Postmodern Architecture Moves Beyond Minimalism to a New Look at the Past
Posted on 13 November 2009 | By Richard Friswell
'Vitruvian Man', da Vinci's model for perfect geometric balance and form, cast in concrete in Yale School of Architecture, Rudolph Hall, New Haven, CT
Don’t count on the expected when considering the state of architecture today. A generation of visionaries, trained in a period when minimalism was the dominant theme in architectural design is now in the full flower of their careers and are expanding on and redefining the assumptions of their predecessors in ways that can surprise, delight and challenge the eye.
Mid-20th century America saw a dream for future prosperity being played out in corporate board rooms and on assembly floors of companies that ranked first in the world for innovation and profits. They saw their vision for future prosperity reflected in the glass and chrome buildings that rose to progressively greater heights, like faceless monoliths, in cities around the world. The purity of modernist design, heavily influenced by the German Bauhaus School of Design of the 1920s and 30s, France’s Le Corbusier and the introduction of the International Style, by American, Philip Johnson, and others in 1932, served as a perfect fit for the times.
Le Corbusier’s United Nations Building stands as a symbol of modernist glass and steel minimalism on the bank of the East River, New York City.
Guided by an extensive pre-war economic recession and post-World War II recovery woes, the U.S. in particular, strove to embrace an architectural style seen as both fashionable and affordable. In Europe, the politically-motivated Modernist Manifesto of the artistic community, calling for change in the social order was abandoned in the wake of the war’s devastating effects on European cities and their economy. The idealistic thinking of the modern movement, propelled by scientific discovery and industrialization, was being viewed as one of the principle causal elements leading, once again, to the horrors of war. “In the years between 1950 and 1970, millions of Ranch Style homes were built in the U.S., symbolizing the realization of the American dream and an idyllic suburban existence…”
generation of their protégés set out in the late 40s to redefine the American suburban landscape and the rapidly-expanding corporate campuses of our sprawling urban/suburban metroplexes with the modernist message, refitted for American tastes and budgets.
Cookie-cutter housing projects led to suburban sprawl and a maze of highways and retail clusters to support the new American life style in mid-20th century
Armstrong Rubber Building, Architect, Marcel Breuer, 1969. Brutalist period uses concrete as a finished effect
The artifice of modern Purism began to crack in the early 1970s, with the introduction of a number of commercial projects that seemed to reflect a re-working—even a challenging—of the broadly-held assumptions about architectural design. The Age of Pluralism had dawned and with it, the modernist dogma of the past 50 years (first in Europe, then, post-war, in the U.S.) slowly began to fade. According to Peter Blake, in his 1977 book, Form follows Fiasco, modernism’s failure was due in part to its proponents’ insistence that it could serve as a generic model for any design challenge. In part, Blake points out that modernism’s, “ unencumbered geometrics, emphasis on function rather than form, purity of line, reliance on technology as a source for design inspiration and a persistent belief that architecture could redefine society through the creation and rational application of universal design principles had not managed to capture and hold the public’s imagination.” It failed, too, in offering an acceptable solution, as neighbors and neighborhoods looked to integrate new buildings to landscapes that in some way could resonate with the older structures already in place there and still prove aesthetically worthy of the costs and effort needed for their design and creation in the now-booming economic climate of the last quarter of the 20th century.
Modest, but elegant beach homes designed by Robert Venturi, who envisioned his neo-modernist structures striking an ‘ordinary pose’ on the landscape.
Two groups of architects emerged during this period. For purposes of this overview, they shall be called the neo-modernists and the neo-traditionalists. For the former, architects like Michael Graves and the partnership of Robert Venturi and John Rauch continued to embrace the austerity, lack of pretention and purist vision of their predecessors– Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, among others. A shift in favor of more fluid solutions occurred in their designs, however. They now resonated with the landscape around them; became less monochromatic as they embraced a more expressive use of color to underscore form and volume and moved a step or two away from geometric orthodoxy to include dramatic curved surfaces and asymmetric variations to inspire the eye. These buildings appeared to invite a conscious dialogue with their surrounding structures as well, in which their creators borrowed– and then greatly modified— design elements, adding drama and visual impact of their own.
Philip Johnson’s AT&T building (1984), now SONY, in New York City symbolized this modernist’s break with the past, as he embraced the classical influences that would lset the tone for a neo-traditional revival.
It was in this very period when architect, Robert Venturi, stated that his goal was to,” strive to have my buildings strike an ‘ordinary’ pose—a working institutional building enhancing, rather than upstaging the buildings around it”. In the search for a dialogue that could serve as a bridge between the past and the future of architecture, the narrative shift that he helped spearhead through his design philosophy was, nevertheless, a first in the modernist lexicon—heralding a softening in modern purism’s orthodox stance against the lessons of history.
Michael Graves’ Portland, OR. Public Service Building (1981-83), an example of neo-modern design.
Among the emerging community of neo-tradionalists in recent decades, one surprising name from the brief history of modernism must be added—Philip Johnson. Trained under Walter Gropius at Harvard, he is renowned for his solid commitment to the tenets of modernism in his 1932 publication and Museum of Modern Art show on the subject of the International Style (defined by an emphasis on planar volume over mass, rejection of symmetry and an abhorrence of applied decoration) and his 1940s and 50s modernist interpretations in residential and commercial design. Johnson, however, soon became disenchanted with the uniformity of the glass and chrome towers he had long advocated as part of the International Style and moved to embrace the more decorous elements of the postmodern movement.
“Johnson, however, soon became disenchanted with the uniformity of the glass and chrome towers he had long advocated as part of the International Style and moved to embrace the more decorous elements of the postmodern movement.”
By the early 1980s, Johnson had thoroughly embraced and incorporated those same classically-inspired design features that he had previously so vehemently rejected. In his long career (1906- 2005), Johnson’s designs continued to reflect his modernist roots, while at the same time, echoed the influences of other great periods in both architecture and art (from neo-Gothic to Florentine; from minimalism to Pop Culture).
As early as the late 1960s, Robert A.M. Stern was a clear-eyed visionary for a new way of looking at architectural design. Often cited as the first to refer to this newly-emerging age of pluralism as, ‘postmodernism’, Stern argued that the days of modernist purism were behind us and that architecture only truly succeeds when it references the outside world, its people and surroundings. Architecture, he claims, is rooted in its context and achieves relevance when informed by the design features and styling of the past. Allusion, therefore, is key to understanding the work of post-modernists like Stern, who describes himself as a ‘modern traditionalist’. Traditional materials like shingle and stone, brick and ornamentation have played an important part in the continuity-of-design that is at the heart of Stern’s design ethic.
