The Story of Post-Modernism

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In the late 20th century, Post-Modernism was the leading global movement in architecture. It questioned the assumption of a single style and cultural totality and effectively stopped the Modern Movement in its tracks. In 1972, this was symbolised by the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe Housing in St Louis, Missouri, the first large-scale modernist housing scheme to be blown up by public demand. Following further detonations, a positive set of traditions flowed into the growing Post-Modern stream, and the pluralist philosophy so active today. Notable were Contextualism and Radical Eclecticism, Post-Modern Classicism and Regionalism, the Heteropolis and the new level of public engagement in city development. After twenty years of success, and then the inevitable commercial rips-offs, Post-Modern architecture succumbed to ersatz, debased by fashion as other leading movements before it. Yet, in another historical turn at the Millennium, plural cultures sought a richer identity than the Minimalism on offer and the result was the second great flowering of Post-Modernism. Now, much aided by the computer and the worldwide web this tradition re-emerged in an outburst of iconic architecture, a patterned ornament driven by digitisation and the complexity paradigm, which has provided the larger ecological and cosmic picture. Ironically, subtracted of its Post-Modern label, this richer architecture again flourishes as the alternative to a mechanistic modernism. In The Story of Post-Modernism, Charles Jencks, an authority on the subject, provides a lively and accessible account of Post-Modern architecture from its roots in the early 60s to the present day. In an evolutionary diagram, Jencks charts the variety of streams that now make up the river delta and discusses the main characters from James Stirling to Frank Gehry and Herzog & de Meuron.