1. POSTMODERNISM
Part I
LECTURE 9
Image Source: http://www.statelykitsch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/MH-sketch.jpg [Online]
History of Architecture-II (AP-313)
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
Nipesh P Narayanan
3. WHAT IS MODERNISM
• Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution
• Search for the Absolute truth
– Man’s destiny is in Man’s hand
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
4. Piet Mondrian
Image Source: http://www.pietmondrian.info/mondrian-at-a-glance/immagini-glance/dipinti-grandi-480/flowering-trees1912-mondrian.jpg [Online]
WHAT IS REALLY REAL?
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
5. WHAT IS REALLY REAL?
Image Source: http://www.pietmondrian.info/ [Online]
“ Abstraction alone is not enough to
eliminate the naturalistic from
painting”
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
7. Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MagrittePipe.jpg [Online]
1928-29
Image Source: http://www.statelykitsch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/MH-sketch.jpg [Online]
THIS IS NOT A PIPE, BUT THIS IS A HOUSE!
1962-64
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
9. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
“Defining our world today as Post-Modern is rather like defining
women as ‘non-men’. It doesn’t tell us very much, either flattering or
predictive. All it says is what we have left – the Modern world, which is
paradoxically doomed, like an obsolete futurist, to extinction. And
there is another linguistic puzzle. How can the world be Post-Modern,
magically preserved like some creature in Alice in Wonderland, beyond
the present tense? Do we inhabit only the past, or future.”
~ Charles Jencks (1987)
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
10. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
“*Postmodern+movements show to some degree that double aspect of
the term:
-They are, at once, a continuation of Modernism and its
transcendence.
- they accept the irreversible nature of the modern world and
modernization, but deny this cuts us off from the pre-modern past,
and this past is as much a part of the present as any aspect of the
twentieth century.”
~ Charles Jencks (1987)
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
11. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
Transcending
Modernism
Continuing
Modernism
No Elitism
Architecture as Public Art
Intellectual product for
those who understand
Dual Coding
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
12. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
“Post-modern Architecture is doubly coded, half-Modern and halfconventional, in its attempt to communicate with both the public and
a concerned minority, usually architects”
~ Charles Jencks (1987)
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
13. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
Modern – Latin , MODO ~ “Just Now”
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
14. WHAT COULD BE POST-MODERNISM
“A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern.
Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the
nascent state, and this state is constant”
~ Jean François (1979), ‘The Postmodern Condition’
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
15. POST-MODERNISM Vs LATE MODERNISM
LATE MODERNISM
Modernist Values
• Expression of Technology
•Circulation and Efficiency
PRAGMATIC
POST-MODERNISM
•City Context
•Values of the mass
•Personal means of architectural
expressions such as ornament
PLURALIST
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism
26. REFERENCE
Charles Jencks. 1977. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. Academy
Editions. ISBN 0856709336
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Postmodernism