theorizing its function and 'sincerity' , by this time has the distant prestige of a fable.
In place of faith in the great centered designs , and the anxious pursuits of salvation , the concreteness of small circumstantiated struggles with its precise objectives capable of having a great effect because they change systems of relations.
The Crisis of Resources and the City-Country Relationship
The postmodern condition has put into crisis even that discipline that the Modern Movement had placed beside architecture , as a theoretical guarantee of its socialization : city planning understood as the science of territorial transformations. From the time when city planning , abandoning the tradition of nineteenth-century urban rhetoric , had become that strange mixture of ineffectual sociological analyses and implacable zoning , the city seemed to have lost very principle of its reproduction , growing from the addition of fatty or cancerous tissue , lacking essential urban features , as in the great peripheral areas.
The most obvious symptom of the change in direction of architectural research was a return to the study of the city as a complex phenomenon in which building typologies play a role comparable to that of institutions , and profoundly condition the production and change of the urban face. The analytical study of the city has skipped over the functionalist logic of the building block , reproposing instead the theme of the continuity of the urban fabric , and of the fundamental importance of enclosed spaces , actual component cells of the urban environment. The study of collective behaviour divided the criterion of the dismemberment of the urban body into its monofunctioning parts , the standard which informs ideal cities , proposed as models by the matters of modern architecture.
The energy crisis , on the other hand , and the crisis of the governability of the great metropolitan administrations has focused once again on the problem of the alternatives to the indefinite growth of the large cities , and on the necessity of correcting the relationship of exploitation still characterizing the city in relation to small centres and the region. The great myth of the double equation , city = progress , development = wellbeing has given way to the theory of limit and of controlled development.
Postmodern Architecture
In architectural criticism , postmodern is used mainly to referrer to historicist architecture that does not go beyond a nostalgic replication of the past. The polemical use of the term to censure all kinds of historicist architecture deserves disapproval , for even the most vehement opponent of postmodernism ought to be aware that there are ways of relating to the history of architecture that are more than a nostalgic reprise of the past. The critique of postmodernism becomes more pointed but also more simplistic when turned into a critique of nostalgia. Used polemically , the concept is at its narrowest.
I would like to widen postmodernism's range of meaning in the sense indicated earlier on , and to regard as postmodern buildings that do not slavishly follow the early versions of modernism. Whenever present-day architecture observes other laws in addition to functional aptness and maximum simplicity of basic forms , whenever it moves away from abstraction and tends toward representational objectivisation , I call it postmodern. By this I mean that in such a case architecture does not seek its final end in itself , in pure three-dimensional realization of volumetric problems , but that it can become a means for the visual realization of contents of a different , of a manifold nature. Then , architecture becomes a work of the visible emergence of beauty and does not remain merely a means subservient to practical ends.
The Concept of Postmodern (II)
The transition from modernism to postmodernism was an almost smooth one , like the transition between the early and the high Renaissance ; by no means did all the standards or the priorities change. The protest against modernism is not a determinate and rigid 'No' ; rather , it is a 'Yes , but' . This does not diminish the fact that some hard truths were advanced against the guiding notions and the established tradition of modern architecture. Some of the articles of faith of Das Neue Bauen were actually turned upside down. However , Mies and Le Corbusier have not been simply eliminated even if some 'radical eclecticists' take the liberty of labeling modernism an unfortunate incident of history.
On the other hand , we cannot shut our eyes and , together with the defenders of modernism , take up a sort of radical evocation of modernity. Effective remedies have indeed been advanced against the one-sided dogmaticism of modernism and these remedies serve as substantial historical evidence of an epochal change. The radical change occurred around 1960. Around 1980 , the new reality of postmodern architecture became common knowledge. Here we are faced , as a matter of general principle , with the question whether it is still permissible to extend a concept that covers everything over a historical process whose most divergent tendencies.
At first glance we note two main movement , which have taken on seemingly irreconcilable positions in their programmatic struggle : 'high tech' architecture (which is based predominantly on the expressive qualities of technological procedures and constructions , and which offers the Olympic Stadium in Munich , the Expo Pavilion in Osaka , and the Pompidou Centre in Paris as its best-known examples) and postmodern architecture (which takes into account the history of architecture and refers to the given factors of the whole cultural setting). The latter wants again to be an art , and its most telling renditions are Robert Venturi's 'My Mother's House' and Guild House , Charles Moore's Kresge College and Piazza d'Italia , James Stirling's Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart , Aldo Rossi's cemetery in Modena , and OM Ungers designs for Enschede and for the Berlin museums.
However , when we look at the different trends of contemporary architecture in terms of the theory of architecture , it becomes obvious that the lines of demarcation run differently than the superficial distinctions in terms of style would have us believe.
Even with a kind of building that forgoes the use of historicizing forms , the characteristic objective of postmodernism - to create an architecture of 'narrative contents' - can be achieved. To the bare realization of the demands of utility are added border-violating contents , which lift architecture out of its primary subservience to function and which use it as a medium extending beyond functionality and serving to represent an 'imaginary world' - that is , as a means of fiction. The contents of postmodernism can refer to a great variety of things. They can indeed create 'a beautiful world of appearances' that distracts one from the bare factually of architecture as a protective cover and that deflects one's attention to the completely different realms of environment as a narrative representation.
Fiction is not achieved by merely combining successfully some geometric forms. Only after a building is no longer bound up solely with itself , only when the stereometric autonomy of perfect volumetric wholes is destroyed and allusions and associations are permitted that go beyond the building itself , is there a possibility for creating an architectonic fiction. A Palladian villa is a nearly perfect architectural fiction not only because it has perfect dimensions and proportions , but also because it contains an abundance of witty allusions to antiquity that bespeak the sophisticated needs of its users; not only because it does not strive to be only functionally adequate for the routines of daily life , but also because it elevates life to the plane of fiction and provides a background for staging it to the fullest.
In the realm of architecture , the fictional is always only one aspect of the total whole. A building is not purely a work of art , and it can never come out as independently as a novel or a painting. Architecture is directly connected to the everyday procedures of human life , and it is more subject to the utility and profit considerations of economics than any other art. But under the dominance of functionalism the fictional element was banished from architecture , and the only thing left was the technique of building.
Today we are in the process of liberating architecture from the abstraction of pure utility and restoring to it the potential of making invented places possible again.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel addressed the conflict that still plagues us at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He spoke of 'radical abstraction' , which today we recognize as the functionalist formula by which a building is developed 'out of its next trivial purpose along and out of the construction'. In his view , the result of this abstraction was 'something dry , rigid and lacking freedom'. Today we realize that the architecture of functionalism , which was made from the same recipe , is for the most part equally dry rigid , and unfree.
The two elements in which Schinkel sought liberation are the answers to 'radical abstraction' in our times : the historical and the poetical. The historical enriches the spectrum of possible references and the wealth of historicizing stylistic means , in order that the poetical may emerge. The poetical is the power of the imagination to picture desirable places ; it is the generative power of fiction going beyond mere purpose.
Fiction limits abstraction because it confronts the nonobjective directive of men utility with the contents of the imagination. Schinkel's statement reduces the maxims of a modern architecture limited to functionalism and the injunctions of postmodern architecture to a common denominator. He realized that an architecture that draws is explicit visual character only from trivial purpose and from construction does not attain a satisfactory result. His statement contains a definition of architecture that is also the definition of postmodern architecture. This leads us to the question of how various people have defined postmodernism.
Charles Jenks has emphasized stylistic pluralism as the
essential feature of postmodern architecture. From this insight he draws the
conclusion that the individual architect must embrace a 'radical eclecticism' -
must submit to any change of style that the client desires. What may be valid
as a description of a total scene does not have to be an imperative for the
individual artist. A certain commitment to one's own idiom should continue to
be possible. Nevertheless , it as a fact that no stylistic dogmas are in force
any longer. The simultaneous presence of one style next to another , with all
their glaring differences , is almost the necessary credential of a highly
advanced architectural culture , especially in the
Correspondingly , Achille Bonito Oliva cited the change of style as the most decisive feature of the 'trans-avant-garde'.
The cultural epoch in which the younger generation is living is that of the trans-avant-garde , which views language as a tool of change , as a path of moving from one work to the next , from one style to the next. The avant-garde , in all its variations since the Second World War , developed in the sense of a linguistic Darwinism rooted in the great movements of the early twentieth century. The trans-avant-garde , however , operates outside these limits ; it follows a nomadic basic inclination that advocates the interchangeability of all languages of the past.
The trans-avant-garde overcomes the idea of progress in art , which was aimed entirely at conceptual abstraction. It brings into consideration that the linear development of earlier art can be viewed as one of many different possibilities , and it directs its attention even to languages that had been rejected earlier.
Oliva too speaks of abstraction as the main trend of modernism in the arts. The 'nonobjective' in painting has its parallel in the abstraction of the primary forms in architecture , which were supposed to represent nothing but themselves. References to contents other than the stereometry of basic forms , signaled by symbolism or ornamentation , were viewed as blemishes , as antiquated tarnishings of the purity of architectural form.
In contrast , postmodern architecture is characterized by the fact that the previously revoked stylistic means regain their validity , but that these stylistic vocabularies are employed to achieve as a particular goal an architecture which is no longer abstract but which puts its arguments across in a representational manner. The pluralism of styles is not in itself an explanation , but it provides the precondition for the development of architecture's capacity to speak in order to make aesthetic fiction possible. The 'styles' provide the vocabulary needed to substantiate an architectural narrative. They are the repository of forms , the potential raw material of architectonic representation. This is why the pluralism of styles is not the most appropriate formulation of postmodernism.
What does adequately define postmodernism is , rather , the insistence of the fictional character of architecture - which is diametrically opposed to the abstractness of modern architecture. Because this key notion exists , and because the fictional concretization of architecture provides the actual impetus of postmodern building , the variety of the available styles is not at the core of the decisions to be made. Vocabularies can change , and they can adequately serve widely divergent forms of representation and a wide variety of contents , as long as they are used as fictional narrative terms and thus are contributing significance and meanings. I am by no means rehashing here the question asked by Baron Hubsch at the beginning of the nineteenth century : 'In what style should we build?' What is at question is : Which stylistic means are adequate for the visual articulation of a given content? What is at stake is not the choice of what stylistic dogma to restore (say , Gothic or Renaissance) but the decision whether architecture is to remain abstract or whether epic devices will again be recognized as legitimate ingredients of an architectural statement. If the latter alternative should become a reality , then the wide range of stylistic means forming the material of fiction automatically suggests itself. Again , one is not saying much when one says that stylistic pluralism is the characteristic feature of postmodernism. We need , rather , to see it as a consequence of the new impetus aimed towards representation and directly opposed to abstraction.
Breakthrough to Postmodernism : Robert Venturi
For Venturi , complexity means manifold influencing factors being put in action in the architecture without the suppression or the smoothing away of contrary or mutually exclusive demands. The driving force of the new architectural aesthetic was not practical response to a given situation but conscious and theoretically formulated reaction against the established norms of architecture.
The Condition of Postmodernity
With respect to architecture , for example , Charles Jencks
dates the symbolic end of modernism and the passage to the postmodern as 3.32
pm on 15 July 1972 , when the Pruitt-Igoe housing
development in
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