Themes of
Postmodernism
Modern
Architecture
Seagram
Building
1958
Postmodern
Architecture
AT&T
Headquarters
(now Sony
Building)
1984
Multivalent in its Environment
“A univalent work or building attempts to refer
only to itself. A multivalent building reaches
out to the rest of its environment and makes
different associations. This ensures that a
work will have multiple resonances, and
different readings.”
—Jenks in Postmodernism: The New Classicism in Art and
Architecture
From Hybridity and Back
• Pre-Modern (antiquity – 1800s)
– Unintentional Hybridity
•
•
•
•
Contagious Magic, Imitative Magic
Culture = Nature
Ideas = Things
Present = Past
• Modernity (1800s – 1960s)
– Intentional Categories
• Postmodernity (1960s – Present)
– Intentional Hybridity
Postmodernity is Modernity but pushes it further:
• The End of History
– There will never be a resolution (utopia/dystopia)
– Capitalism won
• The End of Truth
– No social reality, only representation and simulacra
– No more critical distance
– The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
• Baudrillard
– Multiculturalism
• Female circumcision is acceptable, Georgia is fine
• The End of “The End” (no more dustbins of history)
– There is nothing special about the present
Reality is a Game
“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade
games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination
experienced daily by billions of legitimate
operators, in every nation, by children being taught
mathematical concepts. … A graphic
representation of data abstracted from banks of
every computer in the human system. Unthinkable
complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace
of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.
Like city lights, receding”
—Neuromancer by William Gibson 1984
The World is a Text
• Neo: Is that...
Cypher: The Matrix? Yeah.
Neo: Do you always look at it encoded?
Cypher: Well you have to. The image
translators work for the construct program.
But there's way too much information to
decode the Matrix. You get used to it. I...I
don't even see the code. All I see is
blonde, brunette, red-head…