Topos in Architecture Theory. The Revision of Postmodernism? Rethinking the presence of the recent past.
What ever happened to postmodernism in architecture? After the term has been furiously debated in the 1970s and enjoyed fashionable status during the 80s, its validity slowly eroded, until it has been silently replaced by minimalism, neo-modernism, deconstruction, etc. Following Fredric Jameson, it can easily be argued that these tendencies still belong to the larger legacy of post-modernity. This is to say, we never stopped being postmodern. Or shall we alternatively think of modernity, in the sense of Habermas, as an unfinished and reflexive project, which means, that there has never been something like the postmodern at all? – During the 1970s and 1980s philosophers and historians turned to architecture as an agent of postmodernism, since the built environment exemplified the crisis of the modern project. Several historic changes during the 1960s challenged the discipline of architecture: practice, theory and education underwent a radical reformulation in the consecutive decade. Next to the renewed interest in history, new themes emerged such as semiotics, linguistics, pop and visual culture and the suburban or vernacular.
Parallel to the wide acceptance of postmodernism during the 1980s architectural history turned back to revise the origins of the modern movement. Over the last twenty years there has been extensive research on the architectural culture of the postwar period and on other modes of modernization in non-Western cultures. Now, in the second decade of the 21st Century, the recent past of the period roughly between ‘68 and ‘89 asks for reconsideration. With several critical publications and exhibition events, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum London, the MAK Vienna or the DAM Frankfurt recently, postmodernism seems to be back on stage.
Yet every shift of focus, period and subject in architectural research has been accompanied by a revision of its historiographical methods. Theoretic thinking turns especially problematic with a period that sustains a negative-reflexive relationship to its predecessor (modernity) and that has been obsessed with language, textuality, reproduction and representation. Asked from a contemporary position, what are the conditions, possibilities and problems of analyzing recent past, which might prove to still be our present and arguably our future?
A close examination of one key project of each of these architects (lecture) will be accompanied by a comparative close reading of different interpretations of the project (seminar) – ranging from the statements of the author-architects themselves to reviews of critics at their time to contemporary assessments and revisions.
This 4-credit seminar course includes course materials on the selected buildings, willingness to read, think and participate actively in discussions, and a research paper on a topic of choice of the student after mandatory consultation with the instructor (30000 characters for Bachelor students, PhD students are invited to a more intense exposure, write a full length research paper and engage with additional materials). It is highly recommended to take the lecture course VO 259.426 Topos in architecture theory - “Case Studies of Postmodern Architecture”, that introduced the buildings that will be discussed theoretically and historically in this seminar.
