Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
Jørn Oberg Utzon was a Danish architect. In 1957, he won an international design competition for his design of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Utzon's revised design, which he completed in 1961, was the basis for the landmark, although it was not completed until 1973.
Glenn Marcus Murcutt is an Australian architect and winner of the 1992 Alvar Aalto Medal, the 2002 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the 2009 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the 2021 Praemium Imperiale. Glenn Murcutt works as a sole practitioner without staff, builds only within Australia and is known to be very selective with his projects. Being the only Australian winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, he is often referred to as Australia's most famous architect.
Starchitect is a portmanteau used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame among the general public. Celebrity status is generally associated with avant-gardist novelty. Developers around the world have proven eager to sign up "top talent" (i.e., starchitects) in hopes of convincing reluctant municipalities to approve large developments, of obtaining financing or of increasing the value of their buildings. A key characteristic is that the starchitecture is almost always "iconic" and highly visible within the site or context. As the status is dependent on current visibility in the media, fading media status implies that architects lose "starchitect" status—hence a list can be drawn up of former "starchitects".
Kenneth Brian Frampton is a British architect, critic and historian. He is regarded as one of the world's leading historians of modernist and contemporary architecture. He is an Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York, where he taught for over 50 years. He is a citizen of Britain and the United States.
Deconstructivism is a postmodern architectural movement which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. Its name is a portmanteau of Constructivism and "Deconstruction", a form of semiotic analysis developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Architects whose work is often described as deconstructivist include Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
Ludwig Christian Friedrich (von) Förster was a German-born Austrian architect. While he was not Jewish, he is known for building Jewish synagogues and churches.
Carlo Lodoli was an Italian architectural theorist, Franciscan priest, mathematician and teacher, whose work anticipated modernist notions of functionalism and truth to materials. He claimed that architectural forms and proportions should be derived from the abilities of the material being used. He is sometimes referred to as the Socrates of architecture since his own writings have been lost his theories are only known from the works of others. Together with architects and architectural theorists including Claude Perrault, Abbé Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier, Lodoli articulated a rational architecture which challenged the prevailing Baroque and Rococo styles.
Christopher Charles Benninger is an Indian architect and urban planner. Born in the US, he permanently migrated to India in 1971. Benninger contributed to the field of critical regionalism and sustainable planning in India.
Demetrios ("Dimitris") Pikionis was a Greek architect, and also painter, of the 20th century who had a considerable influence on modern Greek architecture. He was a founding member of the Association of Greek Art Critics, AICA-Hellas, International Association of Art Critics. His oeuvre includes buildings and urban planning in Athens and the entirety of Greece—including several schools and a playground in Filothei, Athens.
In architecture, Rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. The formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Eighteenth-century progressive art theory opposed the Baroque use of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.
Alexander Tzonis is a Greek-born architect, author, and researcher. He has made contributions to architectural theory, history and design cognition, bringing together scientific and humanistic approaches in a synthesis. Since 1975, he has been collaborating in most projects with Liane Lefaivre. In 1985, he founded and directed Design Knowledge Systems (DKS), a multidisciplinary research institute for the study of architectural theory and the development of design thinking tools at TU Delft. Tzonis is known for his work on the classical canon, history of the emergence and development of modern architectural thinking, creative design by analogy, and introducing the idea of critical regionalism.
The Archaeological Museum of Chios is a museum located on Michalon Street in Chios town, Chios, Greece. Designed by the Greek architects Souzána Antonakáki and Dimitris Antonakakis & Eleni Gousi-Desylla in 1965, it has been widely regarded as a significant building in the architectural history of modern Greece. Constructed in 1966-1971, it covers a total area of 2500 square metres. 1200 square metres of floor space is occupied by the exhibitions.
Aris Konstantinidis was a Greek modernist architect.
Julien-David Le Roy or Leroy was an 18th-century French architect and archaeologist, who engaged in a rivalry with Britons James Stuart and Nicholas Revett over who would publish the first professional description of the Acropolis of Athens since an early 1682 work by Antoine Desgodetz. Le Roy succeeded in printing his Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece four years ahead of Stuart and Revett.
Bagsværd Church is a Lutheran church in Bagsværd on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark. Designed in 1968 by Jørn Utzon, it was completed in 1976. The building is considered to be a masterpiece of contemporary church architecture, especially its bright, naturally illuminated interior and its ceiling straddled with softly rounded vaulting.
Philosophy of architecture is a branch of philosophy of art, dealing with the aesthetic value of architecture, its semantics and relations with the development of culture.
Liane Lefaivre, a Canadian and an Austrian, is o-Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the University of Applied Art in Vienna Austria, now retired.
Oluwole Olumuyiwa (1929–2000) was a Nigerian architect.
Suzana Antonakaki was a Greek architect.
Bagsværd Church, Denmark, designed by Jørn Utzon in 1968
Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952), Finland
