THE FUTURE IS IN THE PAST

T

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).

THE ACT OF BORROWING FROM THE PAST WAS CONSIDERED A GROTESQUE THREAT 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

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 5 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

VE

NTURI I LIKE ELEMENTS WHICH ARE HYBRID RATHER THAN PURE, DISTORTED RATHER THAN STRAIGHTFORWARD, AMBIGUOUS AND EQUIVOCAL RATHER THAN DIRECT AND CLEAR. I AM FOR MESSY VITALITY OVER OBVIOUS UNITY. I AM FOR RICHNESS OF MEANING RATHER THAN CLARITY OF MEANING.”