What is postmodernism?

[Eventually...Chicago]

(this is a continued discussion from the Chicago Building Rundown thread)

Maybe I've been spoiled but the few architecture classes I've taken at Yale make such ambivalence nearly impossible.

I've been following this particular discussion from a distance and i thought i'd chime in and just say that i generally agree with you alex1. I've also had a pretty extensive academic experience with the study and practice of postmodernism. I think three books that are invaluable for anyone who wants to learn more about the origins of postmodernism are:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs (she was the first one who explored the notion of "organized complexity")

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi (applies specifically to architecture)

The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi (really started the structuralist, semiotic aspect to postmodernism)

These are the 3 originals that started it all.

The one nice thing for the architecturally inclined is that postmodernism first emerged out of architecture and planning. People like Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, ... came later. Also, check out Charles Jencks's, The New Paradigm in Architecture for a good contemporary history to postmodernism. There is an awesome tree chart in there that shows all the different "sects" of postmodernism.

But really what it all boils down to is that all architecture built after 1960 or so has been postmodern and will continue on for the future. Calatrava, Gehry to Lowenburg and Gang. All postmodernists in some sort of fashion.

[honte]

Originally Posted by Eventually...Chicago

But really what it all boils down to is that all architecture built after 1960 or so has been postmodern and will continue on for the future. Calatrava, Gehry to Lowenburg and Gang. All postmodernists in some sort of fashion.

This is where I draw the line in Art History. I always love it when the people working at a distance - the historians in their gothic, limestone-clad offices - look down and "spot the styles." People look for connections, they attribute ideas, and they foremost try to bolster their own status in the Art History world with new theories and papers.

Any working artist does not want to be misclassified. People take ideas from others and build on them, but this doesn't mean their work is postmodern or post-anything. If I practice preservation, that has absolutely nothing to do with me being a postmodernist, even if our ideals might collide in certain cases.

You can witness this phenomenon most clearly with music, where the critics and scholars are constantly grouping people and corralling them, often against vocal protests by the artists themselves.

If Rossi writes a book that says, "This my idea of Postmodernism," it catches on, and people follow him, then yes, this can be considered an adaptation/progression of the style. If Gang does a building that's not a box, it's her call whether it belongs to the style, what her inspiration was, and what her philosophy is. From what I know of her, I personally don't think her design has much to do with your list of sources, and I really don't care what the "leading scholars" of the style claim. People might read these things; they like certain ideas. They move on. You could also claim that every tower that has a pronounced base, shaft, and crown is "Sullivanesque" or even that any building with a steel frame is "Chicago Style."

Ultimately, classifying art in any means other than chronologically is entirely useless and only serves the limited human mind to draw connections and understand things for what they really are - unless the artist himself draws specific connections that are desired.

[Mr Downtown]

I am perfectly happy to use the term postmodernism to describe architecture. But I am baffled by its use to describe planning.

Most urbanists distinguish planning from urban design from architecture. Obviously, there are gray areas between planning and urban design, and between urban design and planning. But it's pretty easy to distinguish planning from architecture.

Planning has embraced, over the last 20 years, a movement generally called neotraditional town planning or new urbanism. Tenets of this movement apply to a building's placement on its site and to its relationship with the street, elements of urban design. Though some developers of new urbanist communities have ideas about what will be saleable, the new urbanist movement is entirely agnostic with regard to architecture. I have never heard the term postmodernism applied to planning, and I do not understand how it honestly could be.

[honte]

^ I think there is some truth to your analysis. Historically, they were along similar but separate paths. If you want to call it "neo-traditional," fine. We are talking about the same thing.

Basically, postmodernism (or, what in my opinion are the limiting expressions of a style - not a philosophy – which should be the chronological and aesthetic limit of the definition of postmodernism) degraded into pastiche, contrived, mindless neo-traditionalism. Therefore, the planning that you are calling neo-traditional fits hand-in-hand with currently executed, stylistically "postmodern" schemes. Again, this is a separate debate from the one above, which seeks to describe the limits of postmodernism and its evolution. I am describing the eventual adoption en masse of the design ideas of postmodern execution as an architectural style, which coincides with planning principles of the sort you reference.

Your neo-traditional planning and the vast majority of architecture that came out of Postmodernism seek to do the same thing. They also are natively and fatally flawed in precisely the same fashion. Therefore, call it what you wish, but I will continue to call this planning PoMo as a term that encompasses what I feel to be the mistakes inherent in both forms.

I would add that I am indifferent to whatever nomenclature one wants to bestow upon these designs. Frankly, I am not concerned with them beyond the point that I am forced to live among them and interact therewith, and my tax dollars are wasted in their creation. But I do have serious philosophical and ethical reaction to people claiming that these works are "revival styles" or anything along those lines, due to the fact that these claims are disrespectful and disingenuous.

[Mr Downtown]

I think you're confusing two very different philosophies.

Postmodernism is done with a wink. It says "we're so clever that we're going to make little jokes," like exaggerating the scale of ornament or not carrying a colonnade to ground structurally. It is inventing a new architecture by playing dressup.

Neotraditionalism or new urbanism in planning is more the equivalent of honest neoclassicism in architecture. It says "why did we throw the baby out with the bathwater?" Generations of town builders and building designers looked at what performed well and pleased the viewer. Why shouldn't we learn from their experience instead of rejecting it on principle or using it as an inside joke?

But I am very little interested in what term is used. I am very much interested in hearing what mistakes you think are "inherent" in neotraditional town planning and new urbanism.

[honte]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

I think you're confusing two very different philosophies.

I think it's becoming apparent that you are not reading my posts very carefully. I am arguing the point that postmodernism as you and the scholars wish it to be executed has degraded into something less meaningful, thoughtful, etc. How many times do I need to repeat that? You are free to disagree with me, but frankly, it's rude to keep thrusting the idea back in my face as though I just can't get my tiny head around it.

This is not a thread about the merits of neo-traditional planning, so I am not going to address your other question with much detail. I gather from your posts here and elsewhere that you are an adherent to this style of fancifully recreating history, so I don't think there would be much gain anyway. In a nutshell, however, I think most neo-traditional planning throws the modernist baby out with the bathwater; in rejecting what has come immediately before it, it repeats all of the mistakes of modernism and has learned nothing (except that people in America want a place to put their cars, if that's of any value). I do not believe that all of the ideas of traditional cities are wrong; far from it. But I have to tell you, most of the neo-traditionalist schemes are graceless, thoughtless, pointless junk that have nothing to say and will result in more banality and sterilization of the cityscape. There is a giant divide between understanding and copying; neo-traditionalism in all but the best cases is an example of nostalgic copying from the past.

Good architecture and wonderful spaces start with exciting and wonderful contexts. If the planners fail to deliver this at a bare minimum, they have failed.

[honte]

^ By the way, I reject the term "neo-traditional" because it is too loaded. It begs the question, what is tradition? Does Chicago even have a tradition? It's basically 150 years old, and the constant destruction of our historic stock seems to indicate that there indeed is no prevailing sense of tradition here. In other words, the neo-traditionalism is more indicative of a reluctance to move forward than any kind of "suited" species.

And if it's an imported "tradition" from some other city - Boston or Paris or London - then, please do tell me, of what use is that?

[Mr Downtown]

Of course Chicago has a tradition. There are materials (limestone, Chicago common brick, deep red and butter yellow face brick). There are building types (workers cottages, two-flats, three-flats, six-flats, corner tavern/apartment buildings, courtyard buildings, bungalows, four-plus-ones). There are planning traditions (330 x 660 gridiron, 66-foot ROW, compass orientation). There are landscape traditions (foundation plantings, grassy parkways, elm allees, romantic parks).

Although we have some sensitive infill that draws on Chicago traditions, I'm not aware of any projects in the Chicago area that could properly be called new urbanist or neotraditional.

[honte]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

I'm not aware of any projects in the Chicago area that could properly be called new urbanist or neotraditional.

On the small scale, maybe a city block or two in size, there are some developments that come closer to the examples you would probably cite.

So then, what exactly would you use to classify something like the Lake Meadows plan if you reject my term for it and admit that yours does not apply?

[Mr Downtown]

I'd just call it contemporary planning practice. One can see that it's influenced by post-Jane Jacobs thinking that cities should have streets faced with buildings, but that's a realization that has now been honored anew for 40 years--much longer than it was ignored (the Corbu-CIAM era). One can see the influence of Cooper Robertson and Battery Park City in things like extending the street grid and the promenade along the Metra tracks. The rendering happens to show formalism in the park and articulated massing of the buildings. We don't know if either of those concepts will end up part of the project or not.

Labels, as I thought you yourself were arguing, generally get applied from a distance. Only a few buildings are self-conscious enough for us to give them a style name at that moment: neoclassical, deconstructionist, postmodern. Even the buildings we today call Art Deco were at the time just said to be "in the modern style." What would you call Kingsbury Plaza or McCormick Tribune Campus Center or One Museum Park or Trump International Tower? They're all just part of the onrushing mainstream, which someone someday will identify as "characteristic of the early 2000s" and maybe--just maybe--give a name.

[Eventually...Chicago]

Originally Posted by honte

This is where I draw the line in Art History. I always love it when the people working at a distance - the historians in their gothic, limestone-clad offices - look down and "spot the styles." People look for connections, they attribute ideas, and they foremost try to bolster their own status in the Art History world with new theories and papers.

Any working artist does not want to be misclassified. People take ideas from others and build on them, but this doesn't mean their work is postmodern or post-anything. If I practice preservation, that has absolutely nothing to do with me being a postmodernist, even if our ideals might collide in certain cases.

You can witness this phenomenon most clearly with music, where the critics and scholars are constantly grouping people and corralling them, often against vocal protests by the artists themselves.

If Rossi writes a book that says, "This my idea of Postmodernism," it catches on, and people follow him, then yes, this can be considered an adaptation/progression of the style. If Gang does a building that's not a box, it's her call whether it belongs to the style, what her inspiration was, and what her philosophy is. From what I know of her, I personally don't think her design has much to do with your list of sources, and I really don't care what the "leading scholars" of the style claim. People might read these things; they like certain ideas. They move on. You could also claim that every tower that has a pronounced base, shaft, and crown is "Sullivanesque" or even that any building with a steel frame is "Chicago Style."

Ultimately, classifying art in any means other than chronologically is entirely useless and only serves the limited human mind to draw connections and understand things for what they really are - unless the artist himself draws specific connections that are desired.

Gang's architect has everything to do with the list of sources. Also, it should be mentioned that not one of those sources (with the exception of Jencks) ever used the term "postmodernism" I just get frustrated when everyone seems to think building in a historical style is what postmodernism is. Certainly historicism is a postmodern movement but so is organic architecture, abstract architecture, iconic architecture and so on.

I think your premise that an architect only is part of a philosophical movement if they directly state "i am a such and such" is incorrect.
For example... If i believe in socialist ideals i am necessarily a socialist. The definition of a socialist is one who believes in socialist ideals.

Applying this to Gang's Aqua. The building is a direct metaphor/analogy of water. Metaphorical/analogous architecture is, by definition, postmodern. Therefore, Gang is a postmodernist.

And, no, you can't call every building with a base, middle (shaft) and crown "sullivan-esque", because the "Chicago School" refers to a direct period in history. Just as baroque and rococo architectures are similar, but two distinct periods. Postmodernism is a theoretical movement that doesn't refer to a specific period of time other than "after modernism".

New urbanism (especially), neotraditionalism, whatever-ism is all postmodernism. Gehry, Thomas Mayne, Libeskind (hugely), me, Graves, Eisenman(immensely), you, Koolhaas, Jahn, Pelli, Hadid, etc. all postmodernists, whether they like it or not.

I know it seems like a strict academic discussion but you can't throw around a loaded term like "postmodernism" believe it to be simply historicism. We are in the midst of the postmodern movement, which everyone is aware of and will continue to be. Postmodernism is, in it's most basic form, embracing complexity and contradiction. And a theory that accepts all nuance, particularities, and incongruities is inescapable, even by those who reject it.

[honte]

Originally Posted by Eventually...Chicago

And, no, you can't call every building with a base, middle (shaft) and crown "sullivan-esque", because the "Chicago School" refers to a direct period in history. Just as baroque and rococo architectures are similar, but two distinct periods. Postmodernism is a theoretical movement that doesn't refer to a specific period of time other than "after modernism".

New urbanism (especially), neotraditionalism, whatever-ism is all postmodernism. Gehry, Thomas Mayne, Libeskind (hugely), me, Graves, Eisenman(immensely), you, Koolhaas, Jahn, Pelli, Hadid, etc. all postmodernists, whether they like it or not.

I know it seems like a strict academic discussion but you can't throw around a loaded term like "postmodernism" believe it to be simply historicism. We are in the midst of the postmodern movement, which everyone is aware of and will continue to be. Postmodernism is, in it's most basic form, embracing complexity and contradiction. And a theory that accepts all nuance, particularities, and incongruities is inescapable, even by those who reject it.

This is a level-headed description, and if that's what you believe, I can see where you are coming from.

My utility for the word Postmodernism is entirely different than yours. Perhaps we are debating the difference between the modern movement and Modernism. Two entirely different things, with different meanings. For me, Postmodern architecture does refer to a specific period with specific progenitors and followers. Then you have your hangers-on that continue to follow some of these direct stylistic motifs, even once they have run their course.

Your description of postmodernism sounds like Art Historian megalomania to me. If I can rephrase, everything and anything conceivable that followed modernism and embraces more than modernism's strict guidelines, or anything involving "complexity" and "contradiction" (Venturi's "brilliant" ideas that have been taken up as though they had never been discussed or embraced before), is postmodernism.

This is perfectly fine with me. It's kind of like saying that we live in the twenty-first century. OK, let's move on to something more useful to describe what we're talking about.

In any case, this started with the Lake Meadows masterplan, and I hold firmly that the reasons I described it as PoMo (note capitalization) are more than adequate. It's a hanger-on.

[Eventually...Chicago]

we'll just have to agree to disagree

(hand shake)

[Lecom]

I may have added my own two cents concerning the term were it not so late at night, but thanks to everyone for maintaining an interesting, intelligent and thought-proviking discussion.

[GVNY]

Mr. Downtown:

When the term post-Modernism is applied to contemporary urban planning, it is to distinguish modern multifaceted planning from comprehensive Modernism.

In broad terms, with respect to all fields of culture and expression, post-Modernism is the doubt of reality or our perceived view of it. Is there a 'right' or 'wrong' to any problem, or is my 'right' your 'wrong,' and vice versa. Post-Modernism suggests reality is merely an outward extension of our personalities and morals, and thus there is no single viewpoint from which to understand our environment.

Modernism was the antithesis of this belief. Modernist ideologues were rational in a scientific sense. All of society's problems could be solved through a rational and scientific process, and there was one logical scientific answer to every unique dilemma that would benefit all equally. These solutions would be discovered only by following the processes of the scientific method.

With the downfall of Modernism, particularly after the 1972 demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, and the realization that this ideology had failed to create the promised wonderful, efficient and generally socialist utopias, post-Modernists began to challenge the accepted theory of a solution for all.

Thus, the idea of pluralism in planning was born. Post-Modernist in conception, pluralism is the rejection of Modernist comprehensiveness--a profound realization that there are no singular solutions that will benefit everyone, and that multiple plans for distinct facets of the populace is the preferred and arguably correct method of planning.

This is the basis for post-Modernism. It accepts the theory that there is no 'reality,' and that a diverse set of synthesized ideas is what is necessary to properly guide our urban form.

[honte]

^ Yet another definition, and an interesting take on it. I agree with the philosophical side, but I still believe this should properly be called "postmodernist" planning to distinguish it from the Postmodern style of planning / architecture.

[Mr Downtown]

I've spent my entire adult life working generally in the field of urban planning, including 11 years at American Planning Association and the last 15 years around the periphery of new urbanism. I don't ever remember hear any practicing planner describe his work as "postmodernism." Many of them are happy to talk about complexity and about how cities change over time; many of them are anxious to distinguish their work from Corbu/CIAM-style modernism or from "conventional suburban development." But I've never heard one use the term postmodern.

[honte]

^ I don't think many architects used that word to describe their own work either, no? Most of these terms develop after the fact.

[GVNY]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

I've spent my entire adult life working generally in the field of urban planning, including 11 years at American Planning Association and the last 15 years around the periphery of new urbanism. I don't ever remember hear any practicing planner describe his work as "postmodernism." Many of them are happy to talk about complexity and about how cities change over time; many of them are anxious to distinguish their work from Corbu/CIAM-style modernism or from "conventional suburban development." But I've never heard one use the term postmodern.

Neither have I. But apparently that is what labels are for.

[ardecila]

Let me nudge this conversation in a slightly different direction. If any sort of honest attempt at revival (and many "traditionalist" buildings are honest attempts) is labeled as Postmodern, then is a "true" revival style even possible?

According to the Modernists among us, I would assume that the answer is no. I read a quote in somebody's signature about how architecture should refer to its own time exclusively and not any time in the past - the subtext was that architecture is a product of its specific place and time. But that negates the other revivals we have seen in history, which you recognize as genuine.

Is Monticello or the White House fraudulent for "borrowing" from Palladio, when Palladio himself was looking back, refining and distilling the Greco-Roman style into something applicable to grand mansions?