ruminations about architecture and design

Monday, April 4, 2011

the last postmodern house


When I showed this picture to a group of high school students, quite a few of them identified it as "modern" according to some criteria for modern architecture that I had explained to them. Although this is the seminal postmodern house, it is definitely more modern than traditional. The unrelenting geometry, the lack of ornament and the non-classical windows are all linked directly to the International Style and its neighbors.

Post-modernism never ended. We have it in every strip mall in America now--at least every strip mall that has gotten a makeover. I had one professor who tied the frequent use of peaked roofs on box stores to the Trenton Bath houses by Louis Kahn. I think that postmodernism would have happened without the efforts of Venturi and Moore and Stirling. Modernism had demonstrated its marketing power for high rises and corporate office parks, but it's hard to sell hamburgers out of the Farnsworth House.

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