MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN A POST-MODERN ERA

The history of Modern Architecture has been well covered in the classical surveys of Sigfried Giedion, Kenneth Frampton, William Curtis, Alan Colquhoun, and others who traced the developments of this major movement that dominated the architectural landscape of the Twentieth century, until the beginning of the 1970s, when a major contesting movement appeared on the scene, labelled as Post-Modernism. Taking a similar approach, this book explores the different paradigms that have affected the developments of the past six decades, specifically beginning around the 1960s, when a new wind started to blow from within Modernism, and then led to different reactions and counter-reactions, the effects of which are still felt today. This book provides a critical survey, starting with an introductory chapter on the transitional period of the 1960s and then examining the different trends that followed, charting a middle course between the ‘aesthetic’ histories that examine architecture solely in terms of its formal aspects, and the more ‘ideological’ histories that subject it to a critique that often skirts the discussion of its formal aspects. Global in scope, with buildings discussed from every continent, each chapter begins with a theoretical overview of the ‘paradigm’ in question, leading to an examination of its main actors and projects. It concludes with a section on how environmental concerns have featured in architecture throughout the six decades and how thinking and technical innovation have evolved, leading to the current situation, where environmental sustainability is one of the main strands in current and future architecture, along with a new aesthetic architecture which blurs into fine art, and architecture which focuses on technological innovation to develop ever more complex forms.