contemporary architecture/different schools

My view is that all post-modernist theory does is put modernism in its place as a socially constructed ‘style’ rather than a fundamental truth. Somehow PoMo architects have concluded that this means all buildings should have classical doo-dahs everywhere and damn the brief.

Or have I got it totally wrong?

(I am surprised that people are still into all that)

[This message has been edited by JL (edited 14 November 2000).]

Me too, Im actually stunned. I really believed that a school of architecture in the year 2000 would be bursting with entheusiam for the rejuvenation of the modern movement.
Venturi and Co.please stop right now. (PoMo is a pet hate of mine)

Yeah!….and check out the tacky detailing of the imitation high mantled fireplaces with mock brass fenders, a beautiful rose and coven for the stippled ceiling, genuine(?) antique pine kitchen, Italian tiled bathroom, mahogany frontdoor with a fanlight thing and stained glass and glorious PVC sashed windows in a horizontal format…….. UGH! Someone please save us.
Oh and don’t forget the cherub statue thing in the front garden among all the weeds.
Is’nt it all so beautiful and so 2000 AD.

What I found strange about PoMo before it thankfully passed away is that it all somehow managed to look so uniform, despite originating out of a theory about diversity and arbitrariness of style/dogma.

There’s nothing strange about that JL.
It’s the same in every movement in every discipline. Today’s avant garde gets co-opted, debased and assimilated into the mainstream of tomorrow.

What is strange is that nobody who posts a question on Archeire ever seems to get a direct answer…….
…..although looking again, I see that C Ferdinand did not actually ask a question!

But I have heard that the latest research suggests that morality (and hence notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’) developed out of an essential sense of disgust at things which were poisonous or diseased or otherwise unhealthy. So by that logic, the purest, most minimal, sterile, white cube modernism must be the best.

But then we need to be exposed to some dirt and decay to develop our immune systems, so maybe it is better to tag on a few kitschy bits here and there, let the plaster crack a bit…..

I think it’s fair to say that style in architecture is essentially meaningless – leave it to Wallpaper ragazine to deal with that. All the movements borrow from what went before, whether or not they admit it in their official manifestos. There’s no need to be ashamed of the past, neither is there any need to be a slave to it.

I suggest that C Ferdinand changes schools, and gets a shot of a different kind of dogma.
What’ll it be – UCD or Bolton St??

I dont think it is rational to use the metaphor/comparision of genetic programming, i.e. discust at faeces, rotting material, snakes, the dark etc., to aesthetics. As to the cracks and dirt, nobody wants to be exposed to this, but we do live in the real world and it is inevitable. Baroque design is no less sterile than minimalism, however it is more complex. Sterility and complexity are not incompatible.

Aesthetics are a product of civilisation, prone to trends and populism, instinct is not.The conclusion that minimalism is best from such bizarre logic is a little naive.

Styles in Architecture are anything but meaningless. From Doric to Deconstructivism we can trace the architectural legacy of mankind and how it (we) have progressed(regressed for those of a pessemistic disposition). The names of the styles may be meaningless, new humanism, brutalism,bowelism etc., but what the represent is not. Each style represents the thinking and ideology of when it was built.

Post Modernism represents a retreat from modernism. Social conditions tend to determine the direction of architectural styles. This period was a protective mechanism against the public backlash to modernism. The theory behind post modernism may be sound but it is a little weak to be considered the ‘correct’ direction to take for any young architect.

Be aware of why PoMo really came about, study it and then shelve it.