Post-Modernism vs Postmodern Architecture
ポスト・モダニズム / ポストモダン建築
Post-Modernism comes from Avant-garde and Postmodern Architecture from Modern Architecture. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Post-Modernism
Doubts the single right answer and mixes quotation, irony and ornament as play.
Postmodern Architecture
Rebels against modernism's universality, reintroducing historical quotation, ornament, sign, color and irony to city and building.
| Post-Modernism | Postmodern Architecture | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1970s–1990s | 1960s–1990s |
| Family | Avant-garde | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Mixed styles / Irony / Ornament reclaimed / Unexpected color | Historical quotation / Ornament returned / Strong color / Double meanings |
| Best used for | Planting intelligent humor · Escaping homogeneous category codes | Retail and theater fronts that must read as a sign from the street. · Additions in historic districts that quote local types while still declaring themselves new. |
| Type | Mix two or three faces from different eras | Set headings in serif capitals and treat them as ornament with their frames. |
| Composition | Show the grid, then deviate from part of it | Build a strong front, marking center and entrance with pediment and pilaster. |
| Material | Quoted images, patterns, vivid color; meaningful collisions | Tinted stucco, colored stone, metal trim switching color plane by plane. |
| Caution | Random is not plural. Mix only what you can justify aloud. | Pasting on pediments and pilasters without knowing what they quote loses the irony and leaves a dated theme park facade, so read what in modernism is criticized and who the building addresses. |