UNCONSTRAINED BY DOGMA, POST-MODERN DESIGNERS REJECTED MODERNISM’S OBSESSION WITH FUNCTION
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INTRO
Postmodernism was the broader movement of thinking that began in the late 1960s that spanned across philosophy, literature and the arts, and a set of styles in design which emerged as a result of the former. The primary ethos of Postmodernism was to
ESTION THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF ANY FRAMEWORK OR NARRATIVE that sought to explain the world, such as the basic concepts of power, order and control
(Sturken and Cartwright, 313). Characterised by broad skepticism and questioning, it wasn’t tied to any particular dogma and mostly rejected doctrine of any sort. On the other hand, as Robert Hughes put it in Doing their Own Thing “the essence” of the Modern Movement had been its dogmatism and idealistic philosophies, evident in its cries of “Form follows function”, “ornament is crime”, “Less is more” - design strictly governed by principles and ideals. I will discuss how Postmodernism rose both in reaction to this and as a result of a number of factors surrounding late capitalistic society such as advances in technology, mass media, consumerism and the breaking down of the barrier between high culture and popular culture, and how this subsequently led to an explosion of associated Postmodernist visual styles (Strinati, 212) specifically in architecture, which renounced modernism’s rigid rules of form and structure, functionalism, and firm beliefs in concepts of linear progress through a renewed interest in characteristics that had been shunned by modernism, such as ornament, symbolism and visual wit.
THE FUTURE IS IN THE PAST
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S 550 MADISON AVENUE (FORMERLY AT&T BUILDING) PHILLIP JOHNSON 1984
THE A PAST THRE
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THE FUTURE IS IN THE PAST GOODBYE TO GLASS BOXES Philip Johnson’s design for the AT&T building is an example of this visual wit and ornamentation in postmodernist architecture. When it first opened the AT&T Building stood in stark contrast to the modernist skyscrapers, featuring a number of ornamental flourishes, its most notable one being the decorative “Chippendale” motif pediment that tops the building. This reference to Chippendale style furniture is an example of one of the major postmodern tools of pastiche. The AT&T building’s chippendale motif paired with its high arched entrance look like a “wardrobe piece” (Sturken and Cartwright, 340) or “grandfather clock” (Hughes, 10).
ACT OF BORROWING FROM THE T WAS CONSIDERED A GROTESQUE EAT TO THE MODERNIST IDEAL This was a fun and witty pastiche of historical styles and features without meaning or comment on history itself. This playful ornamentation was one of the first to break away from modernist doctrine of discipline and functionalism in its blending different style periods without function. Robert Hughes says that the monumental shaped towers of the ‘20s and ‘30s such as the Rockefeller Center, Empire State, the Chrysler Building were the definitive fantasy monuments of American capital, and that no modernist “glass slab could hope to be as rich in imagery as” (Hughes, 10). This was the idea that Phillip Johnson with the AT&T building adopted, contextualising the building as part of the iconic New York skyline and imbuing it with the
symbolism of these decoratively topped buildings by ornamenting it. There’s also strong influence from classical architecture and Italian architecture with a red granite exterior, grand entrance archway, circular windows and the oversized tympanum, again more historical pastiche. This was the stylistic result of a postmodernist attitude against concept of progress. Modernists held firm beliefs in linear progress, positive that every evolution in design was better than the last and old styles were abandoned. So integral to Modernist design was this notion of progressing forward that just the act of borrowing design features and trends from the past was considered a challenge against the fundamental principles of modern design.
DETAILS FROM 550 MADISON AVENUE (FORMERLY AT&T BUILDING) PHILLIP JOHNSON 1984
THE PORTLAND BUILDING MICHAEL GRAVES 1982
WALT DISNEY WORLD SWAN RESORT MICHAEL GRAVES 1990
NO GLASS SLAB COULD EVER HOPE TO BE AS RICH IN IMAGERY ROBERT HUGHES
COLLAPSING TIME With advances in technology at this time, specifically relating to travel, media, communication and information, we see the rise of a world economy and globalisation. The rapid spread of information and speeding up of both communication and travel affects how time and history is experienced, which in turn is seemingly reflected in design, such as the Piazza d’Italia. This new design feature of pastiching historical styles together appears to emerge alongside this wider sense of the compressing of time that comes with the digital age, this phenomena also upturning how we understand concepts of linear progress in relation to Modernism. ‘Time– space compression’ is a concept largely developed by economic geographers (Harvey, 1989; Massey, 1999), but it has become a keyword in the study of communications. The origin of the concept is Karl Marx’s analysis of the need for capitalism to speed up the circulation time of capital. The faster that money can be turned into the production of goods and services, which then turn back into money in the form of profit (M-C-M), the greater the power of capital to expand or valorize itself. The most abstract manifestation of this is globalization. Emphasis on the image, and the condensing of media comes as a result of several ingredients of late capitalism and late 20th century. Technological advancements resulting in faster communication and spread of information, the rise in mass media and globalisation all result in a way of living that is sped up. Communication is instant, information is instant, travel is instant. Media formats and digestible
information get shorter and faster. With mass media, television (and later on the internet) people are bombarded with masses of information and images every day. Lots of information is condensed into a short time frame. More images than we can consciously process proliferate and increasingly assault us from all sides throughout our lives. This is increasingly reflected in culture and design, I think in architecture this is visible in semiotically packed the buildings are as well as their value of the image and the mashing of historical time periods together. In my opinion we can also link this technique to consumer culture in that companies are trying to sell you as much about a product as they can in whatever time they can, just as buildings become much more jam packed with obscure images, narrative worlds, impressions designed to saturate it with semiotic meanings and associations and less obviously relevant. (Wubbena, 7). In Phillip Johnson’s AT&T building this phenomenon is reflected in the aim to mimic towers of the golden age of american sky scrapers and the borrowing of many different past styles and periods. I think it’s interesting to consider how Modernism and the idea of progress was born out of the time of trains, cars and linear forms of information flow and travel - ie moving from one place to another. On the other hand, the collapse of linear progression and the future as a goal in both Postmodern philosophies and in this kaleidoscope of stylistic historical embellishments - such as in AT&T tower - flourish in an age where communication and spread is instant (which in itself distorts and collapses time) the world is brought to you wherever you are, and connected in a complex web which destroys linear pattern connections.
A GENERATION IS EMERGING THAT IS HUNGRY ONCE AGAIN FOR AN ARCHITECTURE THAT ENGAGES THE PAST, THE FUTURE, AND THE WEIGHTY ABUNDANCE AND HORROR OF THE PRESENT
DE PIRAMIDES SJOERD SOETERS, 2007
INTO THE PRESENT The age of postmodern architecture is far from over, according to designer Adam Nathaniel Furman. To prove it, he has picked out 10 examples, including a pile of Dutch townhouses and a skyscraper modelled on a clock tower. As founder of the Postmodern Society, Furman is an expert on the late 20th-century style that exploits and exaggerates historical references. Along with architect Terry Farrell, who designed a number of postmodern icons in the 1980s, he has just released a book titled Revisiting Postmodernism. In it, he argues that the movement is currently experiencing a resurgence – despite the backlash against it. “A generation is emerging that is hungry once again for a theoretically rich, culturally embedded architecture\that engages the past, the future, and the weighty abundance and horror of the present in all, just as with every generation, they are looking to construct their own historiographies, their own lineages, and part of this is the critical revaluation of postmodernism, its theoretical frameworks, and its architectural tactics, a rediscovery and reframing of a past that has up until now been made taboo by the intervening generation.” he told Deezeen Architecture can be a visually communicative medium through which communal and individual identities are explored, and through which contemporary culture is refracted and represented It can be a celebration of pluralism which actively and symbolically embraces the chaotic, complex, global nature of the world.
AL YAQOUB TOWER ADNAN SAFFARINI, 2013
A HOUSE FOR ESSEX FAT AND GRAYSON PERRY, 2015
THE SCHOOL OF SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES SHORT & ASSOCIATES, 2005
UGLY AND ORDINARY
I LIK HYB DIS STR AN DIR ME UN ME OF
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KE ELEMENTS WHICH ARE BRID RATHER THAN PURE, STORTED RATHER THAN RAIGHTFORWARD, AMBIGUOUS ND EQUIVOCAL RATHER THAN RECT AND CLEAR. I AM FOR ESSY VITALITY OVER OBVIOUS NITY. I AM FOR RICHNESS OF EANING RATHER THAN CLARITY MEANING.”
NTURI ROBERT VENTURI
ORDINARY ARCHITECTURE IS IN TOUCH WITH THE REAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE. GAUDY SUBURBAN, IMPERFECTION ACTUALLY SPEAKS TO PEOPLE .
GUILD HOUSE ROBERT VENTURI 1960
UGLY AND ORDINARY HOUSES FOR PEOPLE Robert Venturi, a controversial architectural theorist and critic of Modernism, put forward a number of key influential theories on Postmodernism in his manifestoes Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Both were a harsh condenment of modernism and culture of elite architecture. Venturi began designing “decorated sheds” , building with complex adornment and symbols. Venturi’s Guild House is considered one of the first and most influential expressions of postmodernist philosophy through architecture, representing a deliberate rejection of modernist ideals and a celebration of the “ugly and ordinary” ‘(as Venturi called it). Guild House uses ordinary materials and flourishes to relate to the rest of the everyday humble architecture in the area including red brick, square, double-hung windows, and chainlink fence, overall mimicking public housing. Despite its visual language being rooted in the everyday, the building is far from ordinary in its philosophy, these embellishments are deliberate symbolic elements, (Larson, 484) and Venturi wished to celebrate the density of symbols in ordinary architecture considered beneath the elite modernist ideals to get in touch with the human experience (Hughes, 6). Not only does Postmodernist design raise questions about history and context through ornamentation, play and visual wit but also shows an engagement with mass culture and popular culture. Venturi, Brown
and Izenour in Learning from Las Vegas embrace the ugliness of symbolism and put forward that ignoring the taste of the ordinary person was wrong. This mirrored a cultural shift that saw relationships between high, low and mass culture change and complicate (Sturken and Cartwright, 314). Where Modernist art, design and culture had seen itself elite and distinguished from the media, the popular and the everyday, postmodern thought was part of pop culture. In our late stage capitalist culture, you increasingly cannot not experience consumerism, branding, images, media and the popular (Strinati, 211). In its characterised skepticism of thought structures, postmodernism questioned modernism’s elite position above the everyday person’s experience. Venturi believed that mass culture and the everyday is so integrated into our identity and so should be a part of our art, design and architecture and hence his protest against modern architecture in buildings such as guild house. The structure has the symmetrical composition of a palazzo and also adopts elements from Classical orders on the front with a giant pillar, again an example of historical pastiche again which protests against modernist ideals of progress. Venturi designed the building with a humorous ornamental top, in the shape of a large golden antenna. This was a playful and controversial symbol of or reference to the elderly inhabitants of the building and their presumed main leisure activity - watching TV - an ironic take on classical pediments and an example of humour in architecture that emerged as pop culture and entertainment became more important in art and design. This ornament, symbolism and visual wit influenced the future of the architecture world as designers, seeing how Postmodernism’s disregard for rules lended to contextualisation and communication in architecture (Cartwright, 340). This was a direct challenge to the basic central principles that Modernism was built on, the design again not only using from the inventory of “postmodern style” features but also expressing on a wider level a shift in global culture.
DETAILS FROM GUILD HOUSE ROBERT VENTURI 1960
SYMBOLISM AND DECORATION COULD SPEAK TO OCCUPANTS IN WAYS THAT MODERN BUILDINGS FAIL
MEN, NOT MACHINES Modernism idolised the machine (Gold, 33) as the perfect model, and situated itself above the everyday person. Modernists built houses that were machines ideal for housing machines (Hughes, 4), beautiful buildings which were cold, cramped, impersonal and failed to appeal to the everyday human. As Evelyn Waugh summed up,“The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men (...) Man is never beautiful; he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces." Sturken and Cartwright in Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture write that one of the key attitudes of postmodern architecture is a critique of modern architecture as uncontextualised and impersonal in this way. Postmodernism questioned the control and minimalism of modernist architecture proposing that, “its insistence on functionality and rejection of decoration, metaphor, and symbolism, ignored the important ways that these elements functioned as cultural signifiers” (Sturken and Cartwright, 340), that without ornament it fails to communicate anything about the surroundings, personality or purpose of the building, with often disastrous results, such as in the case of Pruitt–Igoe. Seeing that modernism’s ideas of progress, discipline and order and could lead to decay in these failed modern buildings but also in WWII, postmodernist architects rejected such principles. They believed that renouncing the belief in house as machine and renewing interest in symbolism and decoration, could speak to occupants in ways that modern buildings fail at.
UGLY IRISH HOUSES It’s all well and saying that the ornament and decoration abhorred by the Modernists is actually what the people want and need but seeing it in your locality is the proof. @UglyIrishHouses on instagram collects photos of Irelands most bizzarre so-called “crimes against design”, both ridiculing and celebrating the architecture, but ultimately proof of the importance to homeowners to have individuality injected into their homes in the postmodern spirit.
SCAN WITH YOUR PHONE TO GO TO @UGLYIRISHHOUSES
LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS
LEARNING FROM THE EXISTING LANDSCAPE IS A WAY OF BEING REVOLUTIONARY
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK BY ROBERT VENTURI DENISE SCOTT BROWN STEVEN IZENOUR
LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS BILLBOARDS ARE ALMOST ALRIGHT Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect. Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1925, but another, more tolerant way; that is, to question how we look at things. The commercial strip, the Las Vegas Strip in particular- the example par excellence -c hallenges the architect to take a positive, non-chip-on-theshoulder view. Architects are out of the habit of looking nonjudgmentally at the environment, because orthodox Modern architecture is progressive, if not revolutionary, utopian, and puristic; it is dissatisfied with existing conditions. Modern architecture has been anything but permissive: Architects have preferred to change the existing environment rather than enhance what is there. But to gain insight from the commonplace is nothing new: Fine art often follows folk art. Romantic architects of the eighteenth century discovered an existing and conventional rustic architecture. Early Modern architects appropriated an existing and conventional industrial vocabulary without much adaptation. Le Corbusier loved grain elevators and steamships; the Bauhaus looked like a factory; Mies refined the details of American steel factories for concrete buildings. Modern architects work through analogy, symbol, and image — although they have gone to lengths to disclaim almost all determmants of their forms except
structural necessity and the program — and they derive insights, analogies, and stimulation from unexpected images: There is a peversity in the learning process: We look backward at history and tradition to go forward we can also look downward to go upward. And withholding judgment may be used sed as a tool to make later judgment more sensitive. This is a way of learning from everything. Architects who can accept the lessons of primitive vernacular architecture, so easy to take in an exhibit like “Architecture without Architects,” and of industrial, vernacular architecture, so easy to adapt to an electronic and space vernacular as elaborate neoBrutalist or neo-Constructivist megastructures, do not easily acknowledge the validity of the commercial vernacular. For the artist, creating the new may mean choosing the old or the existing. Pop artists have relearned this. Our acknowledgment of existing, commercial architecture at the scale of the highway is within this tradition. Modern architecture has not so much excluded the commercial vernacular as it has tried to take it over by inventing and enforcing a vernacular of its own, improved and universal. It has rejected the combination of fine art and crude art. The Italian landscape has always harmonized the vulgar and the Vitruvian: the contorni around the duomo, the portiere’s laundry across the padrone’s portone, Supercortemaggiore against the Romanesque apse. Naked children have never played in our fountains, and L M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66. SYSTEM AND ORDER ON THE STRIP The image of the commercial strip is chaos. The order in this landscape is not obvious (Fig. 34). The continuous highway itself and its systems for turning are absolutely consistent. The median strip accommodates the If-turns necessary to a vehicular promenade for casino crawlers as well as left turns onto the local street pattern that the Strip intersects. The curbing allows frequent right turns for casinos and other commercial enterprises and eases the difficult transitions from highway to parking. The streetlights function superfluously along many parts of the Strip that are incidentally but abundantly lit
MAP OF ASPHALT IN LAS VEGAS
AERIAL PHOTO OF THE LAS VEGAS STRIP
WEDDING CHAPELS, CAR RENTALS AND CHURCHES ON THE STRIP
UNDEVELOPED LAND ON THE STRIP
difficult transitions from highway to parking. The streetlights function superfluously along many parts of the Strip that are incidentally but abundantly lit by signs, but their consistency of form and position and their arching shapes begin to identify by day a continuous space of the highway, and the constant rhythm contrasts effectively with the uneven rhythms of the signs behind. This counterpoint reinforces the contrast between two types of order on the Strip: the obvious visual order of street elements and the difficult visual order of buildings and signs. The zone of the highway is a shared order. The zone off the highway is an individual order. The elements of the highway are civic. The buildings and signs are private. In combination they embrace continuity and discontinuity, going and stopping, clarity and ambiguity, cooperation and competition, the community and rugged individualism. The system of the highway gives order to the sensitive functions of exit and entrance as well as to the image of the Strip as a sequential whole. It also gene;ates places for individual enterprises to grow and controls the general direction of that growth. It allows variety and change along its sides and accommodates the contrapuntal, competitive order of the individual enterprises. There is an order along the sides of the highway. Varieties of activities are juxtaposed on the Strip: service stations minor motels and multimillion-dollar casinos. Marriage chapels (“credit cards acce~ted�) converted from bungalows with added neon-lined steeples are apt to appear anywhere toward the downtown end. Immediate proximity of related uses, as on Mam Street, where you walk from one store to another, is not required along the Strip because interaction is by car and highway. You drive from one casino to another even when they are adjacent because of the distance between them, and an intervening service station is not disagreeable.
THE DUCK AND DECORATED SHED But it is the highway signs through their sculptural Forms or pictorial silhouettes, their positions in space, their inflected shapes, and their graphic meanings, that identify and unify the megatexture. They make verbal and symbolic connections through space, communicating a complexity of meanings through hundreds of associations in few seconds from far away. Symbol dominates space. Architecture is not enough. Because the spatial relationships are made by symbols more than by forms, architecture in this landscape becomes symbol in space rather than form in space. Architecture defines very little: The big sign and the little building is the rule of Route 66. The sign is more important than the architecture. This is reflected in the proprietor’s budget. The sign at the front is a vulgar extravaganza, the building at the back, a modest necessity. The architecture is what is cheap. Sometimes the building is the sign: The duck store in the shape of a duck, called “The Long Island Duckling,” To make the case for a new but old direction in architecture, we shall use some perhaps indiscreet comparisons to show what we are for and what we are against and ultimately to justify our own architecture. When architects talk or write, they philosophize almost solely to justify their own work, and this apologia will be no different. Our argument depends on comparisons, because it is simple to the point of banality. It needs contrast to point it up. We shall use, somewhat undiplomatically, some of the works of leading architects today as contrast and context.
WE SHALL EMPHASIZE IMAGE-IM IN ASSERTING THAT ARCHITECT AND-CREATION ON PAST EXPERI ASSOCIATION AND THAT THESE REPRESENTATIONAL ELEMENTS TO THE FORM, STRUCTURE, AND COMBINE IN THE SAME BUILDIN CONTRADICTION IN ITS TWO MA
Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of building becoming sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duckshaped drive-in, “The Long Island Duckling. Where systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them. This we call the decorated shed.
MAGE OVER PROCESS OR FORMTURE DEPENDS IN ITS PERCEPTION IÂENCE AND EMOTIONAL SYMBOLIC AND MAY OFTEN BE CONTRADICTORY D PROGRAM WITH WHICH THEY NG. WE SHALL SURVEY THIS AIN MANIFESTATIONS:
The duck is the special building that is a symbol; the decorated shed is the conventional shelter That applies symbols. We main tain that both kinds of architecture are valid-Chartres is a duck (although it is a decorated shed as well), and the Palazzo Farnese is a decorated shed-but we think that the duck is seldom relevant today, although it pervades Modem architecture. We shall describe how we come by the automobileoriented commercial architecture of urban sprawl as our source for a civic and residential architecture of meaning, viable now, as the turn-of-the-century industrial vocabulary was viable for a Modern architecture of space and industrial technology 40 years ago. We shall show how the iconography, rather than the space and piazzas of historical architecture, forms the background for the study of association and symbolism in commercial art and strip architecture. Finally we shall argue for the symbolism of the ugly and ordinary in architecture and for the particular significance of the decorated shed with a rhetorical front and conventional behind: for architecture as shelter with symbols on it.
THE UPPER STRIP LOOKING NORTH FROM LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS
PAGE SCAN FROM LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS
UPPER STRIP FROM LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS
BRINGING BACK PLAY
PIAZZA D’ITALIA CHARLES MOORE
rom examples such as the Piazza d’Italia by Charles Moore is another example we can see this cultural shift and the relationship between mass culture and design through its engagement with humour, recognised stereotypes and density of witty symbols. Commissioned to design a commemoration for the Italian immigrant population in New Orleans, Moore came up with the idea for a public fountain in the shape of Italy, circled by columns and a clock tower which appropriated classical forms but were made from contemporary materials (such as stainless steel or neon) in a playful fashion. The Piazza also had a bell tower and Roman templebut expressed in abstract, minimalist fashion and all painted bright hues. This visually witty piece combines historical roman architecture with the visual language of New Orleans’s brightly painted buildings and neon signs (Hinshaw, 132), using these embellishments to give context to the architecture where modernist minimalism would fail. This type of deliberate play into stereotypes to contextualise buildings has influenced architecture in recent times for example with the Inntel Hotel in the Netherlands, an 11 story highrise building made to look like stereotypical Zaandam houses. In the Piazza d’Italia, the elements of classical architecture such as the pillar ornamentation paired with neon lights defy modernist design principles on multiple levels in terms of being a decoration and being a motif from the past. This ornamentation is by definition nonfunctional and not minimal, being purely for witty visual reference and play. Again, like the AT&T building, the historical pastiche of classical features challenge the Modernist belief in progress and disregard for the past.
PIAZZA D’ITALIA CHARLES MOORE
INNTEL HOTEL WAM ARCHITECTEN, 201O
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VISUAL DIVERSITY GAVE
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WOLFGANG WEINGART One of the first to question Modernist dogma in a graphic design context was Wolfgang Weingart. Dedicated to conveying information as clearly and straightforwardly as possible, the International Swiss Typographic style was a modernist graphic movement that put faith in presenting messages objectively. It equated clarity of communication with the ease at which a viewer could interpret meaning for themselves and followed strict rules valuing restraint and control in order to remove creator bias from the piece (Weingart, 55). Weingart was one of the first to question this ethos, starting with a number of type experiments and developing a style which rebelled against the order of Modernist practice with jagged overlaid shapes and outlines, exposed sections of grid, and effectively taking Swiss typography and blowing it apart (Poynor, 8). As in architecture this can be attributed to the shift in critical thought in regards to metanarratives. Similar to the architectural designers of Postmodernism, Weingart thought that
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BREAKING THE GRID
AND MEANING TO DESIGN.
and meaning was not down to how legible the type was but that the designer’s graphic adjustments to type design communicated more than just what the words spelled, eg. in Typografische Monatsblatter.
The journal supplements had shapes and exposed grids printed in silver to emphasise points and draw attention to underlying typographic systems and considerations, overall amplifying the meaning of the essays and revealing the work of a typographer below what we see on the surface of a design. This was this idea central to Postmodern design that deconstruction, decoration, visual play and all these so seen as ornamental unnecessary extras, even if they appeared to interfere with functionality or legibility, actually heightened meaning, and so had an important place in design. This idea resonated with designers such as the Cranbrook Academy, David Carson and well up to the present day, shaking the roots of Modernist guidelines of syntax, hierarchy and imagery.
TYPOGRAPHISCHE MONATSBLÄTTER 11 WOLFGANG WEINGART 1973
TYPOGRAPHISCHE MONATSBLÄTTER 3 WOLFGANG WEINGART 1973
TYPOGRAPHISCHE MONATSBLÄTTER 1 WOLFGANG WEINGART 1972
TYPOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS WOLFGANG WEINGART
TYPOGRAPHIC PROCESS, NR 4. WOLFGANG WEINGART 1971-1972
TYPOGRAPHIC PROCESS, NR 5. WOLFGANG WEINGART 1971-1974
The journal supplements had shapes and exposed grids printed in silver to emphasise points and draw attention to underlying typographic systems and considerations, overall amplifying the meaning of the essays and revealing the work of a typographer below what we see on the surface of a design. This was this idea central to Postmodern design that deconstruction, decoration, visual play and all these so seen as ornamental unnecessary extras, even if they appeared to interfere with functionality or legibility, actually heightened meaning, and so had an important place in design. THE 90’S This idea resonated with designers such as the Cranbrook Academy, David Carson and well up to the present day, shaking the roots of Modernist guidelines of syntax, hierarchy and imagery. In graphic design, Postmodernism often presented itself in deconstruction and fragmentation, a visual consequence of the deconstruction of world beliefs and metanarratives that filtered down to a deconstruction of grid, type, image, colour systems and previously established rules of design. We also see visually, the effect of the culture level merge and Postmodernism’s embrace of pop culture in graphic design and art. With a new found respect for the everyday person, graphic design disregarded teachings making it no longer for just a set of elite designers who study the rules of design but could be made by anyone. Kitsch, pop art and “ugly” graphic design which incorporated symbols of low culture and consumerism flourished. This was also influenced by the spread of the PC, now not only was culture embracing the ameteur designer but also technology allowed anyone to design, with interesting results (Jobling & Crowley, 288). An explosion of visual styles emerged and were combined in chaotic manner also perhaps influenced by the increasing bombardment of inescapable images in one’s everyday life that came with globalisation, consumerism, advertising and, later on, the internet.
RAY GUN COVER DAVID CARSON 1992
BANKOK BRYONBAY DAVID CARSON 2014
TYPOGRAPHISCHE MONATSBLÄTTER 1 WOLFGANG WEINGART 1972
THE LEGACY While the initial explosion of postmodern styles of the 90’s has somewhat dimmed in favour of modernist principles, it’s influence remains. Designers and studios today take the clarity and legibility of modern design techniques and combine it with the eyecatching experimentation of postmodernism.
ADVENTURES IN TYPOGRAPHY 2.0 - FRANKENSTEIN’S HELVETICA SPIN STUDIO
ADVENTURES IN TYPOGRAPHY 2.0 - FRANKENSTEIN’S HELVETICA SPIN STUDIO
LUCERNE THEATRE STUDIO FEIXEN 2017
DESIGN IS CHANGED FOREVER. EVEN THOSE WHO CONSIDER THEMS CAN’T OCCUPY A SPACE OUTSIDE TH
SILK SCREEN POSTER PATRICK THOMAS 2019
TYPE EXPERIMENTS SPIN STUDIO
SELVES MODERNIST HE WORLD THEY LIVE IN
SMILE SAMUEL BLOCH 2017
ARGENTINACINE IDENTITY LOS CABALLOS 2020
CONCLUSION Postmodernist design revived an interest in ornament, symbolism and visual wit, which all defy the Modernist concepts of restraint, order, functionality but also their key belief in progression and technological advance. This style is a direct result of a broader thinking characterised by a distrust of metanarratives and which comes from post-industrial, late capitalist society in the aftermath of WWII. This reacceptance of the symbols of ordinary life, saturation of images and visual play in design, such as in the examples discussed above, that centers around entertaining and facilitating the masses is a part of this late capitalist society where consumerism, pop culture and the image are so forefront in our society that they become embedded in design. Advances in technology assault us with images and messages, disrupting the way we experience time, which when coupled with jaded skepticism brought by modern design’s failures and the violent technology of WWII, led to the disintegration of the concept of progress. This produced a simultaneous learning from the past and explosion of new visual styles which shook the foundations of modernism and gave the world of design the diversity it has today.
WORKS CITED Farrell, Terry, and Adam Nathaniel Furman. Revisiting Postmodernism. RIBA, 2017. Hargreaves, George. “Post Modernism Looks Beyond Itself.” Landscape Architecture, vol. 73, no. 4, 1983, pp. 60–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44666707 Hinshaw, Mark. “Postmodern Postmortem.” Landscape Architecture, vol. 91, no. 6, 2001, pp. 132–131. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44671034. Hughes, Robert. “Doing Their Own Thing”. Time Magazine: U.S. Architects: Goodbye To Glass Boxes And All That, 1997, http://content.time.com/time/ subscriber/article/0,33009,919959-10,00.html. Accessed 30 Oct 2019. Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism. Verso, 1993. Jobling, Paul, and David Crowley. Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation. Manchester University Press, 2003, pp. 271-288. Julier, Guy. The Thames And Hudson Dictionary Of 20Th-Century Design And Designers. Thames And Hudson, 1999. Keedy, Jeffrey. “Graphic Design In The Postmodern Era”. Emigre, 1998, https://www.emigre.com/Essays/ Magazine/GraphicDesigninthePostmodernEra. Accessed 13 Oct 2019. Larson, Magali Sarfatti. “Architectural Competitions as Discursive Events.” Theory and Society, vol. 23, no. 4, 1994, pp. 469–504. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/657888. Poynor, Rick. Eye, No. 4, Vol. 1, 1994, pp. 8–16. Poynor, Rick. No More Rules. Laurence King, 2013. Schmandt, Michael J. “Postmodern Phoenix.”
Stephanson, Anders. “Regarding Postmodernism. A Conversation with Fredric Jameson.” Social Text, no. 17, 1987, pp. 29–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/466477. Strinati, Dominic. An Introduction To Theories Of Popular Culture. Routledge, 2005. Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices Of Looking. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 307-343. Venturi, Robert et al. Learning From Las Vegas. MIT Press, 1972. Waugh, Evelyn. Decline And Fall. Chapman And Hall, 1928. Weingart, Wolfgang. “My Typography Instruction at the Basle School of Design/Switzerland, 1968 to 1985.” Design Quarterly, no. 130, 1985, pp. 1–20. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4091153. Weingart, Wolfgang. Typography. Lars Müller, 2000.