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Assemblage
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Mary McLeod
Architecture and Politics
in the Reagan Era:
From Postmodernism to
Deconstructivism
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assemblage 8
philosophical equations (postmodernism as the cultural one-man movement, advanced by Peter Eisenman; but in
equivalent of poststructuralism), to specific stylistic trends recent years a number of other architects, most notably
or intentions, often at odds from one field to another several young "neoconstructivists," have been grouped with
(autonomy and formalism, for example; are seen as mod- him in this alternative reaction to the failings of modern-
ern in one field, postmodern in another). In American ism. How "postmodern" this phenomenon actually is
architecture, where the word was first popularized, the remains suspect as new labels ("schismatic postmodern-
critic has the potential advantage of its widespread usage. ism," "decomposition," "deconstructivism") are continually
The first, and still the most common, understanding of the being introduced, juxtaposing this group to the other
term refers to the tendency that rejects the formal and "postmodernists. "3
social constituents of the modern movement and embraces
What is immediately apparent in either of these concep-
a broader formal language, which is frequently figurative
tions of postmodernism, however, is that some of the dis-
and historically eclectic. While advocates of postmodern tinctions that can be drawn between modernism and
architecture have often agreed more about what they reiect postmodernism in other fields cannot be sustained in
than about what they endorse, certain themes have consis-
architecture. Although modern architects were frequently
tently been explored: historical styles, regionalism, decora-
engaged in highly sophisticated, abstract formal explora-
tion, urban contextualism and morphologies, among
tions, modernism in architecture was never commonly
others. If there is any single objective that unites these var-
conceived, as it was in painting after World War II, as
ious concerns, it is the search for architectural communi-
being "art about art" or as implying autonomy of the disci-
cation, the desire to make architecture a vehicle of cultural
pline. The modern movement was seen by both its early
expression. Postmodern practitioners and critics have practitioners and its historians as intrinsically involving
tended to seek ideological justification, not in program,
new techniques, mass culture, and a broader social role.4
function, or structure, but in meaning. A manifesto by the
And if postmodern advocates have produced their own
editors of the Harvard Architectural Review declared that
more reductive, monolithic version of modern architec-
postmodernism is "an attempt, and an important one, to ture, it is one that asserts, even exaggerates, the modern
respond to the problem of meaning which was posed but
movement's social concerns. Thus the commonly assumed
never solved by the modern movement."2
polarity of modernism/artistic autonomy and postmodern-
ism/mass culture (cultural "contamination") simply does
As architects themselves have been influenced by critical not hold. Indeed, postmodern currents, whether historicist
discourse and events in other fields, another understanding or poststructuralist, can be viewed as a return to architec-
of postmodernism has arisen in the past few years: one that ture as a primarily formal and artistic pursuit, one that
attempts to link architecture to a general epistemological rejects the social engagement of the modern movement;5
situation, frequently associated with poststructuralism. with few exceptions, the eclecticism and pluralism of post-
Here, the objective seems almost the inverse of that of the modern architecture have operated almost entirely in the
earlier postmodernists. Whereas the first group criticized formal sphere. And yet, in delineating this retreat to tradi-
modern architecture for being abstract, arcane, and in- tional boundaries, it is also important to acknowledge
accessible - for having forsaken architecture's traditional architecture's more visible cultural role. Postmodernism
communicative role - this second group accepts, even has coincided with the public's increased attention to
celebrates, this same disintegration of communication and architecture. More buildings in the United States are now
consensus - the impossibility, in fact, of postulating any designed by architects; more students are enrolled in archi-
meaning at all. Although these two positions are dialecti- tecture schools;6 more design criticism appears routinely in
cally opposed, the territory of debate remains the same: magazines and newspapers; and at least a few architects
meaning and its dissolution. At first, this later interpreta- have achieved the celebrity status that earns them advertis-
tion of postmodernism seemed, in architecture, to be a ing endorsements and Time Magazine covers.
24
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McLeod
25
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assemblage 8
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Times, 11 May 1980 3. Defense Spending, New
York Times, 23 October 1988
26
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McLeod
tence. What both the activists of the 1960s and the first
back to traditional aesthetic parameters, it also reflected a
new
postmodern critics of the early 1970s were reacting to interest in cultural signs, spurred by semiology and
was,
communication
in fact, the evolution of modernism in the postwar decades theories. Meaning, not institutional
reform,
into a routinized corporate modernism that seemed headed was now the objective.
in two equally unpromising directions: the expressionistic
excesses of a Stone or a Saarinen, on the one hand,Postmodernism
and and Politics
the "scientific" determinism epitomized by the researches
What
of Christopher Alexander or the technological fantasies of is immediately apparent in any survey of architec-
Archigram, on the other."5 But if this modernism already developments of the 1960s and 1970s is that the
tural
stripped of most of its revolutionary content spawnedpolitical
the impulses linked to this change in perspective had
mixed
first criticisms of modern architecture, the focus of the connotations. To critics of the traditional Left, mos
attack soon reverted to the modern movement, which notably
was Tomais Maldonado, Kenneth Frampton, and Mar
tin Pawley,
seen as instigating the demise of architectural meaning and the rejection of social engagement represented
an
artistic expression.16 And just as form and content were abdication of the architect's responsibility. They criti-
cized the split between form and social institutions as inva
inseparably intertwined in the minds of the early modern
lid and argued that a rigorous structural rationalism and
pioneers, so too were they inextricably linked in the post-
modern reaction. What was considered wrong with the functionalism were still essential to answering the mass's
needs in an age of late capital. But to the early critics of
modern movement was equally its forms and its political
content. Together they had produced the failures of modernism,
public not yet dubbed "postmodernists," it was
exactly this position that had led to the public's alienation
housing complexes and the destruction of the center city.
and to the disintegration of any sense of urban community
In the United States, this critique of modernism appears to early 1970s, influenced by the social theories of
In the
be related to the economic cycle of construction itself.
Karl Popper, Colin Rowe condemned the utopianism of
Numerous International Style skyscrapers were built in the
modernism as a form of totalitarianism akin to the apoca-
1950s and 1960s, when the economy was booming and, lyptic visions of Marxism. He claimed that the universal
not coincidentally, when modernism had its first realrationalism of modernism suppressed diversity and com-
opportunity to manifest itself in the United States (the
plexity; the objective instead should be a city of fragments,
Depression and World War II had severely limited private
a "collage city."'17 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
construction). The theoretical reassessment of modern also attacked the "environmental megalomania" of modern
architects "as a curse on the city." In a response to Pawley
architecture only emerged in full force during the early
1970s when young architects were almost without work. in 1970 they stated, "We suggest that the architect who
Designers such as Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves starts with what is . . . will be less harmful and more
were making professional careers of an annual house effective
addi- than the petulant rhetorician grandly and dryly
tion or interior renovation (leading to epithets such ascontinuing
"the to evoke 'the impact of technology on Western
civilization' and 'the relationship of the nascent science of
cubist kitchen king"); frequently, they were busier writing
than building. The dismal economy not only permitted design to human goals and aspirations.' We are in favor of
science in architecture but not of science-voodooism,
theoretical speculation, but also further fueled perceptions
of the architect's diminished social role. twenties or sixties style."'8
This
The result, all too familiar today, was a return to the debate echoed the running argument among leftists i
con-
the
cept of architecture as art. Architecture's value no longerlate 1960s and early 1970s between those believing in
the
lay in its redemptive social power, its transformation of instrumentality of technology yet condemning com-
productive processes, but rather in its communicative modity culture and those rejecting the determinacy of
technology
power as a cultural object. If this new perspective harked but finding in popular culture the impulses of
27
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assemblage 8
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
There was something at once exhilarating and resigned in ket increasingly co-opted postmodernism, the value of
this rediscovery of history. On the one hand, it meant free- variety itself became suspect. Many styles and many pasts
dom and a chance to recoup lost values; on the other, it began to appear as one style and one past. By the mid-
suggested that the present was no better than the past, that 1980s, the real-estate ads had designated postmodernism a
aesthetic and political choices might be arbitrary. In the historical style in itself.
most successful postmodern works, such as Venturi's
Vanna Venturi house (1961) and James Stirling and
Regionalism
Michael Wilford's Stuttgart Museum (1977-84), historical
references are used to express just this tension.3" Reinstat- Postmodernism's interest in regionalism, closely linked to
ing a dialogue with the past, the architecture installs and its historicist focus, is yet another response to the modern
then subverts conventions in parodic ways that make movement's universalizing tendencies: the latter's postula-
explicit the inherent paradoxes and provisionality of a his- tion of a method (mass production) and an aesthetic (the
torical moment. The dualities of tradition and innovation, International Style) that would obliterate cultural differ-
order and fragmentation, figuration and abstraction help ences. It is on these grounds that such ideologically
articulate the contradictions of modernism and its ideologi- opposed critics as Jencks and Frampton have placed hopes
cal context. In Venturi's work especially, the very emphasis of political dissent and resistance. Jencks claims that in
on surface and image elucidates the discursive and contin- order to design "dissenting buildings," the architect "must
gent dimensions of our present historicity. But in most make use of the language of the local culture; otherwise
postmodern architecture, such insight appears too painful his message falls on deaf ears, or is distorted to fit this local
to acknowledge. Historical allusion rapidly becomes nostal- language."32 Although Frampton rejects Jencks's emphasis
gia, escape, or enjoyable simulacrum - a denial of history on sign and image, he too turns to regionalism in the early
itself. In the case of i'Leral revivalists, such as Greenberg 1980s as a locus for creating an "architecture of resis-
and John Blatteau, tension and parody are eliminated in tance," one that will answer Paul Ricoeur's quest of "how
academic recreations of the past. And all too often, the to become modern and to return to the sources."33
references to Lutyens, colonial plantations, and imperial
Leaving aside difficulties of what might constitute a "dis-
monuments evoke a one-sided past, a "history of victors."
senting" architectural message, two problems immediately
For other practitioners, such as Stern and Johnson, irony
present themselves: first, the paucity in the United States
looses its critical edge, as historical caricatures are openly
of vital "local" languages - especially in the major areas
acknowledged as diversions from the routine of daily exis-
of new construction - and second, the difficulties of con-
tence. Cartooned exaggeration alternates with esoteric,
vincingly recreating or transforming these languages, given
mannered quotation; history is randomly scavenged to
financial constraints, changes in construction processes,
create an aura of historical depth.
and new building types - often of a radically different
But whether in literal copybook recreations or in exuberant scale. Although buildings such as Venturi's Nantucket
displays of random quotation, the rediscovery of history has houses or Graves's library at San Juan Capistrano are less
reflected with uncanny ease the interests of the market- obtrusive in traditional surroundings than the brutal struc-
place. More than the stripped-down forms of modernism, tures of the two preceeding decades, the postmodern use of
revived historical styles signaled the desire for the instant regionalism rarely extends beyond surface image; such
acquisition of the values of family, tradition, and social designs are mere fabrications, without any real cultural
status that surfaced with a vengeance in the 1980s. The roots.34 And given the conciliatory aspirations of most
marketing tactics of Ralph Lauren, the period revivals in designers, only occasionally do these designs gain a self-
furnishings and fashion, the long-standing eclecticism of consciously critical dimension; more often they seem to be
suburban development - all found aesthetic allies within the architectural equivalents to conservative yearnings for a
the architectural establishment. Paradoxically, as the mar- simpler American past.
34
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
Decoration
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
But even this claim to resistance can be challenged if one exhausted. By the time the AT&T building was completed
looks further at that area excluded from postmodern theo- - the initial shock of its historicist forms dissipated - the
ries: architecture's relation to the powers at large. The re- battle with modernism was largely won; but by that time,
vitalization of the urban metropolis has coincided with the too, postmodernism itself became subject to the forces of
return to the city of a young professional class. This so- consumption and commodification.
called good contextualism is almost exclusively the prov-
ince of the prosperous and upwardly mobile. Whatever its This is probably nowhere clearer than in the architecture
merits, it has contributed to the gloss of gentrification, culture itself. It is almost as if the populist bias of the
itself slowly eroding neighborhoods and producing another movement invited new levels of publicity and promotion.
more insidious kind of uniformity. In the past decade, few The proliferation of books and labels - five different edi-
opportunities have been taken to explore what contextual- tions of Jencks's The Language of Post-Modern Architec-
ism might mean in poorer neighborhoods or in the endless ture, architecture drawings in the art market, editions of
sprawl of suburbia. Certainly here, change, not continuity, the complete works of architects under fifty, architect-
of context is sometimes in order. designed teapots and doghouses, glossy magazine articles,
advertising endorsements for Dexter shoes - signaled
Affirmation and Commodification architecture's new popularity and marketability. The image
of the architect shifted from social crusader and aesthetic
From the 1960s to the present, postmodernism seems to
have changed from being essentially a movement that criti- puritan to trendsetter and media star. This change in
cized aesthetic and social parameters to one that affirms professional definition had ramifications throughout archi-
tectural institutions. In the 1980s most schools stopped
the status quo. However contradictory its generating im-
offering regular housing studios; gentlemen's clubs, resort
pulses, postmodernism's interests in tradition and regional
hotels, art museums, and vacation homes became the stan-
cultures emerged from more than a desire for novelty and
spectacle; they embodied a genuine dissatisfaction with the dard programs. Design awards and professional magazine
course of modernization, one that pointed to the failures of coverage have embodied similar priorities. Advocacy archi-
tecture and pro bono work are almost dead.
technology and artistic novelty as social panaceas.41 By the
early 1980s, however, postmodern architecture largely
abandoned its critical and transgressive dimensions to cre- If this bleak picture of commodification threatens to over-
ate an eclectic and largely affirmative culture, one strik- shadow postmodernism's contributions - its critique of
ingly in accord with the tone of contemporary political modernization and its renewed sense of the city and public
life. It was a trajectory traced by the careers of many archi- space - it poses much broader problems about the power
tects: for Robert Stern, from a critique of public housing in of architecture to counter the forces of capital, indeed, its
the Roosevelt Island Competition to luxury suburban capacity to sustain any critical role at all. Certainly, as the
developments; for Charles Moore, from a sensitive search first critics of the modern movement revealed, architec-
for place and a regionally responsive vocabulary at Sea ture's role has been increasingly diminished by larger eco-
Ranch to outlandish walls and amusement parks at the nomic and social processes.42 But it is also important to
New Orleans World's Fair; for Michael Graves, from the consider what role the theoretical and formal assumptions
startling forms of Fargo-Moorhead to the cartooned imag- of postmodernism may have played in these processes.
ery of Disney Dolphin hotels; and for Andres Duany, Eliz- Commodification suggests the importance of cultural signs:
abeth Plater-Zyberk, and developer Robert Davis, from the that the consumption of objects is as integral to questions
1960s idealism that inspired Seaside to its present Victorian of power as their production. But it also suggests a process
condominiums for Atlanta lawyers. If there were bumps that automatically vitiates any sustained critique, a recy-
and jags in this course, and moments of genuine quality cling of images that leaves material forces untouched.
and insight, the potential for opposition was soon Could it be that postmodernism, by focusing exclusively
38
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McLeod
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assemblage 8
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McLeod
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The introduction of deconstruction to architecture Ithasdoes not, of course, take much imagination to envision
contributed to an atittude of critical skepticism andsubversions
scru- of the status quo resulting in greater inequities
and injustices. Regardless of epistemological questions,
tiny, a questioning of existing conventions of composition
and form. Already, deconstructivism has played a some major values, however provisional, and some notion of col-
lective
role in undermining the pseudohistoricism, mindless con- identity are probably essential to political action and
textualism, and conciliatory values of postmodernism.social betterment." But if these issues seem to place an
unjust burden on form, it may be because poststructuralist
Here its impact can be compared to that of traditional
avant-garde practices of negation and subversion. advocates
But out- are caught in delusions of architecture's transfor-
mative power, a situation strangely reminiscent of an ear-
side of the formal sphere, the critical role of deconstructiv-
lier modern period. Even more than the problem of total
ism remains elusive; indeed, many of the more progressive
relativism,
political contributions of poststructuralist theory have dis- the political problems posed by a poststructural-
appeared in its application to architecture. While inist architecture
liter- reside in the paradox whereby the architect
ary criticism poststructuralist analyses have pointedis absolved
out of obligations of authorship but the object is
granteddis-
internal inconsistencies and irrationalities in oppressive considerable subversive power.
51
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assemblage 8
Should deconstructivism, however, manage to sustain any overlooked is that the initial critique of modern architec-
subversive qualities in the face of these forces, other ques- ture stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the forces that in
tions arise: Are radical formal statements necessarily the fact constitute "technocratic and bureaucratic society." In
most appropriate means to shelter people whose lives are other words, the reification and reductivism of modernism
already filled with the disruption and frustration that were partly a product of those forces that both strains of
deconstructivist architecture celebrates? Would scarce postmodernism have "reinforced." From the same perspec-
resources for public housing be more appropriately spent tive, historicist and poststructuralist advocates could not
on day-care centers, sports facilities, and larger housing have anticipated the power of an increasingly commercial-
units than on structural acrobatics? The avant-garde desire ized society to control the evolution of an artistic move-
"epater la bourgeoisie" may fulfill the architect's need for a ment, how rapidly efforts to preserve and modify a cultural
radical self-image, but it does little in this era of social situation would themselves become sterile and
retrenchment to improve the everyday life of the poor and commodified.
dispossessed.
What seems to be operating in recent architectural devel-
Perhaps not surprising, women, blacks, and other minori- opments is a process by which a movement, whose initial
ties have been notably silent voices in these recent theoret- critique and experimentation is vigorous and challenging,
ical debates. While the reasons are complex and diverse, a becomes increasingly lifeless and routinized as it becomes
few immediately come to the fore: the elitist atmosphere part of the dominant culture. Thomas Crow has described
induced by both the hermetic forms and an obscure dis- the avant-garde as "a kind of research and development
course, the aggressive rhetoric of subversion that rings of a arm of the culture industry.'"61 Both postmodernism and
new machismo, the exclusionary forums of promotion, deconstructivism can be seen as having staked out areas of
and probably most fundamental, the denial of real institu- cultural practice that retain some vitality in an increasingly
tional transformation.59 Deconstructivist forms reject nos- administered and rationalized society: the postmodernists
talgia, historicist fabrication, and the postmodern denial of by looking to forms that predate the hegemony of bureau-
the present, but they embody another kind of forgetting - cratic modernization; the poststructuralists by challenging
a forgetting of the social itself. A tendency that began as a the precepts of rationality and of order itself. But just as
reaction against the conservative ethos of postmodernism both these tendencies discover areas not yet part of com-
and contemporary political life threatens to become an modity culture, they make their existence discrete and
even more extreme embodiment of that same ethos. visible, and thus subject to the market's manipulation.62
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McLeod
populism of Herbert Cans and his The Postmodern Moment: A Hand- period, but the social and symbolic aries between culture, economics,
general disapproval of hedonism book of Contemporary Innovation in aspirations of the modern move- and politics brought on by com-
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assemblage 8
modity capitalism. This dissolution ever, raises other political issues, to were radically different. Third, ies, which are among the most bru-
(underscored in very concrete terms be discussed later in the essay. there was little modern architecture tal, degrading, and corrupt that
by the transformation of a movie in the United States of the 1920s consumer society has ever cre-
12. Le Corbusier, Vers une archi-
star into a president) can be seen as and 1930s against which to com- ated. . . . Las Vegas is not a crea-
tecture (Paris: Editions Cres, 1923);
having made power more diffuse, pare the later works. tion by the people, but for the
Towards a New Architecture, trans.
but also as having made issues of people. It is the final product ...
Frederick Etchells (New York: Prae- 17. See Rowe, Addendum, 1973,
control in everyday life more criti- of more than half a century of
ger, 1960), 211. to "The Architecture of Utopia,"
cal from a political perspective. masked manipulatory violence .
213-17, and Colin Rowe and Fred
13. Claude Schnaidt, Hannes (Tomais Maldonado, Design,
8. See Alan Colquhoun, "Post- Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge,
Meyer: Bauten, Projekte und Schrif- Nature and Revolution: Toward a
modernism and Structuralism: A Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). Rowe's
ten: Buildings, Projects and Writ- Critical Ecology, trans. Mario
Retrospective Glance," Assemblage language of "fragment" and "col-
ings (Teufen: Verlag Arthur Niggli, Domandi [New York: Harper and
5 (1988): 7. lage" in many respects presages
1965), 25. Row, 1972], 60, 65).
contemporary poststructuralist
9. See Walter Benjamin, "The
14. There are, of course, excep- discourse.
Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- 20. Denise Scott Brown, "Pop Off:
tions to this, notably the De Stijl
ical Reproduction," Illuminations, 18. Robert Venturi and Denise Reply to Kenneth Frampton," in A
group and some of the Russian
ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Scott Brown, "'Leading from the View from the Campidoglio, 34-37.
constructivists of the early 1920s.
Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, Rear': Reply to Martin Pawley," Scott Brown argues that Frampton
Paradoxically, we might see modern
1969), 239-40. Architectural Design 40 (July 1970): is caught between two contradictory
architecture's challenge to existing
320, 370; reprinted in A View from positions, an endorsement of Mar-
10. What may appear oppressive social patterns (particularly outside
the Campidoglio: Selected Essays cuse's social critique and a rejection
and totalitarian in one situation Germany) as more successful on a
1953-84, ed. Peter Arnell, Ted of Gropius's social architecture, and
for instance, the stripped classicism formal rather than an economic
Bickford, and Catherine Bergart that he does not acknowledge their
of Nazi Germany - may appear level. The new forms and composi-
(New York: Harper and Row, shared rejection of populist culture.
progressive and democratic in tional strategies raised questions
about traditional hierarchies that 1984), 24.
another - for instance, the similar 21. Also of importance were Her-
forms of Roosevelt's New Deal elevated the monumental over the
19. Kenneth Frampton, "America bert Gans's two other books The
America. Within different contexts, everyday, the public over the pri-
1960-1970: Notes on Urban Images Urban Villagers: Group and Class
the same forms might serve as pro- vate, the formal over the informal, and Theory," Casabella 35, nos. in the Life of Italo-Americans (New
paganda, criticism, or tacit affirma- the male over the female.
359-360 (December 1971): 25-37. York: The Free Press, 1962) and
tion of values. 15. For a discussion of this divi- In this essay Frampton's solution is Popular Culture and High Culture:
sion, see George Baird, "La Dimen- a far cry from the "critical regional- An Analysis and Evaluation of
11. Here I intentionally do not
sion Amoureuse in Architecture," in ism" that he professes a decade Taste (New York: Basic Books,
invoke Walter Benjamin's aspiration
Meaning in Architecture, ed. later. Here he questions how much 1974). Another sociologist fre-
to a complete integration of tech-
Charles Jencks and George Baird legitimate populism remains in quently mentioned during this
nique and content, expressed in his
(New York: Braziller, 1969), 79-99; American culture and proposes the period was Melvin Webber. See,
essay "The Author as Producer," in "semi-indeterminate" infrastructures
and McLeod, "Architecture," 27- especially, Melvin M. Webber,
Reflections, ed. Peter Demetz (New 28. "The Urban Place and the Non-
of Shadrach Woods as urban design
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
models that simultaneously accom- place Urban Realm," in Explora-
1979), 220-38. Benjamin's objec- 16. Several historical reasons exist
modate technology and the specific- tions into Urban Structure
tive is not unrelated to that of some for the failure of the first post-
ities of place. (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
modern architects, especially modern critics to distinguish
between the modernism of the
sylvania Press, 1964). Scott Brown
Hannes Meyer, Ernst May, and Tom~is Maldonado's critique of
and Venturi often cited Gans and
Mart Stam, but the interface 1950s and that of the 1920s and Scott Brown and Venturi's position
Webber in their early writings.
between art and politics has rarely 1930s. First, the continuing pres- is similar to Frampton's. In a chap-
been so clean. Often what is a pro- ence of Gropius and Mies gave to ter entitled "Las Vegas and the 22. Shopping centers have provided
gressive tendency in terms of tech- most Americans an impression of Semiological Abuse," he writes: one of the most important sites for
nique may not be such in terms of modernism's continuity. Second, "There is also a kind of cultural
the dissemination of postmodern
content, and vice versa; and many American practitioners of the nihilism which, consciously or architecture outside of major metro-
depending on the context, one 1950s (in contrast to those in Italy, unconsciously, exalts the status quo. politan areas.
dimension may take on more politi- for instance) did not themselves dis- We find an example of it among
cal importance than another. The tinguish their work from that of the those who are singing paeans to the 23. See Richard L. Berke,
total separation of the two, how- prewar period, even if the forms 'landscape' of certain American cit- "Dukakis Says He Would Commit
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McLeod
$3 Billion to Build New Housing,"29. Robert Venturi, "The RIBA has brought a proliferation of to architects of Learning from Las
New York Times, 29 June 1988. Annual Discourse," Transactions 1 "Charleston Place," whether the Vegas, perhaps in a desire to make
(1981-82); reprinted in A View context is a Westchester suburb or a connections to their own disci-
24. Many (including Michael
from the Campidoglio, 109. Florida resort community. plines. Complexity and Contradic-
Graves, Thomas Gordon Smith, tion in Architecture had a much
and Steven Peterson), of course, 30. Quoted in Paolo Portoghesi, 35. Ando does not appear in the
greater impact on architects, and
have not. One of the strongest Postmodem: The Architecture of the original essay, but is often cited in
the vast majority of its examples are
Postindustrial Society (New York:
defenses of postmodern architecture Frampton's lectures.
from high culture. It was really
coming from the Left is Linda Rizzoli, 1983), 33. Johnson wrote
36. These qualities could, of only at the Yale University School
Hutcheon's article, "The Politicsthis
of letter after having read Jiirgen
course, be regional, if techniques of Architecture that Scott Brown
Postmodernism: Parody and His-Joedicke's History of Modem and materials were particular to a and Venturi's interest in pop cul-
Architecture.
tory," Cultural Critique 5 (Winter region. But that hardly seems to be ture stimulated a major response. It
1986-87): 179-207. Hutcheon the case with the materials, such as
31. The word "postmodern" should is probably fair to say that most fig-
claims here that postmodern works concrete block and metal paneling,
be qualified in reference to Ven- urative imagery in postmodernism
are "resolutely historical and in- used by Ando and Botta. derives from historical architectural
turi's work. Certainly, his mother's
escapably political precisely because
house predates any public acknowl- 37. Marc Treib, "Regionalism and styles rather than popular culture.
they are parodistic" and that they
edgment of the movement, South Florida Architecture," con- 40. The document states: "The
expose "the contradictions of
although it probably influenced the ference paper, The Architectural
modernism in an explicitly political architect is neither the omnipotent
subsequent development of post- Club of Miami, 1986. In Florida,
light." The ease with which parody master nor the slave of spacio-
modernism in the United States
loses its critical edge will be for example, compare the regionally cultural models, universal or local.
more than any other design. Ven-
addressed later. responsive designs of Paul Rudolph, His proposed role is to interpret
turi himself has been extremely
Rufus Nim, and Robert Brown of them within the framework of the
25. Charles Jencks, The Language
critical of most postmodern archi- the 1950s and the early 1960s to continuity of civilization. Reducing
tecture for its "simplistic, esoteric"
of Post-Modem Architecture, 3d ed. the conventional wall surfaces and architecture to its utilitarian func-
(New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 37. use of historicist forms and for its
roof details of most contemporary tion is to remove its role as a means
dependence on a high-art heritage. postmodern architecture. Of course, of social communication. From the
26. Robert Venturi, Complexity
and Contradiction in Architecture See, especially, Venturi, "The some modern architects did experi- moment the language of models
RIBA Annual Discourse," and, ment with air conditioning as one
(New York: Museum of Modern was replaced with the newspeak of
idem, "Diversity, Relevance and response to climatic conditions, and
Art, 1966), 44. towers, bars and grands ensembles,
Representation in Historicism, or in the case of Le Corbusier's Salva- the town has become monotonous,
27. For a more extended discussion
Plus Ca Change ... plus a Plea for tion Army Pavilion the results were illegible and dead for its inhabit-
of some of these issues, see Pattern all over Architecture with a disastrous. ants. A town must be built on the
McLeod, "Architecture," 31-42. Postscript on my Mother's House,"
basis of elemental housing models,
Paradoxically, for Walter Benjamin Architectural Record (June 1982): 38. The quote continues: "I like
roads and squares." Quoted in Por-
the distracted mode of architecture's 114-19; reprinted in A View from that, but am growing impatient
toghesi, Postmodern, 46.
reception is paradigmatic of the new the Campidoglio, 104-18. with fifty-year swings, and wonder
whether a more suitable model for 41. See Andreas Huyssen's more
media - film, photography,
32. Jencks, The Language of Post-
journalism - on which he places us might be Goldilocks, of Three general, and extremely insightful,
Modem Architecture, 37.
so much political hope. But in con- Bears fame, who found some things comments about the trajectory of
trast to the postmodernists who 33. Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civi- (Papa Bear's) too hot or too hard or postmodernism, "Mapping the Post-
stress architecture's reception as art, lization and National Cultures" too big, and other things (Mama modern," in After the Great Divide:
Benjamin seeks transformation (1961), in History and Truth, trans. Bear's) too cold, too soft, or too Modernism, Mass Culture, Post-
through a gradual, almost uncon- C. A. Kelbey (Evanston: North- small, but still other things (Baby modernism (Bloomington and Indi-
scious, change of habit and expec- western University Press, 1965), Bear's) just right, inhabitable, as we anapolis: Indiana University Press,
tation; in other words, a reception 277; quoted in Kenneth Frampton, architects would say" (Charles 1986), esp. 188.
of distraction rather than of atten- "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Moore: Buildings and Projects
42. Venturi, for instance, writes:
tion is now to architecture's politi- Six Points for an Architecture of 1949-1986, ed. Eugene J. Johnson
"Industry promotes expensive indus-
cal advantage. See Benjamin, "The Resistance," in The Anti-Aesthetic: [New York: Rizzoli, 1986]). trial and electronic research but not
Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. architectural experiments, and the
39. Critics coming from other dis-
ical Reproduction," 239-40. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Wash.: Federal government diverts subsi-
ciplines, such as Fredric Jameson
Bay Press, 1983), 16-17. and Andreas Huyssen, seem, how- dies toward air transportation, com-
28. Stern, "The Doubles of Post-
Modern," 87. 34. For instance, the last decade ever, to exaggerate the importance munication, and the vast enterprises
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assemblage 8
of war or, as they call it, national lematic is the inclusion of Gehry in work differs from that of the other 54. That efforts to construct an
security, rather than toward the this group, as his use of the diago- designers in the MoMA exhibition architectural model of "logo-
forces for the direct enhancement of nal stems more from perceptual and from most student work that centrism" exclude more of architec-
life. The practicing architect must concerns in contemporary sculpture embraces a neoconstructivist tural history than they include
admit this" (Complexity and Con- than from a revivalism of construc- aesthetic. raises doubts about whether any-
tradiction, 44). tivist imagery. Influenced by the thing other than the latest architec-
48. Peter Eisenman, "The End of
work of this group, however, a the Classical: The End of the tural style is being "deconstructed"
43. In choosing to discuss post-
trend toward formal fragmentation Beginning, the End of the End," or disturbed at all. For instance, in
modernism and deconstructivism,
can be observed among younger the exhibition catalogue for the
which have both been placed by Perspecta 21 (1984): 166.
architects and students: the post- MoMA show Mark Wigley writes,
critics under a broader rubric of
modern historicist forms of the late 49. Tschumi, Cinegramme Folie, "Buildings are constructed by taking
postmodernism, I do not mean to 8.
1970s and early 1980s have virtually simple geometric forms - cubes,
suggest that I am addressing the
disappeared from student drafting 50. See especially the critiques of cylinders, spheres, cones, pyramids,
entire contemporary field. In the
boards. Huyssen, "Mapping the Post- and so on - and combining them
United States numerous architec-
modern," 206-11, and Edward W. into stable ensembles, following
tural firms, in fact, still practice a 46. In fact, at various moments
Said, "The Problem of Textuality: compositional rules which prevent
form of "late modernism," whose both Tschumi and Eisenman have
Two Exemplary Positions," in Aes- any one form from conflicting with
vocabulary of stripped-down forms called for a broader conception of
thetics Today, ed. Morris Philipson another. No form is permitted to
is highly indebted to the Inter- the term "postmodernism," one that
and Paul J. Gudel, rev. ed. (New distort another; all potential conflict
national Style. As well, among would embrace all contemporary
York: New American Library, is resolved." Mannerist, baroque,
other currents, numerous practi- movements that reject the rational
1980), 113-29. One of the most picturesque, and German expres-
tioners are exploring an abstract instrumentality of modernism and sionist architecture - not to men-
cogent political critiques of decon-
architectural vocabulary, which its concomitant claims of universal-
struction is Barbara Foley, "The tion many areas of non-Western
cannot readily be classified as either ity. See especially Peter Eisenman,
Politics of Deconstruction," in architecture - are ignored in this
deconstructivist or modernist. "The Futility of Objects: Decompo- Rhetoric and Form: Deconstruction reductive and ahistorical account.
sition and the Processes of Differ-
44. Libeskind's philosophical stance at Yale, ed. Robert Con Davis and See Mark Wigley, "Deconstructivist
ence," Harvard Architecture Review
derives from phenomenology, and Ronald Schleifer (Norman, Okla: Architecture," in Deconstructivist
Koolhaas's eclectic position seems 3 (1984): 66, 81; and Bernard
University of Oklahoma Press, Architecture, ed. Philip Johnson
more indebted to surrealism and the Tschumi, Cinegramme Folie: Le
1985), 113-34. and Mark Wigley (New York:
hedonism of the 1960s than to Parc de la Villette (Princeton:
Museum of Modern Art, 1988).
Princeton Architectural Press, 51. Here, the deconstructivist
poststructuralist theories. Both
1987), 7. Among the critics who model of "no meaning/endless 55. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's
Hadid and Gehry are loath to give
have attempted to link these two meaning" risks being as deceptive as term "strategic essentialism" seems
philosophical labels to their work.
tendencies is Hal Foster. See espe- the postmodern assumption of especially appropriate in this con-
The differences between Eisenman
cially his essay "(Post)Modern "transparent communication. " text. See In Other Worlds: Essays
and Libeskind's position are articu-
Polemics," Perspecta 21 (1984); in Cultural Politics (New York:
lated clearly in Libeskind's essay 52. Eisenman specifically precludes
reprinted in Recodings: Art, Spec- Methuen, 1987).
"Peter Eisenman and the Myth of the creation of place as an objec-
Futility," Harvard Architecture tacle, Cultural Politics (Port Town- 56. See Michel Foucault, "What Is
tive. In an unpublished manuscript
Review 3 (1984): 61-63. send, Wash.: Bay Press, 1987), of 1987, he states that "if architec- an Author?" in Language, Counter-
121-36. Like Stern's essay "The ture traditionally has been about Memory, Practice: Selected Essays
45. Certainly, Koolhaas's and Doubles of Post-Modern," Foster's
'topos,' that is, an idea of place, and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bou-
Eisenman's architecture has been
"(Post)Modern Polemics" outlines then to be 'between,' is to search chard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard
largely orthogonal, and any diago- two kinds of postmodernism: neo-
for 'atopos,' the atopia within topos" and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell
nals that appear (one suspects conservative (eclectic historicism)
MoMA must have been hard (Eisenman, "The Blueline Text," University Press, 1977), 113-38;
and poststructuralist (decentering of 5). I am grateful to Sharon Haar for and Roland Barthes, "The Death of
pressed to find the "right" Koolhaas
the object), with Eisenman's work, the Author," in Image, Music,
project) are within standard modern alerting me to this text.
again, serving as the only example Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath
formal practice. But Eisenman's of architecture in the latter 53. Jean-FranCois Lyotard, The
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1977),
combination of orthogonal forms category. Postmodern Condition: A Report on
142-48.
and diagonal "events" is more remi- Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington
niscent of Le Corbusier and early 47. Both Tschumi and Koolhaas and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: 57. Huyssen argues that the rejec-
Stirling than of some of his decon- have focused on program in their University of Minnesota Press, tion of authorship in poststructural-
structivist peers. Perhaps most prob-urban projects; in this respect their 1984). ist theory "merely duplicates on the
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McLeod
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