Characteristics Of Postmodernism

Postmodernism, in its simplest form is what came after modernism. It was a movement, which began in America around the 1960s and then it spread to Britain and Europe and finally the rest of the world. It was a way of reacting against modernism ideas. The movement believed in challenging people, encouraging expression of art, colour and decoration in response to the ideals of modernists that was simplicity and formality, Advocated by artists such as le Cobusier and Walter Gropius. In this essay I will start by discussing what led to the beginning of the postmodernism movement and why. I will choose one key building I believe personifies the postmodernist key features and look into the artists involved in this movement. Both movements had their

The Postmodernism movement wanted to make people question why things were the way they were and allow buildings to surprise you. Modernists generally had an unrealistic belief of perfection and a made up utopian vision of human life when on the other hand Postmodernists believed in questioning everything and the idea of complexity. Modernists believed in form follows function, they stated a building should be functional, almost working and looking like a machine especially due to the fact all buildings began to look the same due to having the same clean, simple features and materials (glass, concrete, steel) which worked well when working at a fast pace but didn 't allow the designer to take their time and design something for not just the function but the aesthetic. Unlike modernist architecture, postmodernism architecture was quite ornamental, new designs were introduced but they also recycled certain features from the past to make something new, such as bringing colour back into architecture, which was not important at all during the modernist era. As you can see in figure 1 it is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1893 which looks very different to a postmodern building show in figure 2 of the guild house by Robert venture, the straight cut lines and symmetrical windows at the William

In my opinion the most important building that Robert Venturi ever designed was the Vanna Venturi house created in 1964, Philadelphia. It is said to be the first postmodern building due to its great influence. The house was designed for his mother and took over 6 years to design. The first thing to note is that Venturi used ornaments on the building, which is something modernists never agreed with yet is what made it so memorable. From the outside it looked like a normal home, but it was far from that. The traditional elements of a home were applied in unconventional ways, for example, the chimney at the front is in fact a facade and has no use, it was purely for decoration purposes; the real chimney is actually behind it hidden away. The gable roof has a vertical space right in the middle and it’s only seen at the front since at the back the design of the house is quite different. The arch above the square entrance serves no purpose and you would think at first the door would be right in the middle of the square opening but it is not, the door has been placed to one side. The home almost looks like a childlike drawing which raises questions and makes people including me question why it was designed like that and this is what postmodernism was about; representing confusion and