Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernism, 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.
The International Style or internationalism is a major architectural style that was developed in the 1920s and 1930s and was closely related to modernism and modernist architecture. It was first defined by Museum of Modern Art curators Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932, based on works of architecture from the 1920s. The terms rationalist architecture and modern movement are often used interchangeably with International Style, although the former is mostly used in the English-speaking world to specifically refer to the Italian rationalism, or even the International Style that developed in Europe as a whole.
Critical regionalism is an approach to architecture that strives to counter the placelessness and lack of identity of the International Style, but also rejects the whimsical individualism and ornamentation of Postmodern architecture. The stylings of critical regionalism seek to provide an architecture rooted in the modern tradition, but tied to geographical and cultural context. Critical regionalism is not simply regionalism in the sense of vernacular architecture. It is a progressive approach to design that seeks to mediate between the global and the local languages of architecture.
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).
Archigram was an avant-garde British architectural group whose unbuilt projects and media-savvy provocations "spawned the most influential architectural movement of the 1960's," according to Peter Cook, in the Princeton Architectural Press study Archigram (1999). Neofuturistic, anti-heroic, and pro-consumerist, the group drew inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was expressed through hypothetical projects, i.e., its buildings were never built, although the group did produce what the architectural historian Charles Jencks called "a series of monumental objects (one hesitates in calling them buildings since most of them moved, grew, flew, walked, burrowed or just sank under the water." The works of Archigram had a neofuturistic slant, influenced by Antonio Sant'Elia's works. Buckminster Fuller and Yona Friedman were also important sources of inspiration.
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the late 1950s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism, new classical architecture, and deconstructivism. However, some buildings built after this period are still considered postmodern.
Charles Alexander Jencks was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of Postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
Harold Foss "Hal" Foster is an American art critic and historian. He was educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the City University of New York. He taught at Cornell University from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The New York Five was a group of architects based in New York City whose work was featured in the 1972 book Five Architects. The architects, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier, are also often referred to as "the Whites". Other architects and theorists have been associated with the group, including Werner Seligmann, Kenneth Frampton, Colin Rowe, and Gwathmey's partner Robert Siegel.
Architectural phenomenology is the discursive and realist attempt to understand and embody the philosophical insights of phenomenology within the discipline of architecture. The phenomenology of architecture is the philosophical study of architecture employing the methods of phenomenology.
"The Origin of the Work of Art" is an essay by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking it for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his essay on a series of lectures he had previously delivered in Zurich and Frankfurt during the 1930s, first on the essence of the work of art and then on the question of the meaning of a "thing", marking the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of art.
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.
Christian Norberg-Schulz was a Norwegian architect, author, educator and architectural theorist. Norberg-Schulz was part of the Modernist Movement in architecture and associated with architectural phenomenology.
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.
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.
Richard Francis-Jones is a highly awarded Australian architect. He is the design director of the Multidisciplinary design practice Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp (FJMT), which was renamed in April 2023 as Francis-Jones Carpenter (fjc). He is a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Graham Cairns is an author and academic. He is the founder and director of the research organisation AMPS Architecture Media Politics Society. He is Executive Editor of its associated peer-reviewed scholarly journal Architecture_MPS, ISSN 2050-9006, published by UCL Press. He researches and publishes on architecture and its relationship with visual culture and socio-politics. He has delivered talks, taught, ran workshops and held various positions at universities internationally.
Jorge Otero-Pailos is an artist, preservation architect, theorist and educator, commonly associated with experimental preservation and the journal Future Anterior. He is best known for his “The Ethics of Dust” ongoing series of artworks derived from the cleaning of monuments, which was exhibited at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Westminster Hall, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and SFMoMA, amongst others. He is Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Suzana Antonakaki was a Greek architect.
