THE LANGUAGE OF

POST-MODERN ARCHITECT
CHARLES JENCKS .

REVISED ENLARGED EDITION

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 THE LANGUAGE OF
POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE
REVISED ENLARGED EDITION

CHARLES A. JENCKS

TQZZOLI
To Maggie Keswick

Frontispiece
J. V. RIGHTER, P. ROSE and P. LANKIN, Pavilion Sojxante-
Dix, St Sauveur, Canada, 1976-8. This ski lodge shows the ‘double-
coding’ characteristic of Post-Modernism, half modern with its
geometric forms and flat top arch and half traditional with its Palladian
exedra and false front. Some of these meanings relate to the local
buildings in St Sauveur, whereas the grand gesture is appropriate for
this public sport. The exedra, holding sun lamps, embraces the stage
toward which the skiers aim. (Chai french).

Front cover
MINORU TAKEYAMA, Wi-Ban-Kahn, first design 1970, redesigned
1977. Blown up. graphic devices in the cornmercial vernacular
advertise this collection of 14 bars in an area of Tokyo where there
are 20,000. The ‘slang of the street’ is combined with pure geometry,
the typical mixed coding of Post-Modernism. (Takeyama).

Published in the United States of America

in 1977 by:
‘Rizzo INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, INC.
712 Fifth Avenue/New York 10019

First published in Great Britain in 1977 by:

Academy Editions, London

All rights reserved.

No parts of this book may be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without permission of
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-62545

ISBN: Paper 0-8478-0167-5

Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
PART ONE The Death of Modern Architecture
Crisis in architecture
Univalent form :
Univalent formalists and inadvertent symbolists
Univalent content . p ;

PART TWO The Modes of Architectural Communication .

Metaphor
Words.
Syntax
Semantics

PART THREE Post-Modern Architecture

Historicism, the Beginnings of PM
Straight Revivalism. :
Neo-Vernacular
Adhocism + Urbanist= Contextual
Metaphor and Metaphysics
Post-Modern Space
Conclusion — Radical Eclecticism ?

NOTES

INDEX
 INTRODUCTION
This book and its long-winded title have had an unusual intensity and understanding, and it is this discontinuity
history which require a little explanation. A situation has in taste cultures which creates both the theoretical base
been developing in architecture over the last twenty years and ‘dual coding’ of Post-Modernism. The dual image of
which is now in the process of focusing very quickly into the Classical temple is a helpful visual formula to keepin
a new style and approach. It has grown out of Modern mind as the unifying factor while different departures from.
architecture in much the way Mannerist architecture grew Modernism are presented in this book. The buildings most
out of the High Renaissance — as a partial inversion and characteristic of Post-Modernism show a marked duality,
modification of the former language of architecture. This conscious schizophrenia.
development is now generally being called Post-Modern The word Post-Modern was first put into widespread
architecture because the term is wide enough to en- circulation in the art world, and it has become, since about
compass the variety of departures, and yet still indicate 1976, a phrase applied to recent trends which go counter
its derivation from Modernism. Like its progenitor the to orthodox Modernism (see appendix for sources).
movement is committed to engaging current issues, to Picked up by Newsweek and related magazines the
changing the present, but unlike the avant-garde it does phrase was then applied indiscriminately to any buildings
away with the notion of continual innovation or incessant which looked different from the rectilinear boxes of the
revolution. International Style. ‘Post-Modern’ thus meant any building
A Post-Modern building is, if a short definition is needed, with funny kinks in it, or sensuous imagery, a definition
one which speaks on at least two levels at once: to other which, the reader will see, | find a bit too generous. This
architects and a concerned minority who care about sense of the term, first used by Nikolaus Pevsner in his
specifically architectural meanings, and to the public at attack on the ‘Anti-Pioneers’, 1966, includes some
large, or the local inhabitants, who care about other sculptural decorators and confectioneers | would also
issues concerned with comfort, traditional building and a condemn, but for quite different reasons than Pevsner:
way of life. Thus Post-Modern architecture looks hybrid their buildings do not communicate coherently because
and, if a visual definition is needed, rather like the front of they are coded exclusively on an aesthetic level. In
a Classical Greek temple. The latter is a geometric archi- simple terms they are misfired sculpture, unintended
tecture of elegantly fluted columns below, and a riotous metaphors which are as Malapropistic as Modern archi-
billboard of struggling giants above, a pediment painted tecture itself (see pages 18-21).
in deep reds and blues. The architects can read the implicit So the term ‘Post-Modern’ has to be clarified and used
metaphors and subtle meanings of the column drums, more precisely to cover, in general, only those designers
whereas the public can respond to the explicit metaphors who are aware of architecture as a /anguage — hence one
and messages of the sculptors. Of course everyone part of my title. Paul Goldberger and a few American
responds somewhat to both codes of meaning, as they do critics have used the term this way and focused on other
in a Post-Modern building, but certainly with different important qualities ; its attention to historical memory and
local context. These aspects are significant, but as the last
Above chapter shows, they are only part of the story. For Post-
1 DUAL CODING, Temple of Artemis at Corcyra, early 6th c. B.C, Modern architecture also takes a positive approach
The typical Greek pediment shows the mixture of meanings, popular towards metaphorical buildings, the vernacular, and a
and elite, which could be read by different groups of people, on new, ambiguous kind of space. Hence only a plural
different levels. Here the running Gorgon, Medusa, with her snakes,
definition will capture its many heads, something | have
and the rampant lion-panthers, and the various acts of murder are
tried to clarify with the evolutionary tree on page 80, and
all represented dramatically in strong colour, This representational
art literally breaks the abstract geometry at the top, but elsewhere
the history of the tradition in the last chapter, For the same
harmony and implicit metaphor reign. Human proportions, visual
reason, there is no one architect who altogether combines
refinements and a pure architecture of syntactic elements also have these various strands, or one building which summarises
their place. Two different languages, each with its own integrity them. If forced to point at an entirely convincing Post.
and audience. Modernist | would instance Antonio Gaudi, obviously not
 INTRODUCTION

a possibility, as reviewers were quick to point out,

because he was a Pre-Modernist. The first edition of this
book ended with his work since it used a rich language so
convincingly to communicate important meanings, but
now | have cut out this section for reasons of space and
consistency. | still regard Gaudi as the touchstone for
Post-Modernism, a model with which to compare any
recent buildings to see if they are really metaphorical,
‘contextual’ and rich in a precise way, but have confined
my examples to the present.
The ambiguity of the prefix ‘Post’ has its amusing and
powerful aspects, which partly explain why it has become
current. People are naturally exhilarated at the prospect
of being ‘Post-Present’. In the middle sixties Daniel Bell
wrote on the Post-Industrial Society, with the implication
that some fortunate Westerners could escape laborious
toil altogether. There was the short-lived ‘Post-Painterly
Abstraction’, a movement of opposition as it states, and
more recently President Carter has come out in favour of a
new foreign policy based on the ‘Post-War’ world. Very
convenient this slippery word, it simply states where
you've left, not arrived.
But the mind rebels at all this linguistic paradox: how
can we be beyond the modern age if we're still alive?
Have we banished the present tense like the Futurists
and located Elysium in a perpetual state of tomorrow 2 MORRIS LAPIDUS, Eden Roc Hotel, Miami, 1954. Lapidus started
(or yesterday)? If so we might look forward to a ‘Post- the Ersatz styling of large hotels with his confections during the
Natal’, or is it ‘Post-Coital’ depression, as we reap the fifties in Florida. He mixes all the popular periods of interior design —
benefits of evading the present. Louis XIV, Robert Adam, Moderne Streamlined — in a distinctive but
Such thoughts made me consider Post-Modern archi- unclassifiable style. This one is ‘it-could-be-Baroque’. Lapidus came
tecture a temporary label when | first used it in 1975, to this commercial formula through shop designs, and now it has
been applied with success throughout the world — as the following
but now I’ve changed my mind. Partly this is due to those
London hotels show. (Morris Lapidus Associates, Architects).
overtones of ‘modern’ which are still kept in the hybrid
title; its power and contemporaneity. Architects, artists,
people in general want to keep up to date, even if they
don’t want to relinquish their cultural past as the avant-
garde has often done. We can see in the Renaissance an phasise that the word ‘modern’ still has an ambiguous
instructive parallel when the word ‘modern’ was first put power, as it did for Vasari, because it refers to a con-
into currency. temporaneous, growing climate of opinion, and it has
At that time they had debates, and confusions, similar this power even for those who would deny, refute or
and relevant to our own. Filarete, for instance, claimed he criticise it. Post-Modernism thus gains some of these
‘used to like modern (sc//., Gothic) buildings’ until the overtones even while it attacks the concept of the
time ‘when | began to appreciate classical ones, | came to avant-garde and the Ze/tge/st.
be disgusted with the former...’ But then as the re- Secondly, and more importantly, the label describes
naissance of antiquity proceeded, the Gothic style the duality of the present situation quite well. Most, if
became old-fashioned and, finally with Vasari, the not all, the architects of the moment have been trained
equation was reversed: the older, classical style was in Modernism yet have moved beyond or counter to this
perfected, that is to say /mproved (or so they thought) as training. They have not yet arrived at a new synthetic goal,
the new, ‘good modern style’ (buona maniera moderna), nor have they given up entirely their Modernist sensibility,
Thus Renaissance writers were confused over the use of but rather they are at a half-way house, half Modern, half
this term, moderna was applied to the Gothic, the classical Post. If we look at Venturi, Stern or Moore’s work — three
Roman and its revival — three different modes. No matter of the hard-core PMs — we can see all the quotes from Le
how committed to the past the architects were they still Corbusier, Kahn, the twenties and all the references to
called it ‘modern’, as if the term had (and still has?) an Palladio, Lutyens and Route 66. There is no doubt such
unchallengeable hold on the present tense — on being work is schizophrenically coded, something you'd expect
‘now’. Only after Giorgio Vasari systematically and con- after a movement has broken down and the architects have
sciously used moderna to mean the revival style did his moved on. For we are talking here of an evolution out of
usage become common and accepted. or away from a shared position, not a revolutionary
The battle of the ‘Ancients and Moderns’ has been schism with the immediate past, and so one of the really
fought many times since then with equal confusion in surprising, even defining, characteristics of Post-Modern-
usage, and in a sense we are again in such a predicament ism emerges: it includes Modernist style and iconography
with the adversaries not only disagreeing, but also using as a potential approach, to be used where this is ap-
their basic words differently. This is not the place to propriate (on factories, hospitals and a few Offices).
analyse differing versions of ‘the modern’, an analysis Whereas Modernism like Mies van der Rohe was
which I’m sure will occur as the attacks and counter- exclusivist, PM is so totally inclusive as to allow even its
attacks mount in vehemence. But it is the point to em- purist Opposite a place when this is justifiable. Put

7
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

another way, Post-Modernism is finding a rationale for centrated on the ‘language’ of my title, something
twenties revivalism, in an era when all revivals are possible Geoffrey Broadbent pointed out, and now | hope the
and each depends on an argument from p/ausi/bility, other part is more adequately represented. But | don’t
since it certainly can’t be proved as necessary. claim a definitive treatment to this continuing discussion
Modern architecture suffered from elitism. Post- and look forward to other books on the subject, one by
Modernism is trying to get over that elitism not by Robert Stern which is under way, an issue of The Harvard
dropping it, but rather by extending the language of Architecture Review, and an exhibition at MOMA — soon
architecture in many different ways — into the vernacular, to be rechristened the Museum of Post-Modern Art
towards tradition and the commercial slang of the street. (following Douglas Davis et a/).
Hence the double-coding, the architecture which speaks As | acknowledged previously, | owe a debt of gratitude
to the elite and the man on the street. It’s of course not a to Conrad Jameson for clarifying my views and reading
very easy way to design at first, before the dualism the text. Even more than before | now see his uncom-
becomes conventionalised. But when a tradition grows promising advocacy of past models, pattern books based
from this base, like the classical Greek mentioned at the On vernacular, as a challenge to Modernism and Post-
outset, it can be much richer and more dynamic than a Modernism, although | find the implications reductive and
pure elitism. Why? Because it can speak to other too restrictive. And again my thanks go to Maggie
architects, the professional elite who care about and can Keswick whose opinions changed and sharpened so
make fine discriminations in a fast-changing language, many of my own, and to her the dedication of the book, tor
and it can speak to the users who want beauty, a tradi- being tenacious about clearing up some matters of style
tional ambience and a particular way of life. Both groups, and some of the more unlovable prose.
often opposed and often using different codes of per- Also |'m grateful for the efforts Haig Beck and Jackie
ception, have to be satisfied. And architecture, which has Cooper have expended on the text, the former for having
been on an enforced diet for fifty years, can only enjoy initiated and criticised the book and the latter for going
itself and grow stronger and deeper as a result. way beyond the call of duty and reading it, slowly,
All the above helps explain this new edition and why backwards — to cut out hidden typographical errors.
there is a new last chapter which outlines the tradition of Lastly | am thankful to Andreas Papadakis who has kept
PM as it developed from the fifties. Previously | had con- an interest in the book and encouraged this new version.

Appendix

The first use of Post-Modern in an architectural context Technische Hogeschool, Eindhoven, July, 1975, pp.
that |!am aware of is way back in 1949, and by Joseph 78-103 for my article ‘The Rise of Post-Modern
Hudnut, in an article, ‘The Post-Modern House’ from Architecture’, later reprinted in the AAQ issue on the
Architecture and the Spirit of Man, Cambridge, 1949, subject, London, Number 4, 1975. Further articles were
republished in Lewis Mumford’s Roots of Contemporary ‘The Revisionists of Modern Architecture’ concerned with
American Architecture, Reinhold Publishing Corp., New a day of the RIBA Conference in July 1976, published in
York, 1952. As Penny Sparke pointed out, in a review of Architecture: Opportunities, Achievements, edited by
the first edition of this book (Artscribe No. 8), Nikolaus Barbara Goldstein, RIBA Publications, London, 1977,
Pevsner used the phrase ‘post-modern style’ — but he pp. 55-62. The issue of Architectura/ Design, April 1977,
only used it once, and then to attack those he also called is devoted to the subject and there | discuss the genealogy
‘Neo-Expressionist’. Since these architects, by and large, of the tradition, pp. 269-271. Finally, an article in The
do not treat architecture as a language, nor use it to com- Sunday Times, May 27, 1977, pp. 30-1, ‘More Modern
municate intended meanings, | would call them Late than Modern’, illustrates three aspects of Post- Modernism
Modernists, rather than Post-Modernists (see my text (participation, ornament and city pluralism).
above). Pevsner’s ‘Architecture in Our Time, The Anti- Joseph Rykwert, in a sense similar to Pevsner, used the
Pioneers’ was published in The Listener, December 29, term ‘post-Modern Movement style’ in ‘Ornament is
1966, and January 5, 1967. No Crime’, Studio /nternational, September 1975, p. 95.
Newsweek used the term (‘Rise of the Come-Hither Erwin Panofsky discusses uses of the terms moderna
Look’, January 17, 1977) to refer to the new faceted glass etc. in his Rena/ssance and Renascences in Western Art
towers in America with their sleek, sensuous surfaces — (1960), from where these quotes are taken. See the
otherwise not distinguishable from Modern ones. Paul Paladin edition, London, 1970, pp. 19-21, 33-35.
Goldberger, in articles on Charles Moore, Hardy, Holzman The Harvard Architecture Review plans its first issue on
and Pfeiffer and others has used it to refer to an archi- Post-Modernism in early 1978, and Arthur Drexler fore-
tecture which Is rich in symbolism and historical allusion. sees an exhibition on the subject in February 1979, at the
In conversation, February 1977, he stressed the importance Museum of Modern Art.
of the picturesque image — something | find rather too C. Ray Smith uses the term in his Supermannerism, New
wide and marginal as a definer. Drexler also questioned, Attitudes in Post-Modern Architecture, E. P. Dutton,
in conversation, his application of the term to HHP. See New York, 1977, but just in his title. He treats several of
Goldberger’s pieces in the New York Times Sunday the American architects also considered here. Various
Magazine, January 16, 1977, February 20, 1977, etc. lecture series on Post-Modernism were put on. at Yale,
| first used the term in April 1975 and then at a seminar IAUS New York, UCLA, Columbia, in 1976.
in Eindhoven; see Architecture-inner Town Government,

8
PART ONE
The Death of Modern Architecture

Happily, we can date the death of modern architecture to a Good form was to lead to good content, or at least good
precise moment in time. Unlike the legal death of a person, conduct; the intelligent planning of abstract space was to
which is becoming a complex affair of brain waves versus promote healthy behaviour.
heartbeats, modern architecture went out with a bang.
That many people didn’t notice, and no one was seen to
mourn, does not make the sudden extinction any less of a
fact, and that many designers are still trying to administer
the kiss of life does not mean that it has been miraculously
resurrected. No, it expired finally and completely in 1972,
after having been flogged to death remorselessly for ten
years by critics such as Jane Jacobs; and the fact that
many so-called modern architects still go around practis-
ing a trade as if it were alive can be taken as one of the
great curiosities of our age (like the British Monarchy
giving life-prolonging drugs to ‘The Royal Company of
Archers’ or ‘The Extra Women of the Bedchamber’).
Modern Architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on
July 15, 1972 at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the in-
famous Pruitt-lgoe scheme, or rather several of its slab
blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.
Previously it had been vandalised, mutilated and defaced
by its black inhabitants, and although millions of dollars
3 MINORU YAMASAKI, Pru/tt-/goe Housing, St Louis, 1952-55.
were pumped back, trying to keep it alive (fixing the
Several slab blocks of this scheme were blown up in 1972 after they
broken elevators, repairing smashed windows, repainting),
were continuously vandalised. The crime rate was higher than other
it was finally put out of its misery. Boom, boom, boom. developments, and Oscar Newman attributed this, in his book
Without doubt, the ruins should be kept, the remains Defensible Space, to the long corridors, anonymity, and lack of
should have a preservation order slapped on them, so that controlled semi-private space. Another factor: it was designed in a
we keep a live memory of this failure in planning and purist language at variance with the architectural codes of the
architecture. Like the folly or artificial ruin — constructed inhabitants.
on the estate of an eighteenth-century English eccentric
to provide him with instructive reminders of former
vanities and glories — we should learn to value and
protect our former disasters. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘experi-
ence is the name we give to our mistakes’, and there is a
certain health in leaving them judiciously scattered around
the landscape as continual lessons.
Pruitt-lgoe was constructed according to the most pro-
gressive ideals of CIAM (the Congress of International
Modern Architects) and it won an award from the
mire 14
American Institute of Architects when it was designed in
ei0 wi
1951. It consisted of elegant slab blocks fourteen storeys
high with rational ‘streets in the air’ (which were safe from
cars, but as it turned out, not safe from crime) ; ‘sun, space
and greenery’, which Le Corbusier called the ‘three
essential joys of urbanism’ (instead of conventional streets,
4 PRUITT-IGOE AS RUIN. Like the Berlin Wall and the collapse of
gardens and semi-private space, which he banished). It
the high-rise block, Ronan Point, in England, 1968, this ruin has
had a separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the become a great architectural symbol. It should be preserved as a
provision of play space, and local amenities such as warning. Actually, after continued hostilities and disagreements,
laundries, creches and gossip centres — all rational sub- some blacks have managed to form a community in parts of the
stitutes for traditional patterns. Moreover, its Purist style, remaining habitable blocks — another symbol, in its way, that events
its clean, salubrious hospital metaphor, was meant to instil, and ideology, as well as architecture, determine the success of the
by good example, corresponding virtues in the inhabitants. environment.
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Alas, such simplistic ideas, taken over from philosophic

doctrines of Rationalism, Behaviourism and Pragmatism,
proved as irrational as the philosophies themselves.
Modern Architecture, as the son of the Enlightenment,
was an heir to its congenital naivities, naivities too great
and awe-inspiring to warrant refutation in a book on
mere building. | will concentrate here, in this first part, on
the demise of a very small branch of a big bad tree; but to
be fair it should be pointed out that modern architecture
is the offshoot of modern painting, the modern movements
in all the arts. Like rational schooling, rational health and
rational design of women’s bloomers, it has the faults of an
age trying to reinvent itself totally on rational grounds.
These shortcomings are now well known, thanks to the
writings of Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, E. F. Schumacher,
Michael Oakshott and Hannah Arendt, and the overall
misconceptions of Rationalism will not be dwelt upon.
They are assumed for my purposes. Rather than a deep
extended attack on modern architecture, showing how
its ills relate very closely to the prevailing philosophies of
the modern age, | will attempt a caricature, a polemic.
The virtue of this genre (as well as its vice) is its license to
cut through the large generalities with a certain abandon
and enjoyment, overlooking all the exceptions and
subtleties of the argument. Caricature is of course not the
whole truth. Daumier’s drawings didn’t really show what
nineteenth-century poverty was about, but rather gave a
highly selective view of some truths. Let us then romp
through the desolation of modern architecture, and the
destruction of our cities, like some Martian tourist out on
an earthbound excursion, visiting the archaeological sites
5 RICHARD SEIFERT, Penta Hote/, London, 1972. The English with a superior disinterest, bemused by the sad but
government subsidised these kinds of hotels in the late sixties to instructive mistakes of a former architectural civilisation.
cope with the tourist boom. Twenty or so, with about 500 bedrooms, After all, since it is fairly dead, we might as well enjoy
sprang up on the main route in from the airport. On the outside they
picking over the corpse.
are uptight International Style, on the inside Lapidus Ersatz. (R.
Seifert & Partners).
Crisis in architecture
In 1974 Malcolm MacEwen wrote a book of the above
title which summarised the English view of what was
wrong with the Modern Movement (capitalised, like all
world religions), and what we should do about it. His
summary was masterful, but his prescriptions were wildly
off the mark: the remedy was to overhaul a tiny institu-
tional body, the Royal Institute of British Architects, by
changing a style here and a heart there — as if these sorts
of things would make the mul/tip/e causes of the crisis go
away. Well, let me make use of his effective analysis, not
his solution, taking as a typical grotesque of modern
architecture one building type: modern hotels.
The new Penta Hotel in London has 914 bedrooms,
which is almost nine times the average large hotel of
fifty years ago, and it is ‘themed’ (a word of decorators)
in the International Style and a mode which could be
called Vassarely-Airport-Lounge-Moderne. There are
about twenty of these leviathans near each other, on the
way to the London Airport (it is known in the trade as
‘Hotellandia’), and they create a disruption in scale and
city life which amounts to the occupation of an invading
army — a role tourists tend to fulfil.
These newly formed battalions with their noble-phoney
names include The Churchill (500 bedrooms, named after
Pe
Sir Winston and themed in the Pompeian-Palladian Style
6 PENTA HOTEL, interior themed in the Vassarely-Airport-Lounge by way of Robert Adam) ; the Imperial Hotel (720 bed-
style. The irony that the same interiors could be found where the rooms, International outside, fibreglass Julius Caesar
tourist left home has not escaped many critics. Nonetheless this inside) ; and the Park Tower (300 bedrooms, themed in
tradition continues to thrive. Corn-on-the-Cob and various sunburst motifs inside).

10
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

non Rt

7 The CHURCHILL HOTEL, London, 1971. A typical combination of revival

style with modern services. The brochure reads: ‘Your car glides to a stop under
the cover of the porte cochére. The door is opened. Your fleeting glance sees
faces...uniforms...a hand touching a hat brim in half salute... good
evening, sir... this way, please...and you enter the lobby. Before you
stretches a hall. Cool and distant and almost white. Crystal chandeliers bathe
the marble floors and columns in soft white light. There are people but it is
rather quiet. Composed feelings. And elegant. This is the Churchill.’ If Robert
Adam only had air-conditioners and down lighters he might have achieved
something as cool and distant too.

ee
a
a
Ce> 4

|Cem

8 RICHARD SEIFERT, The Park Tower, London, 1973. Compared to a gaso-

metre, stacked television sets, and corn-on-the-cob, this modelled exterior was
an attempt to get away from the flat facade. The interior is themed with the
stock-in-trade sunburst motif. (R. Seifert & Partners).

11
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

A recurring aspect of these hotels, built between 1969 9 AIR-CONDITIONING at the E//zabetta Hotel
and 1973, is that they provide very modern services, such 1972. The incorporation of many modern services — electric can-
as air-conditioning, themed in old-world styles which delabra, muzak, surveillance systems, telephone, alarm bell, elevators
vary from Rococco, Gothic, Second Empire, to a com- — within Ersatz styles produces incongruous juxtapositions. A surreal
humour is sometimes sought, although underplayed. The ingenuity
bination of all three styles together. The formula. of
is undeniable, and some hotels, like the Elizabetta, have the courage
ancient style and modern plumbing has proved inexorably of their own vulgarity.
successful in our consumer society, and this Ersatz has
been the major commercial challenge to classical modern
architecture. But in one important way, in terms of archi-
tectural production, Ersatz and modern architecture
contribute equally to alienation and what MacEwen calls
‘the crisis’. | have tried to untangle the different causes of
this situation, at least eleven in number, and show how
they operate in the two modern modes of architectural
10 production (listed in the two right hand columns of the
diagram).
For contrast, the first column on the left refers to the old
system of private architectural production (operating
largely before World War One) where an. architect knew
his client personally, probably shared his values and
aesthetic code. An extreme example of this is Lord Bur-
lington’s Chiswick Villa, an unusual situation where the
architect was the builder (or contractor), client and user all
at once. Hence there was no disparity between his rather
elite and esoteric code (a spare, intellectual version of the
Palladian language) and his way of life. The same identity
exists today, although on a more modest scale and as a
relative rarity — the ‘Handmade Houses’ which are built gs

outside urban centres in America, or the boat house

community in Sausalito, in San Francisco Bay, where 28x
.

10 ‘CRISIS IN ARCHITECTURE’ a diagram of three systems of emphasised several of these eleven causes of the crisis, but clearly
architectural production. The left column shows the implications of the causes are multiple and work as a system tied into the economic
the old, private system of production, while the right columns show sphere. The question is — how many variables must be changed for
the two modern systems. Critics of modern architecture have the system to change?

SYSTEM 1 — PRIVATE SYSTEM 2 — PUBLIC SYSTEM 3 — DEVELOPER

private client is public client and developer client and
architect user architect users differ architect users differ Z|

1 ECONOMIC Mini-Capitalist Welfare-State Monopoly-Capitalist

SPHERE (restricted money) Capitalist (has money)
(lacks money)
aS
Z MOTIVATION aesthetic inhabit solve user's make make
ideological use problem housing money money
| to use el

3 RECENT Too various to list progress, efficiency, Same as System 2

IDEOLOGY large scale, anti-history, plus pragmatic
Brutalism, etc.

4 RELATION local client user remote users move remote and absent
TO PLACE architect in place architects to place changing clients
draughtsmen
=
5 CLIENT’S Expert Friend Anonymous Doctor Hired Servant
RELATION same partners changing designers doesn't know
TO ARCHITECT small team large team designers or users

6 SIZE OF “small” “some large” “too big”

PROJECTS

i SIZE/TYPE OF small large large

ARCHITECT'S partnership centralised centralised
OFFICE

8 METHOD OF slow, responsive, impersonal, anonymous, quick, cheap,

DESIGN innovative, conservative, low cost and proven
expensive formulae

9 ACCOUNTABILITY to client-user to local council to stockholders, a

and bureaucracy developers and board

10 TYPES OF houses, museums, housing and shopping centres,

BUILDING universities, etc. infrastructure hotels, offices,
factories, etc.

11 STYLE multiple impersonal pragmatic

safe, contemporary, cliché and
vandal-proofed bombastic

12
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

each boat house is built by the inhabitant in a different,

11 personalised style. These self-built houses testify to the
close correspondence there can be between meaning
and form when architectural production is at a small scale
and controlled by the inhabitant.
Other factors which influenced this type of production
in the past include the m/ni-capitalist economy where
money was restricted. The architect or speculative builder
designed relatively sma// parts of the city at one go; he
_ worked s/ow/y, responding to well-established needs,
and he was accountab/e to the client, who was invariably
the user of the building as well. All these factors, and
more that are shown in the diagram, combined to produce 11 SAUSALITO BAY BOAT HOUSES, 1960-__. Like the Handmade
an architecture understood by the client and in a language Houses of California, these boat houses depend on the oldest form of
shared by others. architectural production — se/f-bu//d. Each one is tailor-made by the
The second and third columns refer to the way most inhabitant in a different style, and you find cheek-by-jowl, a Swiss
architecture is produced today and show why it is out of chalet boat house and a converted caravan, or here, the Venturi style
scale with historic cities, and alienating to both architects next to the A-frame Fuller style.
and society. First, in the economic sphere, it’s either
produced for a public welfare agency which lacks the
money necessary to carry out the socialist intentions of the
architects, or it is funded by a capitalist agency whose
monopoly creates gigantic investments and correspond-
ingly gigantic buildings. For instance, the Penta Hotel is
owned by the European Hotel Corporation, a consortium
of five airlines and five international banks. These ten
corporations together create a monolith which by financial
definition must appeal to mass taste, at a middle-class
12 level. There is nothing inherently inferior about this taste
culture; it’s rather the economic imperatives determining
the size and predictability of the result which have
coerced the architecture into becoming so relentlessly
pretentious and uptight. 12 PENTA RESTAURANT interior with its royal, fibreglass cartouche
Dieu-et-mon-dro/t. Actually Holiday Inns, the biggest multinational
Secondly, in this type of production, the architect's
in hotels, prefabricates these fibreglass symbols and then sends them
motivation is either to solve a problem, or in the case of
out to some of their 1,700 concessions. The multinationals have been
the developer's architect, to make money. Why the latter instrumental in standardising world taste and creating a world
motivation doesn’t produce effective architecture as it did ‘consumption community’. The National Biscuit Company foresees
in the past remains a mystery, (unless it is connected with the goal of two billion biscuit munchers eating their standard average
the compelling pressures of predictable taste). But it is cookie.
quite clear why ‘problems’ don’t produce architecture.
They produce instead ‘rational’ solutions to oversimplified
questions in a chaste style.
Yet the greatest cause of alienation is the s/ze of today’s
projects: the hotels, garages, shopping centres and hous-
ing estates which are ‘too big’ — like the architectural
offices which produce them. How big is too big? Ob-
viously there is no easy answer to this, and we await the
detailed study of different building types. But the equation
can be formulated in general, and it might be called ‘the
Ivan Illich Law of Diminishing Architecture’ (parallel to
his discoveries of counter-productive growth in other
fields). It could be stated as follows: ‘for any building
type there is an upper limit to the number of people who
can be served before the quality of the environment falls’.
The service of the large London hotels has fallen because
of staff shortages and absenteeism, and the quality of
tourism has declined because the tourists are treated as
so many cattle to be shunted from one ambience to the
13 next in a smooth and continuous flow. Programmed,

13 DISNEYLAND, opened in 1955 as a dream of Walt Disney,

started the new form of ride-through parks where people are put on
a continuously moving assembly line and then shunted past
‘experiences’. Sometimes the ride is effortless and you aren't aware
of the mechanisms. At other times long queues form and you are
ushered into people pens. Multinationals, such as Pepsi, Ford,
General Electric and Gulf, have heavily investedin Disney Enterprises.

13
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

continuously-rolling pleasure, the shunting of people into

queues, pens and moving lines, a process which was per-
fected by Walt Disney, has now been applied to all areas
of mass tourism, resulting in the controlled bland ex-
perience. What started as a search for adventure has
ended in total predictability. Excessive growth and
rationalism have contradicted the very goals that the
institution of tourism and planned travel was set up to
deliver.
The same is true of large architectural offices. Here
design suffers because no one has control over the whole
job from beginning to end, and because the building has to
be produced quickly and efficiently according to proven
formulae (the rationalisation of taste into clichés based on
statistical averages of style and theme). Furthermore, with
large buildings such as the Penta, the architecture has to
be produced for a client whom no one in the office knows,
(that is, the ten corporations), and who is, in any case,
not the user of the building.In short, buildings today are
nasty, brutal and too big because they are produced for
profit by absentee developers, for absentee landlords for
absent users whose taste is assumed as clichéd.
There is, then, not one cause of the crisis in architecture,
but a system of causes; and clearlyto change just the
style or ideology of the architects, as is proposed by many
critics, isn't going to change the whole situation. No
amount of disaffection for the International Style or
Brutalism, for high-rise, bureaucracy, capitalism, gigantism, 15,16 MIES VAN DER ROHE, Seagram Building, New York, 1958.
Corner detail and plan. The plane of |-beams is extended out a few
or whatever else is the latest scapegoat is going to change
inches from the column line so that the corner is clearly articulated
things suddenly and produce a humane environment.It
with angles of steel. The interior curtains now can only be raised to
would seem we have to change the whole system of pre-selected, harmonious positions. Mies kept full-scale |-beam
architectural production at once, all eleven causes to- details by his desk to get the proportions just so. He thought this
gether. And yet perhaps such a radical move is not member was the modern equivalent of the Doric column, but as
necessary. Perhaps some causes are redundant, some are Herbert Read once said: ‘In the back of every dying civilisation sticks
more important than others, and we only have to change a a bloody Doric column’.

et
recto
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i aeisani
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BW i es
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tl rT
14 MIES VAN DER ROHE, Lake Shore Drive Housing, Chicago,
1950. The first classic use of the curtain wall sets the formula for
further variations which Mies pursued to the end of his life. Here the
black steel facade line is without depth and the curtains behind the
glass are allowed a random setting — ‘problems’ which Mies later
‘solved’. The greater problem, that housing looks like offices, was
never raised. (John Winter).

14
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

combination of a few. For instance, if large architectural

offices were divided into small teams, given a certain
financial and design control, and put in close relation to
the ultimate users of the building, this might be enough.
Who knows? Experiments must be tried with different
variables. All that can be said at this point is that the
situation has systemic causes which have to be varied as a
structure if deep changes are to be made. | will pursue
only two causes of the crisis: the way the modern move-
ment has impoverished architectural language on the level
of form; and has itself suffered an impoverishment on the
Teannant) (OA
level of content, the social goals for which it actually built. “488

Univalent form
For the general aspect of an architecture created around
one (or a few) simplified values, | will use the term
univalence. No doubt in terms of expression the archi-
tecture of Mies van der Rohe and his followers is the most
univalent formal system we have, because it makes use of
few materials and a single, right-angled geometry.
Characteristically this reduced style was justified as
rational (when it was uneconomic), and universal (when
it fitted only a few functions). The glass-and-steel-box
has become the single most used form in modern archi-
tecture, and it signifies throughout the world ‘office
building’.
Yet in the hands of Mies and his disciples this impover-
ished system has become fetishised to the point where it
overwhelms all other concerns (in a similar way the
leather boot dominates the shoe fetishist and distracts
him from larger concerns). Are |-beams and plate glass 17 C. F. MURPHEY, Chicago Civic Center, 1964. In terms of Mies’
appropriate to housing? That is a question Mies would curtain wall this solution shows the horizontal emphasis —long spans
dismiss as irrelevant. The whole question of appropriate- and underplayed verticals in brown, especially rusted steel. Except
ness, ‘decorum’, which every architect from Vitruvius to for the Picasso sculpture out front, you would not recognise the
civic importance of this building, nor the various political functions
Lutyens debated, is now rendered obsolete by Mies’
that occur within. (Hedrich-Blessing).
universal grammar and universal contempt for place and
function. (He considered function as ephemeral, or so
provisional as to be unimportant.) building task (a meeting place for the citizens of Chicago).
14 His first, classic use of the curtain wall was on housing, How could an architect justify such inarticulate building ?
not for an office — and obviously not for functional or The answer lies in terms of an ideology which celebrates
communicational reasons, but because he was obsessed process, which symbolises only the changes in technology
by perfecting certain formal problems. In this case, Mies and building material. The modern movement fetishised
concentrated on the proportion of the |-beam to panel, the means of production, and Mies, in one of those rare,
m5, set-back, glass area, supporting columns and articulating cryptic aphorisms that is too hilarious, or rather delirious,
16 lines. He kept full-scale details of these members close to to let pass, gave expression to this fetish.
his draughting board so he'd never lose sight of his loved | see in industrialization the central problem of
ones. building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out
A larger question thus didn’t arise: what if housing this industrialization, the social, economic, technical,
looked like offices, or what if the two functions were and also artistic problems will be readily solved.
indistinguishable ? Clearly the net result would be to (19242
diminish and compromise both functions by equating What about the theological and gastronomic ‘problems’?
them: working and living would become interchangeable The bizarre confusion to which this can lead is shown by
on the most banal, literal level, and unarticulated on a Mies himself in the Illinois Institute of Technology campus
higher, metaphorical plane. The psychic overtones to in Chicago, a large enough collection of varied functions
these two different activities would remain unexplored, for us to regard it as a microcosm of his surrealist world.
accidental, truncated. Basically, he has used his universal grammar of steel
Another masterpiece of the modern movement, the |-beams along with an infill of beige brick and glass to
7 Chicago Civic Center, designed by a follower of Mies, speak about all the important functions: housing,
also shows these confusions in communication. The long assembly, classrooms, student union, shops, chapel, and so
horizontal spans and dark corten steel express ‘office forth. If we look at a series of these buildings in turn we
building’, ‘power’, ‘purity’, and the variations in surface can see how confusing his language is, both literally and
express ‘mechanical equipment’; but these primitive (and metaphorically.
occasionally mistaken) meanings don’t take us very far. A characteristic rectangular shape might be deciphered 18
On the most literal level the building does not communicate as a teaching block where students churn out one similar
its important civic function; nor, more importantly, the idea after another on an assembly line — because the
social and psychological meanings of this very significant factory metaphor suggests this interpretation. The only

Is
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

18 MIES VAN DER ROHE, S/ege/ Building, //T, Chicago, 1947. |s

this an astrophysical research lab? The whole campus is in the
‘universal’ aesthetic of steel, glass and beige brick, except for the
most important building. (See 22).

19 THE INFAMOUS IIT CORNER of the previous building. The

corner looked like a full visua/ stop to Leslie Martin, yet Llewelyn-
Davies argued it looked ‘endless’ because it was stepped back with 20 MIES VAN DER ROHE, //T Cathedra//Boiler House, Chicago,
two |-beams and an L-beam. The fact that the whole building 1947. The traditional form of a basilica with central nave and two
signified ‘factory’, when it was for teaching, was typically overlooked side aisles. There are even clerestory lights, a regular bay system and
in this fetish for details and esoteric meaning. campanile to show that this is the cathedral.

recognisable sign in the building, the lattice-work disc at or neither, depending on the code of the viewer, or the
the top, suggests that the students are budding astro- fact that larger questions of factory symbolism and
physicists ;but of course Mies cannot claim credit for this semantic confusion were at stake — such questions were
bit of literalism. Someone else added it, destroying the never raised.
purity of his fundamental utterance. What he can claim Not so far away from this disputatious corner is another
credit for, and what has exercised great architectural architectural conundrum, designed in Mies’ universal 20
debate, (a debate between two English deans, Sir Leslie language of confusion. Here we can see all sorts of con-
Martin and Lord Llewelyn-Davies), is his solving of the ventional cues which give the game away: a rectangular
1S problem of the corner. These two schoolmen disputed, form of cathedral, a central nave structure with two side
with medieval precision and inconsequentiality, whether aisles expressed in the eastern front. The religious nature
the corner symbolised ‘endlessness’, or ‘closedness’ like a of this building is heightened by a regular bay system of
Renaissance pilaster. The fact that it could symbolise both piers; it’s true there are no pointed arches, but there are

16
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

-
gt gis engages

oa Bee

he nA

21 MIES VAN DER ROHE, //7 Boiler House |Church. A dumb box vernacular. Blank on three sides and lit by a search light — clearly this
placed to either side of high-rise buildings, which are in the same is the boiler house.

=e

22 MIES VAN DER ROHE, //T President's Temple |School of Archi- horizontal steps also break the law of gravity. The building occupies
tecture, Chicago, 1962. The black temple hovers miraculously from a major point on the campus, as the President’s house should. (John
a giant order of steel trusses and a minor order of |-beams. The white Winter).

clerestory windows on both aisle and nave elevations. campus, the central area, where there is a temple con-
Finally, to confirm our reading that this /s the campus structed in a homogeneous material that distinguishes it
cathedral, we see the brick campanile, the bell tower that from the other factories. This temple is raised on a plinth, 22
dominates the basilica. it has a magnificent colonnade of major and minor orders,
In fact, this is the boiler house, a solecism of such and a grandiose stairway of white marble planes mir-
stunning wit that it can’t be truly appreciated until we see aculously hovering in space, as if the local god has
21 the actual chapel, which looks like a boiler house. This is ultimately worked his magic. It must be the President's
an unassuming box in industrial materials, sandwiched house, or at very least, the Administration Centre. Actually
balefully between dormitory slabs with a searchlight it's where the architects work — what else could it be?
attached — in short, signs which confirm a reading of So we see the factory is a classroom, the cathedral is a
prosaic utility. boiler house, the boiler house is a chapel, and the
Finally, we come to the most important position on President's temple is the School of Architecture. Thus

17
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

23 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Marin County

Civic Center, San Rafael, California, 1959-64.
The great Pont du Gard made out of card-
board, gilt and golden bauble, surmounted by
an Aztec minaret, with interior bowling-
alleys of space, and a baby-blue, opaline roof
with cookie-cutter hemi-circles. An excellent
piece of Kitsch modern, unfortunately un-
intended.

24 |. M. PEI, Everson Museum, Syracuse,

New York, 1968. Hardly communicative as a
museum. It might be a warehouse, four
theatres, or a church, except that the blank
box with funny shapes became the sign of
museums in America by 1975. By stressing
sculptural consistency above all other values,
Pei’s work becomes surreal and reduced in
significance.

25 |.M. PEI, Christian Science Church Center,

Boston, 1973. Very hard-edge Le Corbusier —
in fact Chandigarh done with precision con-
crete. From the air you can appreciate the fact
that this centre is laid out like a giant phallus
which culminates, appropriately, in a fountain.
Ledoux designed a phallus-planned building
as a brothel, but there is no further indication
here that some elaborate message is intended.

18
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Mies is saying that the boiler house is more important than baubles reminiscent of a Helena Rubenstein ambience,
the chapel, and that architects rule, as pagan gods, over and superimposed arches associated with a Roman
the lot. Of course Mies didn’t intend these propositions, aqueduct. The arches belie their compression function
but his commitment to reductive formal values in- and hang, with gilded struts, in tension. A golden
advertently betrays them. minaret-totem-pole, which also has Aztec and Mayan
associations, crowns the site of this city centre (which is
Univalent formalists and inadvertent symbolists missing only its city). In defence one can applaud its
Lest we think Mies is a special case, or somehow un- compelling, surrealist image, justifiable in terms of its
characteristic of modern architects in general, let us look at kitsch extravagance, but not much more. Like the Chicago
similar examples which stem from the reaction against his Civic Center already mentioned, it.doesn’t tell us anything
particular language: the formalist reaction in America and very profound about the role of government (escapism ?)
the Team Ten critique in Europe both turned against the or the citizens’ relation to it.
Miesian approach in the sixties. If we look at the work of |. M. Pei, Ulrich Franzen, 24,
23 Frank Lloyd Wright's last work, the Marin County Civic Philip Johnson or Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the 25;
Center, is characteristic of the formalist architecture. The leading American architects, we find the same erratic 26
building is based on the endless repetition of various signification — always a striking form, a reduced but
patterns (and their transformation), which are uncertain potent image, with unintended meanings. For instance,
in their overtones — in this case the baby-blue and golden Gordon Bunshaft’s museum for the Hirschhorn Collection,

26 SKIDMORE, OWINGS and MERRILL, Bunshaft designer,

Bieneke Library, Yale University, 1964. This pompous temple looks
extraordinary at night when the light shines through the translucent
marble: the panels look like stacked television sets which have all
gone on the blink. (US Information Service).
oe

19
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

27 GORDON BUNSHAFT and SOM, Hirschhorn Museum, Wash-

ington DC, 1973. Symbolism at its most inadvertent — a concrete
pillbox meant to protect art from the people? A marble doughnut ?
(Hirshhorn Museum).

the only collection of modern art on the Mall in Washing-

ton, is in the very powerful form of a white masonry
Di, cylinder. This simplified shape, ultimately stemming from
the eighteenth-century ‘modernists’, Boullée and Ledoux,
was meant to communicate power, awe, harmony and
the sublime. And so it does. But, as 7/me magazine and
other journals pointed out, it symbolises more accurately
a concrete bunker, a Normandy pillbox, with its battered
walls, impenetrable heaviness, and 360 degree machine-
gun slit. Bunshaft is inadvertently saying ‘keep modern
art from the public in this fortified stronghold and shoot
‘em down if they dare approach’. So many cues, in such a
popular code, reinforce this meaning and make it obvious 28 ALDO ROSSI, The Gallaratese Neighbourhood, Milan, 1969-71.
to everyone not retrained in the architects’ code. It might A long portico of repeated piers is surmounted by endlessly recurring
have been a multivalent statement of this meaning had the rectangular windows. The interior corridors are also barren funnels of
architect really intended it and combined the pillbox emptiness. Because the forms are ‘empty’ some critics have assumed
they are above historical associations ;but the signs are conventional
image with further cues of an ironic nature. But, as with
and the meanings are quite well established in Italy.
the unintended witticisms of Mrs Malaprop, all credit for
humour must go to the subconscious.
Aldo Rossi and the Italian Rationalists try very sympa-
PASY APRS) thetically to continue the classical patterns of Italian oo Se 3 HX

cities, designing neutral buildings which have a ‘zero

degree’ of historical association; but their work invariably
recalls the Fascist architecture of the thirties — despite
countless disclaimers. The semantic overtones are again
erratic, and focus on such oppressive meanings, because
the building is oversimplified and monotonous. Serious
critics and apologists for them, such as Manfredo Tafuri,
find themselves evading the obvious in their attempt to
justify such buildings with elaborate, esoteric interpreta-
tion.

29 GUERRINI, LAPADULA and ROMANO, Palace of Italian

Civilisation, Eur, Rome, 1942. Deflowered classicism and endlessly
repeated blank forms. This is the architectureof control, and some
future study may show how it depends on boring redundancy for its a es 4 = tes we ;

coercion.

20
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

1 Wild
eat
thi aa

30 HERMAN HERTZBERGER, O/d Age Home, Amsterdam, 1975. This disparity between popular and elitist codes can be
An intricate puzzle of small-scaled elements, a human scale in the found everywhere in the modern movement, especially 31
details. But this is multiplied to vast proportions. The incessant among the most highly acclaimed architects, such as
symbolism of white crosses containing black coffins is equally un-
James Stirling, Arata lsozaki, Ricardo Bofill and Herman
premeditated and unfortunate.
Hertzberger. The better the modern architect, the less he 30
can control obvious meanings. Hertzberger’s Old Age
Home is, on a sophisticated level, the delightful casbah
he intended, with many small-scale places and a closely-
grained urban fabric where the individual is psychologi-
cally hidden and protected by the nooks and crannies.
As an abstract piece of form it communicates humanism,
care, intricacy and delicacy. That is the Chinese puzzle
quality of the various interlocked elements and spaces
acquire these meanings by analogy. Yet such subtle
analogy is hardly enough when more potent, metaphorical
meanings have run amok. For what are the obvious as-
sociations of this Old Age Home ? Each room looks like a
black coffin placed between white crosses (in fact a
veritable war cemetery of white crosses). Despite his
humanism, the architect is inadvertently saying that old
age, in our society, is rather fatal.
Ah well, these ‘slips-of-the-metaphor’ are committed
more and more by the top modernists, and they can even
be made by architects who see architecture as a language —
by Peter and Alison Smithson. It is interesting that, like
other apologists for the modern movement since 1850,
they justify their work in terms of the linguistic analogy,

21
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

CELE EEE
191 5

La

31 ARATA ISOZAKI, Gunma Prefectural Museum, Takasaki, 1974. overall expression is limited to a single range of meanings: precision,
A dramatic sequence of spaces is disciplined by aluminium squares order, and the pervasive hospital metaphor so common in modern
and grids everywhere. But the technocratic overtones are un- architecture. (Masao Arai/Japan Architect).
sympathetic to certain kinds of fine art exhibited inside, and the

and look to previous languages of architecture for their degree of conventional usage, if only to make innovations
lesson. They say of the city of Bath: ‘it’s unique. . . for its and deviations from the norm more correctly understood.
remarkable cohesion, for a form /Janguage understood by When speaking about a possible modern language,
all... contributed by all’.® Their analysis of this Georgian Peter Smithson comes down firmly like a 1920s modernist
city of light and dark stonework shows it to have a wide in support of a machine aesthetic.
relevant language, a consistent language, from humble for the machine-supported present-day cities,
32. details such as street grills, to grand gestures such as only a live, cool, highly controlled, rather impersonal
porticoes. These porticoes the Smithsons characterise as architectural language can deepen that base-con-
metaphors for large doors, and pediments as metaphors nection, make it resonate with culture as a whole.’
for cheaper doors — in short, they are acutely aware of the The fallacies of this position are well known, yet many
way architectural language depends on_ traditional architects today are still committed to such notions
symbolism. because of their training in processes of production, and
This makes their own anti-traditionalism all the more their ideology of progress. They still believe in a Ze/tge/st,
poignant and bizarre; but the Smithsons, as veritable and one determined by machinery and technology — so the
descendants of the Romantic Age, must ‘make it new’ buildings they produce symbolise these now somewhat
each time to avoid the censure of conventionality. old-fashioned demons.
Thereby, of course, they successfully avoid communicat- The great irony is, however, that they also believe in
ing, for all developed languages must contain a high providing essentially humanist values of ‘place, identity,

22
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

|
aad ’\

ate

ine

32 JOHN WOOD II, Roya/ Crescent, Bath, 1767-80. One of the

first examples of housing treated as a palace — the coliseum was
another model. Although making a grand urban gesture, the individual
houses still have an identity, marked by vertical separation and several
variations in articulation (chimneys, fire walls, fences). The Smithsons
are acutely aware of this symbolism, which makes their failure to
provide its equivalent all the more poignant. (Bath City Council).

33 ALISON and PETER SMITHSON, Robin Hood Gardens, London,

1968-72. Unrelieved concrete (except for curtains), popularly
identified now with the image of an industrial process. The variations
of vertical fins are not strong enough to identify each apartment. The és
packed-in scale gives the feeling of there being a dense human wall.
34, 35 SMITHSONS, Robin Hood Gardens, street in the air, and
collective entry. The long empty streets in the air don’t have the life
personality, home-coming’, (| am quoting from several or facilities of the traditional street. The entry ways, one of which
Team Ten sources, values which the Smithsons share). has been burned, are dark and anonymous, serving too many
How can you communicate these meanings if you use a families. The scheme has many of the problems which Oscar Newman
new language based on the machine metaphor? It would traced to a lack of defensible space. Here architectural critic Paul
be very hard, practically impossible, and the Smithsons Goldberger mimes an act that often occurs.

haven't yet pulled off this miracle. Their Robin Hood

33 Gardens, in the East End of London, simply does not do
the trick.
Robin Hood Gardens is not a modern version of the
Bath Crescent, in spite of the large urban gesture and
V-shaped plan. It does not accentuate the identity of each
house, although Smithson admires Bath for being ‘un-
mistakably a collection of separate houses’. It suppresses
this in favour of visual syncopation, a partially randomised
set of vertical fins, and horizontal continuity — the notion
of a communal street deck. These ‘streets in the air’ have,
surprisingly, all the faults which the Smithsons had
34 recognised in other similar schemes. They are under-used;
35 the collective entries are paltry and a few have been
vandalised. Indeed, they are dark, smelly, dank passage-
ways. Little sense of place, few collective facilities and
fewer ‘identifying elements’, which the architects had
reasonably said were needed in modern buildings.
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

an

36, 37 LAS VEGAS and EXETER CATHEDRAL CLOSE, two dif- ethnic diversity, but what large development incorporates the Chinese
ferent kinds of social manifestations in which the architecture lends restaurant, the front of the local butcher? Architects have been too
itself to direct symbolic expression. Regardless of our views of either removed from this level of detail, and will be until they are retrained
social group, it has to be said that modern architects have disregarded as anthropologists or journalists to understand social reality.
this level of symbolic detail and particularity. Most cities contain

The Smithsons claim they have provided a sense of reached impressive proportions in modern architecture,
place. and one can now speak of a ‘credibility gap’ that parallels
On the garden side the building is unified. It is an the loss of trust in politicians. The root causes of this are,
urban place, a part of the definition of a city, provided | believe, based on the nature of architecture as a language.
it does not become a repetitive pattern which It is radically schizophrenic by necessity, partly rooted in
organizes an homogeneous space.® tradition, in the past — indeed in everyone’s childhood
Indeed the space isn’t homogeneous, it has kinks and an experience of crawling around on flat floors and perceiv-
artificial mound near the centre. But these deviations from ing such normal architectural elements as vertical doors.
the norm and the subtle cues of visual separation are And it is partly rooted in a fast-changing society, with its
hardly strong enough to override the repetitive pattern new functional tasks, new materials, new technologies and
and homogeneous material. These signify more strongly ideologies. On the one hand, architectureis as slow-chang-
‘council housing’, ‘anonymity’, ‘the authorities didn't ing as spoken language (we can still understand Renais-
have enough money to use wood, stucco, etc.’ — in short, sance English); and, on the other, as fast-changing and
they signify ‘social deprivation’. The Smithsons’ laudable esoteric as modern art and science.
intentions of providing a community building on the scale Put another way, we learn from the beginning the cul-
of the Bath Crescent and offering the same degree of tural signs which make any urban place particular to a
individual expression and identity in an architectural social group, an economic class and real, historical
language understood by all — these positive aims are people; whereas modern architects spend their time
denied by the built form. unlearning all these particular signs in an attempt to
Such contradictions between statement and result have : design for universal man, or Mythic Modern Man. This

24
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

zBaisi

EXETER CATHEDRAL CLOSE

3-M monster of course doesn’t exist, except as a historical alise its housing estates or blow them up, or hire interior
fiction — the creation of modern novelists, sociologists and decorators. It doesn’t matter (except in Russia) ; there are
idealistic planners. Mr Triple-M is no doubt a logical always other realistic professions who are ready to move
necessity for architects and others who want to generalise in.
a statistical average. Tom Wolfe has criticised novelists In any case, before we finish with this modern archi-
for writing about such non-existing creatures, and the tecture-bashing (a form of sadism which is getting far
same points could be scored against architects.® They try too easy), we should mention one dilemma architects face,
to provide modern man with a mythic consciousness, with (which isn’t entirely of their own making), because it has
consistent patterns reminiscent of tribal societies, refined an effect on the language they use.
in their purity, full of tasteful ‘unity in variety’, and other
such geometric harmonies; when in fact modern man Univalent content
doesn't exist, and what he would want if he did perchance Let us now examine the major commissions, the most
‘6, 37 exist would be realistic social signs. Signs of status, prevalent building types which have engaged the skill of
history, commerce, comfort, ethnic domain, signs of being architects in this century. A certain disinterest is needed
neighbourly, (though also a bit better off than the here, because the truths are hard and the solutions not
Joneses). Modern architects aren't trained in these codes, forthcoming. Many will deny or gloss over the social
they don’t know how to get close to this reality, and so realities behind architecture because they are so trivial
they go on providing a mythic integration of community, and depressing and of no one’s desire, no one’s fault. The
(often now a projection of middle-class values). major mistake architects made in this century, on this
Too bad: society can go on without architects, person- score, is perhaps to have been born at all.

25
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Let us look anyway at the major monuments of modern considered the first great work of European modern
architecture and the social tasks for which they were built. architecture because of its pure volumetric expression,
Here we will find a strange but unnoticed deflection of the its clear clean use of glass and steel, almost the curtain wall,
modern architect's ro/e as a social utopian, for we will see and its refinement of utilitarian products — the beginning
that he has actually built for the reigning powers of an of industrial design. Further landmarks of architecture,
established, commercial society; and this surreptitious those that modified the language slightly, were Frank
liaison has taken its toll, as illicit love affairs will. The Lloyd Wright's curvilinear poetry of pyrex tubing and 39
modern movement of architecture, conceived in the 1850s streamlined brick, built for a large wax company; Gordon
as a call to morality, and in the 1920s (in its Heroic Bunshaft’s classic solution for the office tower, two pure
Period) as a call to social transformation, found itself slabs set at right angles, one on top of the other, erected
unwittingly compromised, first by practice and then by for the multinational based on soap; Mies van der Rohe’s 40
acceptance.’ These architects wished to give up their dark, Rolls-Royce solution to the curtain wall built for
subservient role as ‘tailors’ to society and what they the Seagram's Whiskey giant; Eero Saarinen’s walk-
regarded as ‘a corrupt ruling taste’, and become instead through bird-of-prey built for TWA; and numerous refine- 69
‘doctors’, leaders, prophets, or at least midwives, to a new ments of the curtain wall built by the large offices, such
social order. But for what order did they build ? as Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, for soft drink companies,
tobacco chains, international banks and oil companies.
How should one express the power and concentration of
1 Monopolies and big business. Some of the capital, the mercantile function, the exploitation of
accepted classics of modern architecture were built for markets ? These building tasks would be the monuments
clients who today are multinational corporations. Peter of our time, because they bring in the extra money for
38 Behrens’ Berlin Turbine Factory was for the General architecture; and yet their potential role as social paragons
Electric of its day, AEG. This building of 1909 is often is without credibility.

38 PETER BEHRENS, AEG Factory, Berlin, 1909. Often regarded as

one of the first great modern buildings, the fountainhead too of
industrial design, this work set the factory as the major metaphor for
subsequent building. Here the marriage was made between big
business, ‘good design’, and the functional style. This union was
eagerly sought for at the time by the German Werkbund, and it bore
multi-national fruit sixty years later. (Bauhaus Archive).

39 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Johnson Wax Building, Racine,

Wisconsin, 1938. Columns taper downwards and are supported on
brass shoes. Everything takes up the curve theme in this ‘total work
of art’. The idea of a unified corporate image became standard by the
fifties for such multinationals as the CBS, IBM, Olivetti, etc. (US
Information Service).

Opposite
40 GORDON BUNSHAFT and SOM, Lever Brothers Building, New
York City, 1951-2. The first convincing use of the light curtain wall.
Spandrels and glass alternate in horizontal bands which are then
covered by a neutral mesh of mullions. By the sixties, many multi-
nationals on Park Avenue had similar corporate boxes.

26
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

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41 JOHN KIBBLE, Glasgow Botanic Garden, 1873. Recreated from

a former building as ‘the Crystal Art Palace’, this glasshouse recalls
Indian architecture and onion domes. The large squashed dome at
the back is 146ft across, and had at its centre a lily pond in which an
orchestra played: the ceiling opened and closed for diminuendo and
crescendo. (Easter Young).

2 International exhibitions, World Fairs. Another

geneology of modern architecture is traced from the
11, 42 Crystal Palace of 1851 to the Theme Pavilion at Osaka
1970. This line of descent has a series of technical
triumphs to its credit, resulting in the new language of
lattice structures, the open girders of Eiffel, the pin-
jointed parabolas of industrial sheds, the translucent and Opposite above
geometric domes of Buckminster Fuller, and the soaring 42 KENZO TANGE, Theme Pavilion, EXPO 70, Osaka, 1970. A
tents of Frei Otto (these tents always soar in architectural megastructure carrying various services was finally built after being
criticism). Indeed these triumphs did a great deal to contemplated by the avant-garde for ten years. World Fairs often
aestheticise the experience of architecture: historians and allow such grandiose and creative ideas to be realised, and have
critics skipped lightly over the content of the structures, therefore played an important role in the evolution of modern
their propagandist role; and focused instead on their architecture. (Masao Arai).
spatial and optical qualities. The mass media followed suit.
Opposite below
Overlooked was the blatant nationalism and ersatz
43 The CAMBODIAN PAVILION, Osaka, 1970. Designed with the
43 ambience which constituted ninety per cent of the World
advice of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, this typically nationalist
Fairs. Why? Because this ignored content was so pavilion echoes Khmer architecture and Angkor Vat. Most World’s
obviously hedonistic and lacking in subtlety, and because Fair architecture has an air of pastiche about it which could offend
there was no great understanding of how this blatant convinced nationalists, but it conforms to mass standardsof propriety.
content works in mass culture, nor how it is occasionally This manifestation is overlooked by serious critics and remains
humorous, creative and provocative. undiscussed. (Japan Information Service).

28
THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

23
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

44 PATRICK HODGKINSON, Foundling Estate, London, 1973. Long) Below

lines of housing with greenhouse living-rooms are stacked on the 45 RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO, Pompidou Centre,
diagonal. The grand public entrance, the largest of its kind in Great Paris, 1977. Gigantic trusses manufactured by Krupp and brought
Britain, looks as if it leads to a ceremonial space, at least a stadium, through Paris streets early in the morning, hold up this spiky cultural
but it actually culminates in an empty plaza. The Futurist styling and centre. The technological image is carried through with conviction,
semantic confusion are again a consequence of the modern move- especially on the services which are painted in strong primary
ment’s rejection of rhetoric and a theory of communication. colours. By sinking the building and breaking up its facade, the scale
is sympathetic with the traditional Paris street pattern. (Bernard
Vincent).
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

3 Factories and engineering feats. From Walter wh

Gropius’ Fagus Factory, 1911, to Le Corbusier’s ‘home as

a machine for living in’, 1922, we have the birth and
establishment of the major metaphor for modern architec- UL

ture: the factory. Housing was conceived in this image,

and the Nazis were not altogether wrong in attacking the
first international manifesto of this metaphor, the We/s-
senhof Sied/ungen, 1927, for its inappropriateness. Why
should houses adopt the imagery of the mass production
ERE
PES
SSS
44 line and the white purity of the hospital ?
More recent mass housing in England, for instance that
46 in London, or Milton Keynes, has followed this pervasive
twentieth-century metaphor. That no one asked to live ina
factory did not occur to the doctor-modern-architect,
because he was out to cure the disease of modern cities, no
matter how distasteful the medicine. Indeed, better if it
tasted like castor oil and caused convulsions, because then
the transformation of bourgeois society was more likely
to be complete, the patient would reform his petty
acquisitive drives and become a good collectivised
citizen.
Such metaphors for housing have been rejected almost
everywhere they've been applied, (exceptions occur in
Germany and Switzerland), but they have taken hold in 46 JEREMY DIXON, CHRIS CROSS and ED JONES, ‘Netherfiela’
appropriate areas : stadia, sports grounds, aircraft hangars, Milton Keynes Housing, 1974. Another long line, now accentuated
1 47 and all the large-span structures traditionally associated by structural fins and a flat roof plane, is the apotheosis of the
with engineering. Here the poetry of process is exhilarating assembly-line metaphor applied to housing. (John Donat).

47 KENZO TANGE, National Gymnasia for the Olympic Games, in the typical Japanese ‘slant’ which has become something of a
Tokyo, 1964. Two buildings in subtle counterpoint are placed on a cliché. The gentle curves and structural expression are also traditional
podium. The concrete masts, which hold the hyperbolic curves, end signs.

31
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

without being wildly inappropriate or surreal, and we can

claim the single, unmitigated triumph of modern archi-
tecture on the level of content.

4 Consumer temples and churches of distraction.

Someone from an alien culture would be amazed to see,
if he took a quick helicopter trip over any of our sprawling
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mastered this territory of Disneyland and ride-through
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beginning to try, and we can already count the triumphs.
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48, 49 HANS HOLLEIN, Jewellery Shop, Vienna, 1975. Hollein

uses voluptuous, shiny marble to set off the polished mechanical
equipment. The contrast of circle and fissure, of skin-like marble
and the glistening gold lips folding over each other, is explicitly
ironic and sexual. Tight space is ingeniously cut up to loosen the
customer's libido even further. Perhaps only a Viennese could have
brought off this mixture of commerce and sensuality. (Jerzy
Surwillo).

SZ
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

50 HANS HOLLEIN, Jewellery Shop, Vienna, 1975.

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51,52 JOHN PORTMAN, Bonaventure Hote/, model, Los Angeles,

1976. Portman has revived the nineteenth-century tradition of the
grand hotel — at least the cost part of this tradition — with his lavish
Regency Hyatts in several American cities. He gives the exteriors an
absolute geometric image, parts of which in mirrorplate reflect like
overblown jewels. The planning is reminiscent of themegalomaniacal
schemes of Boullée.

large hotels, constructed in the theological material of Several modern architects, in a desperate attempt to
mirrorplate, his interpretation would be confirmed. The cheer themselves up, have decided that since this is an
culture idolises tinsel, personal adornment, private inevitable situation, it must also have its good points.
jewellery. The more adept modern architects become at Commercial tasks are more democratic than the previous
embellishing buildings (and of course they are working at aristocratic and religious ones; ‘Main Street is almost all
a distinct disadvantage, having previously equated right’ according to Robert Venturi.
‘ornament’ and ‘crime’), the more the anomaly appears. A When these commercial design tasks first emerged into
jewel is a jewel, is not a fitting object for great architecture. consciousness, about the turn of this century, they were
The banality of content will not go away. celebrated by the Futurist, Sant’ Elia, with a glee and
moralising tone that were later to become common. He
Architecture obviously reflects what a society holds contrasted the new building tasks, given over to commerce
important, what it values both spiritually and in terms of and energy, with the previous ones devoted to worship —
cash. In the pre-industrial past the major areas for the nineteenth-century dynamo versus the thirteenth-
expression were the temple, the church, the palace, agora, century Virgin.
meeting house, country house and city hall; while in the The formidable antithesis between the modern world
present, extra money is spent on hotels, restaurants and and the old is determined by all those things that
all those commercial building types | have mentioned. formerly did not exist... we have lost our predilection
Public housing and buildings expressing the local com- for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and we have
munity or the public realm receive the cutbacks. Buildings enriched our sensibility with a taste for the light, the
representing consumer values generate the investment. practical, the ephemeral and the swift. We no longer
As Galbraith says of American capitalism, it results in feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the
private wealth and public squalor. palaces and the tribunes. We are the men of the great

35
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

53 LAS VEGAS LIGHTSCAPE. The secular and commercial activities

celebrated by the Futurists are realised here with a technological
artistry they would have relished, but a social content on which they
would have choked.

54 LITTLE CHAPEL of the FLOWERS, Las Vegas, 1960. Drive-in

marriage and divorce, your Olde New England clapboard church
advertised in neon, with totally automated services — a combination
which is far too new and old at the same time, but one which appeals
to vast numbers in a consumer society.

36
 THE DEATH OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

hotels, the railway stations, the immense streets, the enlightened scientists and teams of experts. What a
colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, dream !
straight roads and beneficial demolitions. 8 Indeed, the managerial revolution did occur, and
In short, these embrace the social activities of a middle- socialist revolutions happened in a few countries; but the
class tourist wandering from railway station to hotel along dream was taken over by Madison Avenue (and its
wide super-highways dotted with bulldozed sites and lit equivalents), and the ‘heroic object of everyday use’
by sparkling neon signs. With slight modifications, Sant’ became the ‘new, revolutionary detergent’. Societies kept
53 Elia could be describing the glitter of Las Vegas, or less on worshipping at their old altars, with diminishing faith,
fashionably, let us say, the main street of Warsaw. What- and tried to incorporate the new values at the same time.
ever the country, whatever the economic system, such The result? Ersatz culture, a caricature of the past and 54
secular building tasks are the important ones today, and future at once, a surreal fantasy dreamed up neither by the
so much modern art and architecture tries to celebrate avant-garde, nor the traditionalists, and abhorrent to both
this fact. ‘The heroism of everyday life’, that notion shared of them.
by Picasso, Léger and Le Corbusier in the twenties, was a With the triumph of consumer society in the West and
philosophy which tried to place banal objects on a bureaucratic State Capitalism in the East, our unfortunate
pedestal formerly reserved for special symbols of venera- modern architect was left without much uplifting social
tion. The fountain pen, the filing cabinet, the steel girder content to symbolise. If architecture has to concentrate
and the typewriter were the new icons. Mayakovsky and its efforts on symbolising a way of life and the public
the Russian Constructivists took art into the streets and realm, then it’s in a bit of a fix when these things lose their
even performed one grand symphony of sirens and steam credibility. There’s nothing much the architect can do
whistles, while waving coloured flags on top of factory about this except protest as a citizen, and design dissenting
roofs. The hope of these artists and architects was to buildings that express the complex situation. He can com-
reform society On a new class and functional basis: municate the values which are missing and ironically
substitute power stations for cathedrals, technocrats for criticise the ones he dislikes. But to do that he must make
aristocrats. A new, heroic, democratic society would use of the language of the local culture, otherwise his
emerge, led by a powerful race of pagan supermen, the message falls on deaf ears, or is distorted to fit this local
avant-garde, the technicians and captains of industry, language.

37
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

ST grat Ai carne

55 ADOLF LOOS, Chicago Tribune Column.

38
 PART TWO
The Modes ofArchitectural Communication

Monsieur Jourdain, Moliére’s Bourgeois Genti/homme, Below

was rather surprised to discover that he had been speaking 56 SAN FRANCISCO CITYSCAPE, 1973. With various skyscrapers,
prose for forty years — ‘without knowing anything about it’. including a trussed rectangle and the triangular building, known
affectionately as ‘Pereiras’ Prick’ (he designed the Transamerican
Modern architects might suffer a similar shock, or doubt
Corporation).
that they've been speaking anything as elevated as
prose. To look at the environment is to agree with their
56 doubt. We see a babble of tongues, a free-for-all of per-
sonal idiolects, not the classical language of the Doric,
lonic and Corinthian Orders. Where there once were rules
of architectural grammar, we now have a mutual diatribe
between speculative builders; where there once was a
gentle discourse between the Houses of Parliament and
Westminster Abbey, there is now across the Thames, the
Shell Building shouting at the Hayward Gallery, which
57 grunts back at a stammering and giggling Festival Hall.
It's all confusion and strife, and yet this invective is still
language even if it's not very comprehensible or per-
suading. There are various analogies architecture shares
with language and if we use the terms loosely, we can
Below
speak of architectural ‘words’, ‘phrases’, ‘syntax’, and 57 The SOUTH BANK, London, 1976. With large chunks devoted
‘semantics’. | will discuss several of these analogies in to different functions: /eft to right: The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royal
turn, showing how they can be more consciously used as Festival Hall and Shell Tower carry on their distinctive form of garbled
communicational means, starting with the mode most conversation, Each chunk sends out a single, if muted, message that
commonly disregarded in modern architecture. it is an ‘important’ monument of some unspecified kind.

— OVAL FESHIWRE Hees

a HindSE
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Metaphor but also because they were strongly coded in a culture

People invariably see one building in terms of another, or which had become sensitised to the spectre of 1984.
in terms of a similar object; in short as a metaphor. The This obvious point has some curious implications, as we
more unfamiliar a modern building is, the more they will shall see.
compare it metaphorically to what they know. This match- One implication became apparent when | was visiting
ing of one experience to another is a property of all Japan and the architect Kisho Kurokawa. We went to see
thought, particularly that which is creative. Thus when his new apartment tower in Tokyo, made from stacked 59
pre-cast concrete grills were first used on buildings in the shipping containers, which had a most unusual overall
late fifties, they were seen as ‘cheesegraters’,, ‘beehives’, shape. They looked like stacked sugar cubes, or even more,
‘chain-link fences’; while ten years later when they be- like superimposed washing machines, because the white
came the norm in a certain building type, they were seen cubes all had round windows in their centres. When | said
58 in functional terms: ‘this looks like a parking garage’. this metaphor had unfortunate overtones for living,
From metaphor to cliché, from neologism through constant Kurokawa evinced suprise. “They aren’t washing ma-
usage to architectural sign, this is the continual route chines, they're bird cages. You see in Japan we build
travelled by new and successful forms and technics. concrete-box bird nests with round holes and place them
Typical negative metaphors used by the public and by in the trees. I’ve built these bird nests for itinerant business-
critics such as Lewis Mumford to condemn modern men who visit Tokyo, for bachelors who fly in every so
architecture were ‘cardboard box’, ‘shoe-box’, ‘egg-crate’, often with their birds.” A witty answer, perhaps made up
‘filing cabinet’, ‘grid-paper’. These comparisons were on the spot, but one which underscored very nicely a
sought not only for their pejorative, mechanistic overtones, difference in our visual codes.

Left
58 CONCRETE GRILLS, now the sign of
parking garage, were first used on offices in
America in the late fifties. They work here to
carry the external loads and mask the cars.
While the ‘cheesegrater’ is now no longer
perceived as a metaphor, the precast grill is
on rare occasions still used for offices.
Whether it signifies garage or office depends
on the frequency of usage within a society.

Opposite
59 KISHO KUROKAWA, Wakagin Capsule
Building, Tokyo, 1972. 140 boxes were
driven to the site and lifted onto the two
concrete cores. Each habitable room has
built-in bathroom, stereo-tape deck, cal-
culators and other amenities for the business-
man. The metaphor of stacking rooms like
bricks or sugar cubes has re-emerged every
five years or so, since Walter Gropius pro-
posed it in 1922. The overtones of this are
ambiguous: to some they have always
suggested regimentation, to others the unity
in variety of the Italian hill town. (Tomio
Ohashi).

40
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

A well-known visual illusion brings this out even more:

60 the famous ‘duck-rabbit figure’, which will be seen first
one way then the other. Since we all have well learned
visual codes for both animals, and even probably now a
code for the hybrid monster with two heads, we can see it
three ways. One view may predominate, according to
either the strength of the code or according to the direction
from which we see the figure at first. To get further read-
ings (‘bellows’ or ‘keyhole’ etc.) is harder because these
codes are less strong for this figure, they map less well
than the primary ones — at least in our culture. The general
point then is that code restrictions based on /earning and
culture guide a reading, and that there are multiple codes,
some of which may be in conflict across subcultures. \n
very general terms there are two large subcultures: one
with the modern code based on the training and ideology
of modern architects, and another with the traditional code
based on everyone’s experience of normalised architec-
tural elements. As | mentioned, (above page 24), there
are very basic reasons why these codes may be at odds
and architecture may be radically schizophrenic, both in
its creation and interpretation. Since some buildings often
60 The DUCK-RABBIT ILLUSION, read from left to right by duck
incorporate various codes, they can be seen as mixed hunters and from right to left by frequenters of the Playboy Club.
metaphors, and with opposing meanings: e.g. the ‘har- Since this illusion is so well known we can now see it as a new
monious, well-proportioned pure volume’ of the modern animal with two heads. But note: you can only read it one way at a
architect becomes the ‘shoe-box’ or ‘filing cabinet’ to the time depending on the code you choose to adopt. (E. H. Gombrich,
public. Art and Illusion).

Ray
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5)
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L eae .

61 JORN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Australia, 1957-74. A

mixed metaphor: the shells have symbolised flowers unfolding, . symbol. This rare class of sign, like a Rorschach test, provokes
sailboats in the harbour, fish swallowing each other and now, response which focuses interest on the responder, not the sign. It
because of the local code, high cost. As with the Eiffel Tower, could be called the ‘enigmatic sign’, because, like the ocean, it
ambiguous meanings have finally transcended all possible functional happily receives projected meanings from everyone. (New South
considerations and the building has become simply a_ national Wales Government Office, London).

42
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

61 One modern building, the Sydney Opera House, has

provoked a superabundance of metaphorical responses,
both in the popular and professional press. The reasons
are, again, that the forms are both unfamiliar to architecture
and reminiscent of other visual objects. Most of the meta-
phors are organic: thus the architect, Jorn Utzon, showed
how the shells of the building related to the surface of a
sphere (like ‘orange segments’) and the wing of a bird in
flight. They also relate, obviously, to white sea shells, and
it is this metaphor, plus the comparison to the white sails
bobbing around in Sydney Harbour, that have become
journalistic clichés. This raises another obvious point with
unexpected implications: the interpretation of archi-
tectural metaphor is more elastic and dependent on /oca/
codes than the interpretation of metaphor in spoken or
written language.
Some critics have pointed out that the superimposed
shells resemble the growth of a flower over time — the
unfolding of petals; while architectural students of Aus-
62 tralia caricatured this same aspect as ‘turtles making love’.
From several points of view the violent aspect of broken
and smashed up shapes is apparent — ‘a traffic accident
with no survivors’; while again these same views elicit
possible organic metaphors — ‘fish swallowing each other’.
Reinforcing this interpretation are the shiny, scaly ele- 62 CARTOON presented by architectural students when Queen
ments of the tiled surface which are apparent up close. Elizabeth officially opened the building (from Architecture in
But the most extraordinary metaphor, and the one which Australia).

ene renal
bh aR .
—s

i] i Fa =f

63 SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, view of shells soaring and crashing, metaphors. Note the way the building glistens and takes on the
again an interesting ambiguity to be set along with the other mixed cloud formations. (Australian Information Service).

43
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Australians apply with a certain bemused affection, is symbols of Australia’s break with colonial conformity
‘scrum of nuns’. All those shells leaning over, confronting and provinciality.
each other in two main directions, resemble the head- But doubts arise. We know the building was designed
dresses and cowls of two opposed monastic orders, and by a European (not an Australian) as an opera house — and
the wildly unlikely idea that this could be a scrimmage of one that works neither economically nor functionally in
mother superiors dominates the possibilities. ‘Wit’ has the manner it was conceived. Since such knowledge is an
been defined as ‘the unlikely copulation of ideas together’, integral part of the code with which we interpret the
and the more unlikely but successful the union, the more it building, our judgement cannot avoid being contaminated
will strike the viewer and stay in his mind. A witty building by this knowledge. It’s rather like looking at the duck-
is one which permits us to make extraordinary but con- rabbit figure: our perception is bent and shaped by codes
vincing associations. based on previous experience. It is virtually impossible to
The question obviously arises of how appropriate these perceive the douilding without knowing about the notorious
metaphors are to the building’s function and its symbolic ‘Sydney Opera House Case’, the firing of the architect,
role. Concentrating on this aspect and momentarily dis- the cost, and so forth. So these local, specific meanings
regarding other things such as cost (the Australians spent also become symbolised in the ‘extravagant’ shells.
something like twenty times the original estimate for their Several modernists criticised the Opera House for other
mixed metaphor) we might come to the following con- reasons: as a piece of literal communication the building
clusion. On the one hand the organic metaphors are very tells you little and dissimulates much. You can’t pick out
appropriate to a cultural centre: images which suggest the various theatres and restaurants and exhibition halls
growth are particularly apt for meanings of creativity. The beneath the shells, which is why it has been so annoying
building flies, sails, splashes, curves up and unfolds like to certain architects brought up in the tradition of
an animated vegetable. Fine. Perhaps if the building were expressive functionalism. They expect to see each func-
renamed The Australian Cultural Centre (not the Sydney tion given a clear and separate volume, which ideally
Opera House) and justified as a symbol of Australia’s speaking, is an outline of the function — such as the 64
liberation from Anglo-Saxon dependence, (the over- auditorium. They would have designed the building as a
riding influence of Britain and America), then its inter- series of boxy fly towers and wedge shapes (the conven-
pretation might be clearer. We could then see these tionalised ‘word’ for auditorium in modern architecture).
extraordinary metaphors in their most positive light, as The building violates this code, as classical architecture

64 KONSTANTIN MELNIKOV, Russakov Club, Moscow, 1928. The of this building. The shapes follow, more or less, the volumes needed
wedge shape plus rectangular flytower became established as the for the functions.
‘word’ for auditorium in the language of modern architecture because

44
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

often did, by obscuring actual functions behind overall signs), in order to make his preferred mode, decorated
patterns. The debate then becomes whether such ob- sheds (symbolic signs) that much more potent. Thus we
scurantism is justified by the wit and appropriateness of are being asked, once more by a modernist, in the name
the organic metaphor. | think it is, but others would deny of rationality, to follow an exclusive, simplistic path.
this. Clearly we need all the modes of communication at our
Perhaps one of them would be Robert Venturi, who also disposal, not one or two; and it’s the modernist commit-
starts from the position that architecture should be looked ment to architectural street-fighting that leads to such
at as communication, but comes to different conclusions oversimplification, not a balanced theory of signification.
from mine. He contends that buildings should look like In any case, the Sydney Opera House does pose some
65 ‘decorated sheds, not ducks’. The decorated shed is a difficult problems as a duck, because of its lack of a shared,
66 simple enclosure with signs attached like a billboard, or the public symbolism — a point Venturi’s extreme position
application of conventional ornament, such as a pediment brings out. While the organic metaphors are suitable
symbolising entry; whereas a duck, for him, is a building analogues for a culture centre, they are not reinforced by
in the shape of its function, (a bird-shaped building conventional signs which spring from the Australian
selling duck decoys), or a modern building where the vernacular, and therefore they have an erratic signification.
construction, structure and volume become the decoration. Rather, they emanate from the widespread formalist
Clearly the Sydney Opera House is a duck for Venturi, movement of modern architects, a movement which might
and he wishes to underplay this form of expression be more appropriately termed surrealist. Like a Magritte
because he thinks it has been overdone by the modern painting — the apple which expands to fill a whole room —
movement. | would disagree with this historical judgement, the meaning is striking but enigmatic and ultimately
and take even greater exception to the attitudes implied evasive. What precisely is Utzon trying to say, beyond the
behind it. Venturi, like the typical modernist that he wishes primitive and exciting? Why, besides creativity, all the
to supplant, is adopting the tactic of exclusive inversion. sails, shells, flowers, fish and nuns ? Clearly our emotions
He is cutting out a whole area of architectural com- are being heightened as an end in themselves, and there
munication, duck buildings, (technically speaking iconic is no exact goal towards which all these meanings
converge. They float around in our mind to pick up con-
nections where they will, like a luxuriant dream following
overindulgence.
They do however prove a general point about com-
& & munication: the more the metaphors, the greater the
drama, and the more they are slightly suggestive, the
=| GH VA
Han way greater the mystery. A mixed metaphor is strong, as every
Bi DECORATED SHEP
student of Shakespeare knows, but a suggested one is
powerful. In architecture, to name a metaphor is often to
kill it, like analysing jokes. When hot dog stands are in the

65 ROBERT VENTURI, The Duck

versus Decorated Shed. Venturi would
prefer more decorated sheds, because
he contends, they communicate effec-
tively, and modern architects have for
too long only designed ‘ducks’. The
duck is, in semiotic terms, an /conic ¥
sign, because the signifier (form) has ee $-
certain aspects in common with the yee
signified (content). The decorated
shed depends on learned meanings — 2
writing or decoration which are
symbolic signs. ot
Ne

SECURITY WRT EA =
WW me

66 SECURITY MARINE BANK, Wis-

consin, c. 1971. The symbo/ic shed,
one part communication of status and
security, the other part function, Com-
mercial pressures today naturally dis-
sociate signifier and signified in this
way, although not usually so clearly.
(Wayne Attoe).
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

108 shape of hot dogs, then little work is left to the imagina-
tion, and all other metaphors are suppressed: they can't
even suggest hamburgers. Yet even this kind of univalent
metaphor, the Pop architecture of Los Angeles, has its
imaginative and communicative side. For one thing, the
customary scale and context are violently distorted, so the
67 ordinary object, for instance the doughnut, takes on a
series of possible meanings not usually associated with
this item of food. When it’s blown up to thirty feet and
built out of wood and sits on a small building, it becomes
the Magritte object that has taken over the house from the
occupants. Partly hostile and menacing, it is nevertheless
a symbol of sugary breakfasts and Gemut/ichkeit.
Secondly, an architecture made up from such signs
communicates unambiguously to those moving fifty miles
per hour through the city. In contrast with so much modern
building, these iconic signs speak with exactitude and
humour about their function. Their literalism, however
infantile, articulates factual truths which Mies’ work
obscures, and there is a certain general pleasure (which
doesn’t escape children) in perceiving a sequence of
them. Contrary to Venturi, we need more ducks; modern
architects haven't propagated enough.
One who tried was Eero Saarinen. Immediately after he
selected Utzon’s Opera House as the winner of the com-
petition, he returned to America and designed his own
version of the curvilinear, shell building. The TWA ter-
69 minal in New York is an icon of a bird, and by extension,
of aeroplane flight. In the details and merging of circula- 67 HENRY J. GOODWIN, Big Donut Drive-in, Los Angeles, 1954.
tion lines, of passenger exits and crossways, it is a Originally there were ten of these giants, now there are, alas, three.
particularly clever working out of this metaphor. A The doughnuts sold are big.
70 supporting strut is mapped to a bird’s leg, the rain-spout
becomes an ominous beak, an interior bridge covered in
71 blood-red carpet becomes, | suppose, the pulmonary 68 DINOSAUR, Los Angeles, 1973. A curio shop which actually
artery. Here the imaginative meanings add up in an ap- sells a few old bones, among other things. Los Angeles had a great
propriate and calculated way, pointing towards a common deal of Pop architecture in the twenties and thirties, but most of it
metaphor of flight — the mutual interaction of these has been supplanted by the slick commercial symbols of chains,
meanings produces a multivalent work of architecture. such as MacDonalds Hamburgers. (Environmental Communications).

46
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

69 EERO SAARINEN, TWA Building, New York, 1962. Designed

after Saarinen judged the Sydney Opera House competition. Here
the concrete shells are clearly recognisable as a metaphor of flight,
although there are other animals suggested. (TWA).

70 TWA BUILDING. The leg of the bird is at the same time a

beautiful abstraction of structural forces.

71 TWA BUILDING. The red carpet swoops over the entry space,
curve and counter-curve reinforce the feeling of continuous move-
ment — all appropriate for a transportation building.

aii i
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

The most effective use of suggested metaphor that | can

think of in modern architecture is Le Corbusier's chapel
D2, 7/3 at Ronchamp which has been compared to all sorts of
things, varying from the white houses of Mykonos to
Swiss cheese. Part of its power is this suggestiveness — to
mean many different things at once, to set the mind off on
a wild goose chase where it actually catches the goose,
among other animals. For instance a duck (once again this
74- famous character of modern architecture) is vaguely
78 suggested in the south elevation; but so also are a ship
and, appropriately, praying hands. The visual codes,
which here take in both elitist and popular meanings,
are working mostly on an unconscious level, unlike the
hot dog stand. We read the metaphors immediately
without bothering to name or draw them (as done here),
and clearly the skill of the artist is dependent on his
ability to call up our rich storehouse of visual images
without our being aware of his intention. Perhaps it is also 72, 73 LE CORBUSIER, Ronchamp Chapel, France, 1955. View
a somewhat unconscious process for him. Le Corbusier from the south-east. The building is over-coded with visual meta-
only admitted to two metaphors, both of which are phors, and none of them is very explicit, so that the building seems
esoteric: the ‘visual acoustics’ of the curving walls which always about to tell us something which we just can’t place. The
shape the four horizons as if they were ‘sounds’, (respond- effect can be compared to having a word on the tip of your tongue
ing in antiphony), and the ‘crab shell’ form of the roof. which you can’t quite remember. But the ambiguity can be dramatic,
not frustrating — you search your memory for the possible clues.
But the building has many more metaphors than this,
so many that it is overcoded, saturated with possible inter-
pretations. This explains why critics such as Pevsner and and every time we decode its surface we come up with
Stirling have found the building so upsetting, and others coherent meanings we know do not refer to any precise
have found it so enigmatic. It seems to suggest precise social practice — as they appear to do. Le Corbusier has
ritualistic meanings, it looks like the temple of some very so overcoded his building with metaphor, and so pre-
complicated sect which reached a high degree of meta- cisely related part to part, that the meanings seem as if
physical sophistication; whereas we know it is simply a they had been fixed by countless generations engaged in
pilgrimage chapel created by someone who believed in a ritual: something as rich as the delicate patterns of Islam,
natural religion, a pantheism. the exact iconology of Shinto, is suggested. How frustrat-
Put another way, Ronchamp creates the fascination that ing, how enjoyable it is to experience this game of signifi-
the discovery of a new archaic language does; we stumble cation, which we know rests mostly on imaginative
upon this Rosetta stone, this fragment of a lost civilisation, brilliance.

48
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

semiotics at the Architectural Association

literal when compared to the actual views,
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

79 CESAR PELLI, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 1976. A Opposite

long, high building which looks like an extruded moulding, among 80 PDC metaphors seen in a seminar on architectural semiotics,
other things, because its section is projected throughout the building UCLA, 1976, drawn by Kamran. The metaphors were voted on by
and on the end elevations. This metaphor is appropriate to its the class and placed in the following order of plausibility: 1 aircraft
function, since the building displays the mouldings of interior hangar, 2 extrusion or architectural moulding, 3 station or terminal
designers (among other products). Its blue exterior, in translucent, building, 4 model of a building, 5 warehouse, 6 blue ice-berg, 7
transparent and reflective glass, gives it a startling presence in Los prison, 8 a child’s building-blocks or puzzle. The fact that so many
Angeles; and because of its size, it is known as ‘The Blue Whale’. metaphors turned out to be actual building types (e.g. ‘station or
(Marvin Rand). terminal’) shows that the PDC recalls other architecture quite strongly.

Another modern building which crystallises a series of the spoken language, and subject to the transformations
metaphors, because of its unusual shape, is Cesar Pelli’s of short-lived codes. While a building may stand 300
79 Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles — known locally as years, the way people regard and use it may change every
‘the Blue Whale’. Opposed to Ronchamp and TWA, it ten years. It would be perverse to rewrite Shakespearean
makes use of rectilinear forms and a curtain wall of three sonnets, change love poetry to hate letters, read comedy
different types of glass, but these familiar elements none- as tragedy ; but it is perfectly acceptable to hang washing
theless call up unfamiliar associations because of their on decorative balustrades, convert a church into a
peculiar treatment: ‘iceberg’, ‘cash register’, ‘aircraft concert hall, and use a building every day while never
hangar’, and most appropriately ‘extruded architectural looking at it, (actually the norm). Architecture is often
moulding’, (it’s a centre for interior decorators and experienced inattentively or with the greatest prejudice
80 designers). of mood and will — exactly opposite to the way one is
These metaphors can be mapped quite literally in terms supposed to experience a symphony or work of art.12 One
of outline shape and section; not so the ‘Blue Whale’ implication of this for architecture is that, among other
image which relates only in terms of colour and mass. things, the architect must overcode his buildings, using
And yet this is the favoured nickname. Why? Because a redundancy of popular signs and metaphors, if his work
there happens to be a local restaurant whose doorway is is to communicate as intended and survive the trans-
a large blue whale’s mouth, and the building is recognised formation of fast-changing codes.
as a leviathan in its small-scaled neighbourhood swallow- Surprisingly, many modern architects deny this most
ing up all the little fish, (in this case the diminutive decor- potent metaphorical level of meaning. They find it non-
ators shops). In other words, two local pertinent codes, the functional and personal, literary and vague, certainly not
large scale and the connection with the loca! restaurant, something they can consciously control and use appro-
take precedence over the more plausible metaphors of the priately. Instead they concentrate on the supposedly
building, the aircraft hangar or moulding — a good rational aspects of design — the cost and function, as they
example of the way architecture is even more at the mercy narrowly define them. The result is that their inadvertent
of the perceiver than, say, poetry. metaphors take metaphorical revenge and kick them in the
Architecture as a language is much more malleable than behind: their buildings end up looking like metaphors of

50
= °Q Ww ee) fo < oc oO a5 FE
Ww Lu O oe =) jon < =< O fe) = = = = =< S
= A
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

lerosadsp sedadoada
Pim ff |
wre
me

81 MANUFACTURERS HANOVER TRUST, New York, 1970. This

kind of building on Park Avenue and elsewhere is often satirised by
cartoonists such as Steinburg and Kovarsky, who will represent it as
grid paper, bank account statement, or any number of economic
graphs which rise and fall.

81 function and economics, and are condemned as such. became, largely, the sign of a parking garage (‘office’ is the
The situation is bound to change, however, as both social secondary usage). Yet there is a crucial difference be-
research and architectural semiotics demonstrate the tween the ‘words’ of architecture and of speech. Consider
interpersonal, shared response to metaphor. This is much the case of the column. A column on a building is one 82
more predictable and controllable than architects have thing, the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square another, the 83
thought; and since metaphor plays a predominant role in column smoke-stack at Battersea Power Station in 84
the public’s acceptance or rejection of buildings, one can London a third, and Adolf Loos’ entry for the Chicago 85
bet that architects will see the point, if only for their own Tribune Column a fourth. If the column is a ‘word’, then
prosperity. Metaphor, seen through conventional visual the word has become a phrase, a sentence and finally a 86
codes, differs from group to group; but it can be co- whole novel. Clearly architectural words are more elastic
herently, if not precisely, delineated for all these groups and polymorphous than those of spoken or written
in a society. language, and are more based on their physical context
and the code of the viewer for their specific sense. To
Words determine what ‘Nelson’s Column’ means you have to
Underlying much of what | have been saying so far is the analyse the social-physical context, (‘Trafalgar Square as a
notion of cliché — the fact that the architectural language, centre for political rallies’), the semantic overtones of
like the spoken one, must use known units of meaning. Nelson, (‘naval victories,’ ‘historical figure’ etc.), the
To make the linguistic analogy complete, we could call syntactic markers, (‘standing alone’, ‘surrounded by open
these units architectural ‘words’. There are dictionaries space and fountains’), and the historical connotations of
of architecture which define the meanings of these words: column, (‘use on temples’, ‘Three Orders’, ‘phallic symbol’
doors, windows, columns, partitions, cantilevers, and so etc.). Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this book,
forth. Obviously these repeated elements are a necessity but an initial attempt has been made for analysing the
of architectural practice. The building industry standardises column in general, which shows how fruitful this can be.114
countless products, (there are over 400 building systems We can make a componential analysis of architectural
in Britain), and the architectural office repeats its favourite elements and find out which are, for any culture, dis-
details. tinctive units.
As in language, yesterday's creative metaphor becomes Modern architects have not always faced up to the
today’s tired usage, a conventional word. | have men- implications of clichés, or traditional words. They have,
tioned that the wedge shape became a sign of auditoria, by and large, tried to avoid the re-use of symbolic signs
and that concrete grills — the cheesegrater metaphor— (the technical term for meaning set by conventional usage)

52
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

STAIN
es

82-86 The COLUMN as a ‘WORD’, seen in different contexts, — which has no capital or entablature — so the ‘fluted columns have
changes its meaning. At ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELD, London, been violated’. Adolf Loos’ CHICAGO TRIBUNE COLUMN, a
1726, it is seen on a portico with other columns of the same order — competition entry for a newspaper, was a double pun on the word
clearly signifying ‘colonnade’, ‘entrance’, ‘public building’ as well as column (‘newspaper column’, ‘tribune’, the name of the newspaper).
historical associations. The NELSON COLUMN, Trafalgar Square, Loos felt that the Doric Order was a most basic statement of archi-
1860, shifts the semantic overtones towards commemoration, tectural order and therefore fitting for a monument. Finally, the
‘victory, ‘politics’. ‘standing alone’ etc. The COLUMN-SMOKE- KENTON COUNTY WATER TOWER, Ohio, 1955, again shows the
STACKS at BATTERSEA POWER STATION, London, 1929-55, polyvalent aspect of this vertical shape, how it can be used on
have entirely different associations, because of their
syntactic elevator shafts, chimneys, rocket launchers and oil derricks. Because
properties. They are placed above a massive base on four corners of the column’s positive associations with antiquity, it is often used
(incidentally this is now the sign of power station), and so the build- as a disguise for such ‘practical and prosaic’ functions.
ing looks mildly like an overturned table. Smoke belches out the top

gEHTON COUNTY
WATER DISTRICT NO 4

53
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

it

because they felt these historical elements signified lack

of creativity. For Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius
the use of historical elements even signified lack of
integrity and character. An architect who used the symbolic
sign was probably insincere and certainly snobbish — the
Classical Orders were a kind of pretentious Latin, not the
everyday vernacular of industrial building and sober
utility. From these latter building tasks a universal
language, they hoped, could be constructed, a sort of
Esperanto of cross-cultural usage based on functional
types. These signs would be indexical (either directly
indicating their use, like arrows, linear corridors), or else
iconic, in which case the form would be a diagram of its
function (a structurally-shaped bridge, or even Venturi’s
duck). Modern architectural words would be limited to
these types of sign.
The only problem with this approach is, however, that
most architectural words are symbolic signs; certainly
those that are most potent and persuasive are the ones
which are learned and conventional, not ‘natural’. The
symbolic sign dominates the indexical and iconic, and
even these latter depend somewhat on knowledge and
convention for their correct interpretation. There was thus
a devastating theoretical mistake at the very base of the
modern language. It couldn’t work the way the architects
hoped because no living language can: they are all based
87 ,88 LE CORBUSIER, Pessac Housing, before and after, 1925
mostly on learned conventions, on symbolic signs, not
and 1969. Ground floors were walled up, pitched roofs were added,
the ribbon windows were divided up, terraces were turned into extra ones which can be understood directly, without training.
bedrooms, and a great number of signs which connoted ‘security’, A good example of architects’ mistaken attitude towards
‘home’, ‘ownership’, were placed all over the exterior, thus effectively the symbolic sign is their treatment of the pitched roof,
destroying the Purist language. (Architectural Association, Philippe which conventionally signifies ‘home’ in Northern 87
Boudon). countries. The modern architect disregarded this custom 88

54
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

for functional and aesthetic reasons, to create roof gardens,

more space, rectilinear form (Walter Gropius gave six
rational reasons for designing flat roofs). Not surprisingly
these flat-top buildings were regarded as alien, as in-
secure, even unfinished and ‘without a head’. The houses
had been decapitated. Many of the inhabitants of Le
Corbusier's Pessac felt his stark white cubical forms
lacked a proper sense of shelter and protection, so they
shortened the ribbon windows, added shutters and more
window mullions; they articulated the blank white sur-
faces with window boxes, cornices and eaves; and some
89 ‘POPULAR BUNGALOW’, Wales, 1975. Speculative builders
put on the old Bordeaux sign of protection, the pitched have dominated this market since Levittown set the lower middle-
roof. In short, they systematical/y misunderstood his class standard. Obvious signs are always incorporated which vary
Purist language and systematically redesigned it to in- in their sources: Georgian bay window versus rustic stone chimney;
corporate their conventional signs of home. plastic shingle versus cottage sign; display of car versus front
In spite of the many flat-roofed housing estates today, garden ; detached from the group, yet in the style of the neighbour-
certain unreconstructed people still go on in their in- hood. These minor contradictions display just the right blend of
corrigible way thinking that pitched roofs mean shelter personality and conformity.
and psychological protection. Many studies have shown
this, and a major building society in England, recognising
the fact, has taken as its symbol an archetypal couple
walking arm in arm under a pitched-roof umbreila. Since
this sign exists and since repeated usage will always
create the symbolic sign, the modern architect might
change his attitude towards these conventions. He might
regard them as powerful meanings to be used normally in
a straightforward way, if only to catch the attention of an
audience he wants to convert.
If one wants to change a culture’s taste and behaviour,
or at least influence these aspects, as modern architects
have expressed a desire to do, then one has to speak the
common language of the culture first. If the language and
message are changed at the same time, then both will be
systematically misunderstood and reinterpreted to fit the
conventional categories, the habitual patterns of life. 90 The ETON HOUSE, /dea/ Home Exhibition, London, 1974. The
This is precisely what has happened with modern housing facial metaphor is often present at the Ideal Home Exhibition, with
estates. Pruitt-lgoe and Pessac are the two most cele- two or three examples strictly symmetrical about the front door
(‘mouth’). Various signs of status are tacked on (such as the fibre-
brated examples. A more promising approach for the
glass, Adam detailing), but the snobbism is more apparent than real:
modern architect, or social interventionist, would be to
it is not meant to convince the neighbours that you sent your son to
study the popu/ar house in all its variety and see how it Eton, but simply to distinguish the building from ‘council housing’.
signifies a different way of life for different taste cultures This is perhaps the strongest social motivation, the distinction
and ethnic groups. between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (those ‘controlled’ by the government).
Broadly speaking, these groups are classified in socio- Hence the Ideal Home styles are relatively permissive, including
economic terms by sociologists and market researchers, Swiss Chalet and American Ranch House. In fact for 1976, the Ideal
even though there is a lot of overlap and borrowing British Home was Colonial, an unforeseen consequence of 1776.
between groups, and there are other forces at work.1? The swiss chalet style
class influence on taste is only one of several influences. ’ pitched a 4
Z “i :
It seems to me more exact to speak of semiotic groups than j A Ai fLwright chimney
af LaerTook
class-based taste cultures, because those groups which
‘c ah ee califorman
share preferences of meaning have a life and continuity muerte ’ Ll colonial Cupola ranch style
of their own, which is only lightly coloured by socio- pag :
economic background. Basically, semiotic groups are in ‘eae E4

different universes of signification and have different

views of the good life. | will mention three versions of the
popular house which spring from these different groups.
2personal ites3 3 : ;
name " @ eee “Sweeping lawn
1 The ideal of many working-class families is to buy a TO e =
driveway ee ; g sect
detached, small house, a bungalow roughly similar to
others in an area they know. The values expressed in these ranch style fence
7
houses are security, ownership, separation (a free-stand-
91 KEVIN FISHER, English Popular House Analysis, 1976. This
ing building), and a kind of conservative anonymity synthesis of several reigning trends in the market shows how
(represented by conforming more or less to the norm of eclectic and permissive the popular English house is becoming. A
the area). Levittown in America, and the Ideal Home pastiche of Japanese, American and English, modern and traditional,
89 Exhibition in Britain, as well as most buildings in both urban and rural. Few architects would dare use such a language be-
90 countries, cater to this semiotic group. It could be called cause of its impurity,so the market remains open to the speculators.
conservative or conformist, sensible or petit-bourgeois, It is of course possible to use any language to send any message.

55
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

depending on which values are stressed and who is doing ‘every man’s home is his castle’ — and the castle may be
the valuing, because all these aspects are very clearly defended by a picket fence or garden gnomes. There is a
signified in the language. The archetype is a two-storey stately avenue winding to the front door — the curved
house with a central doorway, a symmetrical displacement pathway; past sylvan forests — bushes.
of windows on either side, a chimney and pitched roof —
all of which vaguely resembles a face with two eyes (top 2 The next semiotic group tends to take the previous
windows), nose (entrance portico) and mouth (doorway). values for granted, since it hasn't just left what is regarded
The band of planting in front of the house could be the as the teeming city. In America this group might be called
shirt collar or moustache, symbolic ‘moat’, or ‘forest’, middle-class fastidious, since the clipped lawns and
depending on what other signs are stressed. Since this status signs of colonial provenance (nearly always false)
group often wants to signal its new-found independence, harangue the passerby like some Bicentennial orator in a
meanings tend to support the old Anglo-Saxon maxim, fit of nationalism. Indeed, cleanliness and caution, hard

92°93 LUCILLE BALL’S House,

Beverly Hills, c. 1955. Movie Star
House tourism has been a mass industry
since the twenties, and maps are thank-
fully provided for visiting anthropologists.
The habitat and layout of these houses is
so conventionalised as to constitute a
norm: first a public street and sidewalk,
then a layer of manicured verdure dis-
creetly signifying privacy, then the
rambling house in one of five acceptable
styles; the garage to one side. Behind
this the tennis court, swimming pool and
shrine room where the star's previous
triumphs are shown to invited guests.
This screening room often doubles as an
exercise and game room, since physical
fitness and relaxation are the two major
drives of this tribe. The ‘California
Colonial’ of Lucille Ball’s house, with its
raised eyebrow dormers, is the most
popular style, followed closely by
pseudo-Tudor. (Carol Barkin and
Stephanie Vaughan).

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56
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

work and discretion, prosperity and sobriety — all the it? Often they are called the ‘aristocracy of America’,
images of WASP success — are there to brand this as the because their values and way of life have become the
ultimate bourgeois dream. The only problem with this standard of emulation for the mass of America. Films, and
classification is that the appeal of these values reaches countless sightseeing bus trips going past the stars’
much further than the middle class. houses, (a minor industry since 1922), have made these
For instance, the reigning style of movie star houses, buildings the most influential in popular taste. They tend
WS those of Beverly Hills and Bel Air which sell from a to be in one of six styles: 1 Southern Mansion, 2 Old
quarter of a million dollars to three million, fall in this English, 3 New England Colonial, 4 French Provincial/
category. The movie stars clearly aren't middle-class, even Regency, 5 Spanish Colonial, or 6 Contemporary/
if their tastes look it and they've come from this back- Colonial Hybrid. These are also the six reigning styles of
ground. Are they slumming, or have they just adopted a the popular suburban house. A close investigation will
previously existing semiotic tradition and then amplified reveal that most of these houses are Ersatz. That is, few of

94,95 JIMMY STEWART'S House, Bev-

erly Hills, c. 1940. A very fastidious mixture
of Tudor and Japanese architecture with
Swiss accents. The clarity of outline, the
black and white alternatives, the very
studied informality of massing and planting
send out a clear message. Such houses,
often exposed in films, have confirmed if not
created the American Dream House. Similar
examples can be found outside every major
city from Boston to Los Angeles, and since
the norm is so invariable it almost consti-
tutes a ‘language without speech’. Put
another way one could say that the language
itself does the talking and the designer is a
mouthpiece of this language. (Carol Barkin
and Stephanie Vaughan).

PEEPHOLES

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57
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

them are serious, scholarly revivals, there is almost no order and rectitude. The down-at-the-heels aristocrat
pretence to historical accuracy or serious eclecticism. The and the intellectual, the drop-out and left wing socialite
styles are notional, signs of status and historical roots — all unite against what they take to be the vulgarity of the
but signs meant to remind you of the past, not convince previous group’s ‘good taste’. Even the modern architect
you that the building is living in the present. There are unites with them on this score.
96- amusing cases when the signs become the whole building Thus we find the emphasis on nature and naturalness,
98 itself. the building isolated and hidden in the actual woods, (as
opposed to bushes), which are not manicured to near
3 Another semiotic group distinguishes itself from the perfection. They are allowed to grow almost freely, just
previous one by inverting these signs and values. A cut back at certain points to reveal a gable here, a roof
studied casualness is preferred to fastidiousness, a kind there, as if by felicitous chance. In fact it is our old friend
of seedy, unselfconscious comfort is preferred to blatant the picturesque tradition, the celebration of the carefully

96 ,97 DISSEMINATION of the Movie

Star Language, Gay Eclectic House, in the
lesser side of Beverly Hills, conversion
c. 1975. Analysis by Arloa Paquin. In this
area interior decorators and others have
started to convert their 1930 bungalows.
Starting from a 20ft stucco box, they add on
a false brick front (in this case), with carport,
grillwork and ‘false’ shingles and Mexican
beams. Some of these distortions of the
code are amusing. Others are creative, most
are cloying; but the language is at least
being used (instead of entirely dominating
the speaker).

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58
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

98 ‘HEDGE HOUSE’, Beverly Hills, California, c. 1965. There is

nothing much left of the old modern architecture which the owner
disliked and covered with various ‘natural’ signs of planting. These
clipped bushes, manicured to fit in the remaining fascia, heighten the
act of entry and ‘protect’ the doorway. They have become conven-
tional signs mandatory for all movie star houses.
Oils
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

careless and studied accident, in a variety of new clothes.

These may be the white modern architecture of the
1920s, (Le Sty/e Corbu has actually become a popular
status-badge when handled by Richard Meier), the
stick-and-shed style of the 1960s, or the House and
Garden style of the last seventy years, represented on a
collective level by such resorts and communities as Port-
meirion and Port Grimaud.
Portmeirion is a misplaced Italian hill town set on the
lush Welsh coast, surrounded by two miles of rhodo-
dendron and other exotic overgrowth. Every vista is
carefully composed as a landscape, each path wanders
perfectly around every rock outcrop, each bush and
flower relates miraculously to near and far buildings, and
space ebbs and flows like water into small contained
pools and dramatic, open cascades. 7rompe /‘oei/, phoney
windows, buildings shrunken to five-sixths of their normal
size, eye traps, calculated naivities, whimsical conceits
(a sail boat is turned into concrete and thence into a re-
taining wall) — this sort of easy-going wit has proven

100 SIR CLOUGH WILLIAM-ELLIS, The Pantheon, Portmeirion,

1926-66. A picturesque massing of foliage, and eclectic fragments
cannibalised from destroyed monuments. Here an English lantern
surmounts a Florentine dome painted day-glo green, which is on top
of pink-Palladian walls, which is behind an actual Norman Shaw
fireplace (through which you enter !).

101 PORTMEIRION, view into Battery Square, showing seaside

architecture and Italian campanile. This stage-set architecture has,
not surprisingly, been used in several films and commercials. This
was the first creation of a formula that was later applied, in a cheap-
ened version, to communities such as Port Grimaud, and ride-through
parks such as Disneyland.

popular with writers and tourists. The builder, Sir Clough

William-Ellis, has cannibalised old buildings and pre-
served parts of them in his new confections.
This care for the old and traditional is very apparent and
one may take it as a characteristic sign of this semiotic
group. The ancient is valued not so much for itself, but
as a sign of continuity between generations and a con-
nection with the past. While the first guess is that such
values and understatements appeal only to elite tastes, this
does not turn out to be true. For instance, 100,000 visitors

Opposite
99 RICHARD MEIER, Doug/as House, Harbor Springs, Michigan,
1971-3. The villa in nature, enclosed, protected, and yet standing out
as a man-made element. This Italian tradition, taken over equally by
Le Corbusier and the upper classes, contrasts the raw and the
cooked, the untouched and the finished. Here Meier uses a Corbusian
syntax to represent the interior space, which is layered both horizon-
tally and vertically through four storeys. (Ezra Stoller).

61
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

come to Portmeirion every year, this sophisticated version language he has a perfect right to do so. The Venturis
of Disneyland; and millions visit country houses in justify their approach as social criticism: they want to
England, mostly because of their rich historical associa- express, in a gentle way, a mixed appreciation for the
tions. American Way of Life. Grudging respect, not total ac-
These three semiotic groups, the conservative, the ceptance. They don’t share all the values of a consumer
fastidious and the ‘natural’, hardly exhaust the plurality of society, but they want to speak to this society, even if
taste cultures which exist in any large city. In America partially in dissent. Also their sensibility is through and
there is also the Main Street tradition, which Robert through modernist, their training has been in the language
Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have analysed as a of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, so they cannot use popu-
series of signs, and England has its counterpart in the lar signs in a relaxed and exuberant way — on a level with
High Street. the Las Vegas sign artists whom they admire. But how
Venturi, Scott Brown and their team have been instru- could they? It takes years, perhaps a generation, to
mental in calling attention to this wide area of symbolism, master the unselfconscious and conscious use of a new
102 and have put on an exhibition ‘Signs and Symbols of language, and so these architects are, to use a phrase
American Life’, which has presented some of the images borrowed from the Futurists, ‘the primitives of a new
that make up a popular language. Their own design, where sensibility’.
possible, incorporates these signs, usually in an ironic We may expect to see the next generation of architects
103 and esoteric way. While many critics deplore their work using the new hybrid language with confidence. It will
104 as unnecessarily banal, or ugly, or condescending — that is, look more like Art Nouveau than the International Style,
anything but popular — their deadpan approach is not incorporating the rich frame of reference of the former, its
necessarily a bad thing. After all, an architect may use a wide metaphorical reach, its written signs and vulgarity,
language without sending the customary messages, and its symbolic signs and clichés — the full gamut of archi-
if he wants to signify ‘the ugly and ordinary’ with this tectural expression.

ARCHI TECTURAL LESSONS

OM THEHOME,THESTP,& THESTREET

102 ROBERT VENTURI, DENISE SCOTT BROWN and TEAM, The symbolism in three major areas: the house, the main street, and the
Street, section from an exhibition ‘Signs of Life: symbols in the commercial strip. The ‘lessons’ that these designers drew favoured
American City’, Renwick Gallery, Washington DC, 1976. Public symbolic instead of sculptural architecture, ‘decorated sheds’
buildings, state capitols, courts in a classicising style are mixed with instead of ‘ducks’. (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC).
the commercial vernacular. This exhibition documented popular

62
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

SERGI
~ ae

103,104 VENTURI and RAUCH, Jucker House, Katonah, New

York, 1975. The exterior exaggerates elements of the popular code —
the overhanging eaves and picture window — while the interior uses
the white, planer International Style as a backdrop for Kitsch and
other objects. Actually, the fireplace with its round mirror is a
miniature of the house, a very witty comment on the traditional idea
of aedicules, miniature models and dolls houses. (Stephen Shore).

Syntax
Another aspect architecture shares with language is more
mundane than metaphors and words. A building has to
stand up and be put together according to certain rules,
or methods of joinery. The laws of gravity and geometry
dictate such things as an up and down, a roof and floor and
various storeys in between, just as the laws of sound and
speech formation dictate certain vowels, consonants and
ways of speaking them. These compelling forces create
what could be called a syntax of architecture — that is
the rules for combining the various words of door, window,
wall, and so forth. Most doors, for instance, follow the
syntactical rule requiring a floor, necessarily flat, on both
sides. What happens when this rule is constantly broken ?
The fun-house at the Amusement Park — which takes
advantage of the fact that the nervous system uncon-
sciously knows the syntactical rules and enjoys having
them broken from time to time. Delirious word-salads,
the speech of schizophrenics and poetry, all distort con-
ventional grammar. It is obviously one of the defining
characteristics of all sign systems used aesthetically.

63
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

They call attention to the language itself by misuse, Opposite above

exaggeration, repetition, and all the devices of rhetorical 107 BOOTMOBILE, Los Angeles, 1976.
skill.
Opposite below
Michael Graves speaks about ‘foregrounding’ the
108 HOT DOG STAND, Los Angeles, c. 1938. Reinforced with
elements of architecture by turning them on their side,
additional signs such as oozing mustard, ‘Tail-o-the-pup’ etc. This
extending them out from their usual, functional context architecture would appear to be unambiguous, yet at the Architectural
and painting them like a Juan Gris Cubist composition. Association in London, where | teach, it is classified in the slide
His houses are poetic distortions of a Cubist syntax, whose library as a ‘hamburger stand’. Once again, visual codes are mainly
only fault, in terms of communication, is in the choice local. See page 46.
of a limited syntax and undercoding. You need a reader's
guide to appreciate the fact that a blue balustrade is a signify for him the process that generated them. How 112
HO column lying down. The Handmade Houses of the West enticing; how banal. The spirit of process is supposed to Tit
111 Coast use a much more accessible syntax in a similar way. lift you heavenwards so you overlook the prosaic as_ =mp-
Shingles, wood siding, different types of standard win- tions. Once again, as with Mies, the analogy of beautifully
dows tipped on their sides, placed at the corner of the consistent form is meant to stand for the missing values,
building, roofs pitching at odd angles, logs used without transport the mind above ordinary concerns. But this
finishing — these syntactical tricks have a richer resonance Architectural Ascension is not quite miraculous enough;
of meaning, except, of course, for those trained in there is no lift-off, that is, syntactically speaking. Se-
synthetic cubism. Again it is a matter of coding and rich- mantically, (a mode of communication Eisenman dis-
ness of coding which is at stake, not an absolute dif- dains), his buildings convey the sharp white light of
ference in meaning. rationality and the virtues of geometrical organisation: the
The syntax of architecture has preoccupied the exciting ‘bridges to cross’, surprising punched-out ‘holes
modern movement to the point of obsession, which is one of space’, the framed ‘vistas’, the Chinese puzzle of
reason it will not be emphasised here. Starting with structure. So far as one can recognise these semantic
nineteenth-century theorists, Viollet-le-Duc, Semper and meanings and connect them with other associations,
Choisy, this interest was soon idolised and became the (Protestantism, the white architecture of the twenties),
dominant meaning of architecture. It’s as if all that then these buildings have a wider meaning. In other words,
architecture suddenly had to talk about was its construc- the pure realm of syntax is only relevant perceptually when
tional process, the way it was put together. Louis Kahn it is incorporated into semantic fields.
wrote about THE FORM of building as if it were the
Architectural Saviour which would rescue him from all Semantics
other concerns. In the nineteenth century, when different styles of archi-
Peter Eisenman produces beautiful syntactic knots tecture were being revived, there was a fairly coherent
which dazzle the eye, confuse the mind, and ultimately doctrine of semantics which explained which style to use

106 HANDMADE HOUSE, West Coast, c. 1970. Traditional wooden

construction and ready-made windows and doors are displaced
from their usual syntactic position to, again, call attention to them-
selves: ‘The Window Building’. (From Handmade Houses, A Guide
to the Woodbutcher's Art, by Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro, 1973.
The owner and place are not identified).

105 EZRA EHRENKRANTZ, SCSD (Schoo/s Construction System

Development), California, 1960s. The syntax of architecture obvious-
ly relates to functional concerns, as this drawing shows. Six major
elements: 1 mixing boxes, 2 rigid ducts, 3 flexible ducts, 4 outlets,
5 lighting, 6 roof plenum, show the air-conditioning requirements.
These were combined with roof, floor and a partition system to give
a flexible syntax that could be changed in several ways. (Drawing by
Mary Banham from The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environ-
ment by Reyner Banham.)

64
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66
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

Opposite above
109 MICHAEL GRAVES, Benacerraf House addition, Princeton,
1969. A Cubist syntax is used to call attention to itself. This heighten-
ing of our perception of doors, stairways, balustrades and views from
a terrace is complex and masterful. It is so rich here that one forgets
to ask what the functions are (actually an open terrace above, and a
playroom and breakfast room below). Note how the structure,
sometimes unnecessary, is pulled away from the wall. Railings and
cut-out wall planes also serve to define a net of rectilinear space.
The front balustrade is, conceptually, a column lying on its side — a
play on syntactical meaning, as is the whole addition. (Laurin
McCracken.) See page 64.

Opposite below /eft

110 MICHAEL GRAVES, Hanse/mann House, Fort Wayne, Indiana,
1967-8. The entrance to this house is heightened, literally by being
raised, and metaphorically by the foreground stair, the direct frontal
approach, and various articulations over or near the actual doorway.
Thus the act of entry, a procession across a bridge and then through
a series of layered spaces, is given an almost sacred significance.
Views of trees and sky are also heightened by frames, or curved
soffits. The curved railing, the extended three columns and the
diagonal (stair) all call attention to syntactic features.

Opposite below right

111 MICHAEL GRAVES, Snyderman House, Fort Wayne, Indiana,
1972. The intersection of two related syntaxes, Corbusier and
Rationalist, set up actual semantic meanings: e.g. ‘a war between a
Mondrian and a Juan Gris’, ‘a stucco building trying to spring out
of a prison cage’, ‘a collision of two ships’, ‘scaffolding’ etc. This
elaboration of a 1920s syntax is Baroque in every way but the
curvilinear.

112, 113 PETER EISENMAN, House /// for Robert Miller, Lakeville,
Connecticut, 1971. Several of the drawings which generated the
house show the main oppositions between two grids at 45° (step 6),
a conceptual cage of boxed space (step 7), a column grid (step 3),
and wall planes in ‘shear’ (step 5). Bridges and open volumes unite
and divide the room functions. The facades ‘mark’ some interior
transformations, that is if you look at them with the diagrams in your
hand and think for a long time. This architecture, like nineteenth-
century programme music, demands a complementary text in order
to be fully understood.

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114 J, C, LOUDON, How to Dress a Utilitarian Cottage, sketches

from Loudon's Encyclopaedia, A basic cube with hipped roof is
transformed with verandah and terrace, with trellis, with a castellated
Gothic jacket, monastic habit and Elizabethan front, The suitability
of style depends on the owner's role and place of residence,

68
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

“ : Pi
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115 THOMAS USTICK WALTER, Moyamensing Prison, Phila- important. But it needn't have broken down if an adequate
delphia, 1835. The Egyptian style, with its battered walls, heavy theory of eclecticism had been in operation. (1 can’t dis-
columns and small openings, naturally signified a structure from cover anything of that time that develops much beyond the
which it was hard to escape. (HABS, Library of Congress, photo notion of syncretism: taking the best parts from different
Jack E. Boucher). buildings and combining them).
Nonetheless, revivalist architects did at least justify
their choice of a style in terms of appropriateness, suit-
on which building type. An architect would pick the Doric ability ;and this gave a degree of coherence to their formal
Order for use on a bank because the Order and the choice. One architect, J. C. Loudon, proposed a theory of
banking function had certain overtones in common: ‘associationism’ based on the notion of ‘association of
sobriety, impersonality, masculinity and rationality (a bank ideas’, and even went so far as to say that each house
was meant to look tough enough to discourage robbers, should convey in its manner the character and role of its
and sensible enough to encourage depositors). Not only owner.!% If the inhabitant were a country parson, the
were these semantic properties set by comparison, by house should be dressed in castellated Gothic or related 114
looking at the Orders in opposition to each other and other clothing. Thus the environment would become more and
styles, but so were a host of syntactic aspects: the size of more legible as society became more differentiated.
the Doric capital, the column’s relation to other columns, To a certain extent this doctrine was followed in the
and its proportion to the cornice, frieze and base. Since nineteenth century, and you find that the introduction of a
these forms and relationships were used coherently, new style is assimilated into the appropriate semantic
people felt able to pass judgement on their su/tab//ity. field. The Neo-Egyptian Style, popular in 1830 because
They could tell what the building signified, and they of the Rosetta Stone and Napoleon's previous campaigns,
could read a slight change in emphasis, a variation of was used sensibly on banks, tombs, prisons and medical 115
proportion, as a change in meaning. colleges. The argument for its use might be based either
Of course, this is to idealise the situation, as only a on conventional or natural meanings. In the first cases,
small part of the community could make these distinctions. Neo-Egyptian was appropriate because the Pharaohs
But at least some could, and this community (echoing the buried their treasure in temples of this style; or famous
root-word ‘communication’) kept the architect responsive Egyptian doctors, healers and practitioners of medicine
to the whole enjoyable game of signification. He knew were sometimes also architects. Hence by the association
that if the semantic system were violently overthrown or of ideas, you could properly use the Egyptian style on
became too complicated, his communication would be banks and chemists’ shops. Secondly, this style had
reduced to primitive gestures. In fact, by 1860 the game natural meanings of heaviness, impenetrability and
of eclecticism had become too complicated. For this reason massiveness. The walls are battered and the openings
it was overthrown, and vilified sixty years later because it small — use it on prisons, it ‘naturally’ signifies high
had failed to signify those meanings architects found security.!4

69
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

116 CHARLES GARNIER, Paris Opera House, 1861-74. The giant,

heroic order is played double height against asmaller one. Surfaces
are covered with sculpture and polychromy. Everywhere statues take
up operatic poses, flexing their muscles — eventhe women look intimi-
dating. The interior grand staircase displays people as if they were
to make an entrance on stage. The internal corner, with its re-entrant
angles, medallions and general grandiloquence, is the most muscle-
bound corner of the time. The Second Empire style natura//y signified
power: it took a lot of money to build. (French Government Tourist
Office).

70
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

By the same line of reasoning, the Neo-Baroque, or

Second Empire Style of 1860 had a series of natural
overtones. It was massive, overarticulated, splendiferous,
muscular, angst-ridden, tempestuous, bombastic, playful,
exuberant, pretentious, and very expensive to build.
Where should it be used ? On the opera house of course.
Garnier’s Parisian confection of the 1870s was most
suitably clothed; and it was no accident that when he
conquered France, Hitler danced a jig on its steps. His
choice of this style for the Third Reich (an Empire meant to
last longer than the French attempts) was both appropriate
and inadvertent. It symbolised strength, but like so many
governments which have chosen this style, it was a
strength that didn’t survive its leader. Today, for this
historical reason, it conventionally symbolises ‘vanished
power’ or ‘ineffectual dictatorship’, and is used in in-
numerable movies and television dramas to signify this
ambivalent pathos. The short-lived nature of the archi-
tectural code, and its distortion by historical events thus
brings out once again the domination of conventional
meaning over natural signification.
We can clarify this issue by looking at the classical
language of architecture, the way the Three Orders con-
stituted a semantic system, and how this system changed
under the pressures of eclecticism. Vitruvius characterised
the Doric Order as bold, severe, simple, blunt, true,
honest, straightforward, and in sexual terms, masculine.
In part this characterisation stemmed from the natural
metaphors inherent in this form, but also it stemmed
from historical accident (or at least Vitruvius’ account of
the Doric Order's birth).
The Corinthian Order was, by contrast, delicate, dainty,
slender, ornamental and, sexually speaking, a young virgin.
As one would guess, the middle Order, the lonic, was a
kind of architectural hermaphrodite, a neuter — in fact for
Vitruvius, a matronly Order, because it was slightly more
feminine than masculine (with volutes that look elegant).
But these characterisations really only begin to make
sense, as E. H. Gombrich has pointed out, when the
117 CHARLES GARNIER, Paris Opera House, 1861-74.
Orders are put /n opposition to each other.
The rigid orders of ancient architecture would seem
to be a fairly recalcitrant matrix for the expression of ferences are, because custom and usage will first set them
psychological and physiognomic categories; still in one semantic space and then transform them to
it makes sense when Vitruvius recommends Doric another. This can be seen in the nineteenth century with
temples for Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, Corinthian the rapid shift of stylistic meanings. For instance, in very
ones for Venus, Flora, and Prosperina, while Juno, crude terms, the concept of state power was indicated
Diana, and other divinities who stand in between the successively by the Roman revival, the Greek neo-
two extremes, are given lonic temples. Within the Classical, the Gothic (at least in the House of Parliament),
medium at the architects’ disposal, Doric is clearly the Italian High Renaissance, the Rundbogensti/, the
more virile than Corinthian. We say that Doric High Victorian Gothic, and finally in the 1870s, the
expresses the god’s severity; it does, but only Second Empire Style. There was a general trend in this
because it is on the more severe end of the scale evolution towards more and more bombast and articula-
and not because there is necessarily much in common tion, understood metaphors of power; but all of a sudden
between the god of war and the Doric order. (E. H. the semantic system could be overturned. Simplicity could
Gombrich, Art and //lusion, London, 1960, pp. become a correlate of potency, as it was with the Neo-
316-317.) Classical and the International Style. There is nothing to
Clearly there is nothing in common between warfare keep an age from inverting the semantic space of its
and the Doric except with respect to comparable things predecessors. The relation of form to meaning is mostly
or elements: they each occupy equivalent semantic conventional.
zones. In other words, if we map the Three Orders in a We can see this transformation of meanings in the jump
tS) semantic space, it is the relationships (r1, r2, r3) which from the Classical Language of architecture to Eclecticism,
really matter, and not the ‘natural’ meanings of the forms, and in the work of one man. Nikolaus Pevsner has sum-
nor the particular semantic axes we choose, (whether marised the way John Nash used a different ‘style for the
Vitruvius’ or our own). job’.
As long as we can distinguish clear differences between [Nash] had a nice sense of associational propriety ;
elements, it doesn’t matter too much what these dif- as shown in his choice of the neo-Classical for his 118

71
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

hil
Mi"

118 JOHN NASH, Chester Terrace, Regents Park, London, 1825, opportunism Nash was damned by the serious classicists, C, R,
The Corinthian Order, triumphal arches, and endlessly repeated Cockerell: ‘Greek bedevilled , . , seenographie tricks hastily thought,
white forms were used on these town houses giving them an hastily executed...’ The indictment may have its point, but still
appropriate impersonality and rectitude, The detailing was notional Nash‘s willingness to change to the appropriate semantic system has
and symbolic, quickly conceived for spec builders. For this kind of its greater point,

town house and of the Gothic for his country More significantly, a single form has taken on its oppo
mansion (complete with Gothic conservatory), More- site meaning in the system, The Corinthian (or Nash's
over, he built Cronkhill in Shropshire (1802), as an Classical Order) has become masculine, simple and
Italianate villa with a round-arched loggia on slender straightforward, because now it is set against other
columns and with the widely projecting eaves of the formal elements, This inversion is a good illustration of the
Southern farmhouse (Roscoe's Lorenzo Medici had semiotic rule that it is relationships between elements
come out in 1796); he built Blaise Castle, near which count more than their inherent meanings. We
Bristol (1809) in a rustic Old-English cottage style could find countless other examples throughout architec
with barge-boarded gables and thatched roofs (one tural history: the Picturesque aesthetic being ‘tunctional’
is reminded of the Vicar of Wakefie/d, Marie Antoin- in 1840 and ‘anti-functional’ in 1920; simple, Platonic
ette’s diary in the Park of Versailles, and Gains forms symbolising truth and honesty in 1540 and deceit
borough's and Greuze’s sweet peasant children), and artifice in 1870, and so on, Although our intuition and
121 and he continued the Brighton Pavilion in a ‘Hindu’ perception of form may feel straightforward and ‘natural’,
fashion, just introduced after 1800 at Sezincote in the it is based on an elaborate set of changing conventions
Cotswolds where the owner, because of personal It is the differences between juxtaposed elements which
reminiscences, insisted on the style, ‘Indian Gothic’ constitute one of the bases for their meaning — not the
(Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European natural overtones inherent in the elements themselves,
Architecture, Warmondsworth, 1964, p, 378.) Even though aesthetic and technical issues dominate
In effect, Nash has substituted a revival style for each of architects today, they still pay some measure of attention
120 the Three Orders, Roughly speaking, Hindu has been to semantics, An architeet will use a curtain wall for an
substituted for Corinthian, Gothic for lonic and Classical office building, because glass and steel feel cold, im
for Doric (the Old English and Italian styles occupy new personal, precise and ordered — the overtonesof methodical
1!
niches). business, rational planning and commercial transactions, ht nS

if?)
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

MASCULINE MASCULINE

Classical

Italian
ae
ORNAMENTED ORNAMENTED ¢

STRAIGHTFORWARD

Wee e
Old English

Corinthian Hindu
FEMININE FEMININE

119 The THREE ORDERS. | have used these particular axes of 120 JOHN NASH'S Five Sty/es compared in the same semantic
Vitruvius for the sake of simplicity and comparison with the subse- space as the Three Orders (128). The comparison brings out the
quent diagrams. But more interesting oppositions could be chosen fact that it is the re/ationship between styles, or Orders, which
as long as they are semantically distinct enough to give different matters most in determining semantic meaning. The Corinthian, or
information from each other, For instance, ‘nature’ might be opposed Classical Order, has thus taken on its exact Opposite meaning in
to ‘culture’, ‘power’ to ‘impotence’, etc. Semantic meaning consists Nash's system, because now it is more masculine, simple and
partly in oppositions within a system. straightforward than the Hindu style.

peedeededdaas

(A bow!

121 JOHN NASH, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 1815-18. Nash threw Victorian country house, All this obscures, however, the appropriate-
into his soufflé a bit of Gothic, a bit of Chinese, a bit of cast-iron ness of choosing the Indian style for an escape palace next to the sea.
(palmtree columns), and his own version of a bulbous Hindu style. If you are designing a ‘pleasure dome’ for the Prince who wants to
The domes are faintly mammarian. Here is the beginning of modern get away from London sobriety, what better than the style of Kubla
Ersatz, the first exuberant Kitsch building in England, Bad taste has Khan (published 1816) ?
been a positive creative force since then reaching one high with the

73
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

122 NORMAN FOSTER, Willis Faber Office, |pswich, 1975. Dark

tinted solar glass and steel studs make this ‘Big Black Piano’ or
‘Rolls-Royce’ semantically fitting for cool office work. The building
curves around the site, takes up the street lines and reflects the
surrounding environment in fragments. (John Donat).

74
MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

75
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

One could argue that the architect should deflect these

meanings, that business might be made to look more
adventurous and domestic than it is; yet the basic classifi-
cation is suitable.
Wood is intrinsically warm, pliable, soft, organic, and
full of natural marks such as knots and grain, so it is used
domestically or where people come into close contact 123
with the building. Brick is associated by use with housing,
and is inherently flexible in detail, so it is also used
domestically. In spite of the fact that there are much more
economic building systems available, the wood-and-brick
hybrid still accounts for seventy-five per cent of specula-
tive and council housing in Britain — a clear indication
that semantic issues take precedence, in the public’s
mind, over technical ones.
What about new materials such as nylon, which make
up pneumatic buildings ? The inflatable system is naturally
123 TRADITIONAL SWISS CHALET “Montbovon’, sixteenth- pudgy, squashy, cuddly, sexual, volumetric and pleasant to
century, now in Geneva. The natural qualities of wood make it
touch, so it has naturally found a secure niche in the
semantically suitable for the house. The knots, grain and texture are
semantic field and is used appropriately on swimming
all metaphors for the wrinkles and birth marks on skin; the surface
is tactile, warm and faintly responsive, again like the human body:
pools, blow-up furniture, entertainment areas and other 124-
the material can be easily tooled at a human scale. In this case the unmentionable places. Its occasional use as a church or 126
surface is adorned with jewellery and decorated like a peasant office building brings out different, less dominant
costume. semantic overtones.

124 PAUL BURROWS, Brothe/ for Oj/ Men in the Desert, 1973.
The pneumatic architecture takes up and supports the natural
metaphors of these girls, as well as their activity.

76
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

125 BARBARELLA, 1968, is always shown surrounded with vis-

cous, shiny plastic and soft, hairy fur. (ALA Fotocine).

126 JAMES BOND and TIFFANY CASE in Diamonds Are Forever,

1971, frolic around on a transparent water bed surrounded by 3,000
tropical fish. Connery’s sardonic smile suggests he has had almost
enough of this sort of thing. (United Artists).

77
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

These comparative aspects of building systems can be

graphed in a semantic space similar to that already used,
although axes other than the ones | have taken over from _--@ Concrete
es Vitruvius would be more relevant. The relations between Se ee

brick, pneumatics, concrete and steel set up the semantic

field which will differ slightly for each individual and
particular usage employed. Architects do not at present
consciously map materials to each other, and functions to
emeiart
pect
Soc
each other, and then compare the two mappings. Rather
128 they leave semantic questions to intuition, if they acknow-
ledge them at all. Yet if our complex urban environments
are to speak coherently, an explicit method must be used.
The various building systems, the new materials, the five
- @ Pneumatic
or so reigning styles, create such semantic richness as to = S r=a
S65
ss, ~ oor Mae
¢------------------
generate confusion. So far architects have only responded
to this as a positive aesthetic gain, trading off stylistic
options for psychological and social meaning. As a result 127 FOUR BUILDING SYSTEMS. Particular uses of each building
no one expects to understand a building and read it as a system have to be established before these relationships can be
text. Everyone is the loser, the architect and public. plotted: e.g. the particular use of concrete may in fact be more
complex and feminine than the use of steel. Then the functional
Hence the plea that some system of semantic ordering
aspects have to be mapped in the same semantic space, and the two
be explicitly used. It can be as crude as the one proposed
mappings compared.
here, because it is gross distinctions and oppositions that
are at stake, not the fine shades of semantic meaning
(which can in any case only be communicated in
language).
Several architects have made hesitant steps in this
direction — hesitant because they are not backed up by
theoretical understanding, or by more than single instances
in their large output. One such building in Rome com-
129 pleted in 1965 has been rather heavily criticised for being
made up of clichés, and for being schizophrenic. This
building, by the Passarelli brothers, uses the conventional
forms for office: smooth black steel and glass, below
conventional signs for dwelling — hanging vines, broken
silhouette, picturesque massing and balconies. A third
building system below ground, in monolithic, Brutalist
concrete, is the parking garage. The standard joke was
that each of the brothers designed a different part of the
building and never talked to each other. Part of the criti-
cism directed against this building was for its obvious,
boring use of styles already better developed by Harrison
and Abromovitz, Paul Rudolph, and Le Corbusier; and one 128 ARCHIGRAM, Bournemouth Scheme, 1971, uses four different
can see the point of this censure. building systems semantically :the tent-like forms signify ephemeral
But also, and perhaps a more deep-rooted reason for beach activity, the wandering stepped forms signify large-scale
the pique was the use of various structures and materials. collective activity (department store), the fragmented individual
Architects and critics brought up with the International objects are the conventional sign for amusement park, and the linear
Style were ingrained with the Purist notion that one spine classifies circulation. These sytems are then modified or
aesthetic and structural system should be used on a distorted to articulate further meaning: the linear spine indents to
accept plastic pod-like rooms and changes into a lattice girder as it
building. Attendant ideas supporting this were the notions
goes out over the water.
of harmony, the classical ideal that a part cannot be added
or subtracted without disturbing the integrated whole,
and that each building had, Platonically speaking, one and architect must master at least three or four to articulate any
only one best solution. complex building today, especially if he is to design the
There were even further assumptions which this build- interior.
ing called into question: the self-conscious use of opposite Secondly, the connection of any particular style with
styles as sty/es. Le Corbusier had said, ‘the ‘styles’ are a sincerity, whether it is the International Style or the ad hoc
lie’. Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius believed that a aesthetic of Handmade Houses, is a matter of history and
single style, expressing the character and integrity of the convention, not something eternally true. By that typical
architect, must animate all his work — otherwise he was process of historical inversion, we have actually arrived
guilty of insincerity, pandering to the whims of a client at a position where consistency and Purism do not equate
and ultimately to a corrupt ruling taste. Eclecticism meant with integrity, but quite the reverse. How has this
slick facility and lack of conviction. happened ?
There are two obvious problems with this single-style Precisely because the International Style has been
approach (still the reigning one, even if it is less explicit accepted on a massive scale by those who build cities.
than at previous times). First, mixed styles are an aid to - It is now the conventional style of the ruling class and its
communication, as the Passarelli building shows; and an bureaucracy, (at least for its large-scale offices and civic

78
 MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

, SCHIZOThe split functions of mixed develop”

ment have rarely, if ever, been ex-
pressed in so split-minded a way as
in the casa per uffici e abitazioni
recently completed in the Via Romag-
na at Rome, |, designed by the three
brothers Passarelli: three floors of
parking out of sight below ground, an
open ground floor concourse, three
office floors of the sleekest curtain
walling in black steel following the
street lines, and finally four floors of
crazily expressed hanging gardens
punched askew. Rudolph stands on
Mies. The quadruple columns (ducts
running centrally between them) stand
proud as pilotis, are enveloped in
curtaining and are threaded through
balconies. The obvious merit of this
mixture aesthetically is that it de-
velops the accrued confusion of
history: Roman wall, neo-Roman-
esque church, 2, shuttered palazzos.
Like so many Italian schemes, it all
seems balanced, even academic, in
section, 3. How was it designed?
| Perhaps the brothers split it: Vincenzo
the flats, Luca the offices and Fausto
the car park—a new Adelphi.

eee
129 PASSARELLI BROTHERS, Multi-use structure, Rome, 1965.
The concrete and hanging vines classify the flats, the black steel
curtain wall indicates office, and below ground, exposed concrete
articulates parking. Termed ‘Schizo’ in this item by Architectura/
Review, and attacked by modernists for its impurity, the building
nonetheless makes basic distinctions which are obscured in Purist
design.

buildings), so its use hardly ensures that same sincerity

which preoccupied the pioneers of the style. Furthermore
the ‘Masters of Modern Architecture’ (| take the phrase
from a series of books) have become like the consumer
products Coca-Cola, Xerox, and Ford, each with their
own house style and corporate brand image. They did not 130 PAOLO SOLERI, Arcosanti, Cordes Junction, Arizona, 1972-7.
Restaurant block and accommodation to left and bell foundry and
intend this of course, but since they couldn't advertise
great arch to the right, with housing on either side (semi-circular
and since they had to work within a consumer society, the windows). The Roman-like pattern making, squares, circles and
main way of selling their reputation was to develop a single flat masonry walls, is not tied to any semantic system, either his-
recognisable style which could be purveyed through torical or internal to the scheme. The formal play is pleasurable, but
magazines, books and TV. In short, their authenticity, and it doesn’t relate to anything other than the grand ecological dreams
their sincerity itself, became a marketable commodity, just of Soleri.
as that of Picasso and Ché Guevara did in other fields.
The followers of the ‘masters’ are led in the same direc- other than that of architects. The environment which is
tion, with the result that we can now recognise the Safdie created by such a situation is one where every building
style, the brand marks of Kurokawa and Tange, the is a monument to the architect's consistency, rather than
Stirling manner, and so forth. How does a client or appropriate to the job or the urban setting.
committee know which one to pick? They choose from The issues involved are obviously complex. An architect
books or articles which show his style distinguished from must, to a certain extent, develop his own way of doing
those of competitors. Originality and distinctiveness are things, his own details and mannerisms; but these no
saleable items. longer guarantee or signify authenticity as they tended
The result of this hidden process, of the marketing of to do before the avant-garde was incorporated into con-
reputations, has been to produce a recognisable style sumer society. And if this practice now produces essen-
of the elite, middle-class architects: it tends towards tially boring, idiosyncratic sculpture, oversimplified in a
univalence because of the pressures toward consistency. single language, then today the architect's sincerity can
It is made up from repetitive geometrics, divorced from be measured by his ability to design in a plurality of styles.
most metaphors except that of the machine, and purged Consistency equals unconscious hypocrisy, (or, oc-
130 of vulgarity and the signs common to semiotic groups casionally, conscious elitism).

is)
 EVOLUTIONARY TREE

1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980

FORMALISTS | SCHOOL
Saarinen Johnson —_ Yamasaki Moore Giurgola STERN ‘Greys’
Scully Righter
NEO-LIBERTY Bs eidaer
Moretti Gardella Aulenti BARCELONA SCHOOL Clotet and Tusquets Thomas G. Smith
HISTORICISM Portoghesi_ Scarpa Albini Correa MBM © Bofill — OMA Cohen
Koolhaas HHP
JAPAN STYLE
, Maekawa Tange Kitukake Kurokawa Takeyama Monta Watanabe
Jowsey.
Gowan
Outram Dixons
Greenberg
Portmeirion Madonna Inn Bayley
4 : Disneyland Puerto Banus
WAR REBUILDING
STRAIGHT Warsaw Old Centre Lapidus PASTICHE ‘Gay’ Eclectic
Reed Port Grimaud :
REVIVALISM
L A Pop Spoerry ‘PATTERN BOOKS
TRUE VERNACULAR
Erith : Jameson
Fath
peed Sours INTERIOR DECORATION
Hicks Terry 5 i
Blatteau
: Getty Museum

Beaux-Arts

Burton aaa
Ahrends Koralek :
Darbourne and Darke Maguire and Murray Clendinning Cullinan 3
NEO VERNACULAR Hillingdon
MBM Esherick Guedes j
Ersicine Recycling REHABILITATION GLC Policy
Feilden
Lost New York etc
Van Eyck and Bosch
Bout and Ley

a RAU
Stirling
Rowe
COLLAGE CITY
Collins Neo Rationalism Kriers
Newman Rossi Bologna de Feo Botta
URBANIST TOWNSCAPE ‘Site Revival’ : e
LA TENDENZA
AD HOC Jacobs Goodman Jameson Huet
ANTI-MODERNISM
Greene Erskine URBAN PROTEST
CONTEXTUALISM
Guedes Handmade Houses Garbage Housing
Drop City Kroll Wampler

Scharoun Moore
Takeyama Wines Agrest
METAPHOR SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE Pietila Howard Machado
‘Blue Whale’
METAPHYSICAL Silvetti Gough
TWA Norberg-Schulz ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Roche Shirai Face House
Tigerman Yamashita
Wilson

Netsch Eiaexeiand Kevenun CHARLES MOORE __ Stern

POST MODERN Haiduk Kipper
Aalto SCHAROUN Venturi SUPERGRAPHICS GRAVES | Pelli Geh
SPACE
Michels ean
Sellers and Rienecke “iahanen PETER EISENMAN _ Coate
Hosford Walker

Luckey
HHP

80
 PART THREE
Post-Modern Architecture

Historicism, the Beginnings of PM Milan, 1957, looked somewhat like a medieval tower;
The question of what period of architecture might be Luigi Moretti used an actual rusticated base in the Casa
plausibly revived was fiercely and rather uncharitably del Girasole, Rome, 1952, while Lubetkin, in England,
debated by the English and Italians in the late fifties. used, ironically, a caryatid porte-cochére as early as 1939. 133
Reyner Banham and his teacher Nikolaus Pevsner One of the most convincing historicist buildings of the
launched quite different kinds of attacks on Italian Neo- fifties was Paolo Portoghesi’s Casa Baldi, 1959-61, an 134
liberty and what they took to be a return to Historicism essay in free-form curves definitely reminiscent of the
(not to be confused with Karl Popper's use of this term in
politics). Professor Banham, calling the class to order,
attacked ‘The Italian retreat from Modern Architecture’ as
‘infantile regression’, because it went back to a pre-
machine age style. Pevsner listed the other retreats from
the faith and found shades of deviant ‘neo-Art Nouveau
and neo-De Stijl’, neo-this and neo-that sprouting
everywhere like poisonous weeds. Their articles and
attacks, lasting from 1959 to 1962, were meant to wipe
out these heresies with a little critical weed-killer, but in
the event the Italians fought back at this Puritanism, the
refrigerator school of criticism.!°
The kind of buildings which were provoking this debate
all had vague or repressed historical allusions: Franco
132 Albini’s museums and Rinascente, 1957-62, were reminis-
cent of traditional Roman building; the Torre Velasca, 133 LUBETKIN and TECTON, Highpoint//, Highgate, 1938. Because
of local hostility to modernism, the architects, half-ironically, incor-
porated casts of the caryatid removed from the Erechtheum. The
classical reference was perhaps fitting to their ordered, classical
geometries, but at this stage in time it is the presence of the human
figure and the representational boldness, where it is appropriate — at
the door — which are noteworthy.

134 PAOLO PORTOGHESI and VITTORIO GIGLIOTTI, Casa Baldi

7, Rome, 1959-61. Half Baroque, half modern in its curves and
132 FRANCO ALBINI and FRANCA HELG, Ainascente Department materials. The wall planes curve to acknowledge windows or doors,
Store, Rome, 1957-62. A modern pa/azzo with a heavy cornice and or create overlapping focii of space. Unlike later buildings by the same
no windows, but corrugated service ducts instead. The exposed steel architects, the forms aren’t entirely sculptural, but keep semantic
skeleton takes up the proportions of traditional Roman streets, while memories (eg cornice, building block, closed bedroom). (Oscar
the masonry echoes the context. (Oscar Savio). Savio).

81
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Opposite
136,137 DRNORMAN NEUERBURG etal, Getty Museum, Malibu,
1970-5. The Villa dei Papyri was never quite like this since it lacked
a parking garage and chlorinated water, but several parts of this
seaside palace have been replicated. Its transplantation to Southern
California and a magnificent view overlooking the Pacific is approp-
riate especially as a museum for antiquities. Because it has the greatest
budget, and therefore upkeep, of any museum there is a slightly
miraculous polish about the ambience which the Romans would have
envied. Note, below, the trompe /‘oei/ columns, garland and false
marble. Several Pompeiian styles made a virtue of deceit which here
is ironically more deceitful — for instance the contradictory painted
shadows. (The Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Museum). See pages
94-5,

more kitsch variants of Yamasaki, Ed Stone, and Wallace

Harrison. Yamasaki and Stone produce their sparkling
version of Islamic ‘grilles and frills’ in 1958 and then
‘almost-real-Gothic’ in 1962 — at least this is the date of
Yamasaki’s infamous instant arches (awaiting their
cathedral, in Seattle). The historicism is attenuated,
embarrassed, half-baked — neither convincing appliqué
nor rigorous structuralism — a problem for many of the
architects who left Mies setting out for decoration (and
never quite arrived).
Philip Johnson is easily the most accomplished and
135 EERO SAARINEN and ASSOCIATES, Sti/es and Morse Col- intelligent of this group; indeed he probably thought
/Jeges, New Haven, 1958-62. Wandering medieval spaces and the about the problem of historicism far sooner and longer than
heavy crude masonry of San Gimignano were partly sought because
other architects. His first, tentative break with Mies was
of the neo-Gothic campus of Yale. In retrospect the historicism seems
the Synagogue in Port Chester, 1956, on the outside a 142
diagrammatic, as homogeneous and scaleless as the modernism it
was criticising. - startling simplification recalling those of Ledoux, on the
inside memories of the Soane Museum. These historical 141
quotes are located within a black picture-frame of
Borromini he was studying, yet also unmistakably in- Miesian steel, and the absence of ornament and content
fluenced by Le Corbusier. Here is the schizophrenic mark it as modernist, so Johnson really like so many
cross between two codes that is characteristic of Post- others is looking two ways. His writing and sensibility
Modernism: the enveloping, sweeping curves of the probably outdistance his architecture in contributing to
Baroque, the overlap of space, the various focii of space Post-Modernism.
interfering with each other and the Brutalist treatment, the In 1955 the essay attacking ‘The Seven Crutches of
expression of concrete block, rugged joinery and the Modern Architecture’ exposed some of the formulae
guitar-shapes of modernism. | give the dates of this behind which modern architects hid, or tried to escape
Italian historicism to set it against the slightly later responsibility for formal choice: for instance the pretence
emergence of the same thing in Japan, Spain and America to utility and structural efficiency were two such
(where critics sometimes claim it happened first). ‘crutches’.'® Johnson later, in ‘The Processional Element
Although Saarinen built his ‘orange-peel dome’, the inArchitecture’, 1965, also debunked the spatial rationalisa-
Kresge Auditorium and chapel, in 1955, and these were tions of the modern movement. Combined with his play
reminiscent of Renaissance and medieval prototypes, it with historicist shapes (the redundant segmental arch
wasn't really until his Stiles and Morse colleges at Yale, appears in his Amon Carter Museum, 1961 and Follee
135 1958-62, in ‘peanut-brittle Gothic’, that overt historicism 1962) these arguments no doubt pushed the door of
arrives. Here we have a conscious medieval layout, history open further.
picturesque massing, an attention to the local Yale Mies is such a genius! But | grew old! And bored!
context — in sum the beginnings of a sensitive urban My direction is clear; eclectic tradition. This is not
place-making. The detail and massing may be dia- academic revivalism. There are no Classic orders or
grammatic, and slightly cheapskate, but this is the Gothic finials. | try to pick up what | like throughout
modernist inheritance. Saarinen couldn't quite go the history. We cannot not know history.!7
next step and design conventional decoration. So by 1961 we have at least a camp, laconic statement in
Semi-historicism starts in America, in a big way, about favour of eclecticism. What keeps Johnson from develop-
1960 with the major works of Philip Johnson and the - ing this is not only his jocular tone, his preference for

82
 Etecha

POTEET!
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um
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=:
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Opposite above
138 RALPH ERSKINE, Byker Wa// on the outside, 1976, incorporates
old buildings into the pattern which is meant to shield the community
from traffic noise: multi-coloured brick and ventilator hoods form a
kind of syncopated decoration which just avoids being twee. The
wall has given great identity to the area, both positive and negative.
See page 104.

Opposite below /eft

139 BERNARD MAYBECK, Leon Ross House, San Francisco, 1909.
A very dynamic handling of the face theme with all sorts of other
ideas going on: a body image, a set of tightly layered frontal planes,
the juxtaposition of Gothic and Tudor, the contrast in materials. See
page 116.

Opposite below right

140 ANTONIO GAUDI, Gue// Colony Church, near Barcelona,
1908-15. This entrance porch to the crypt shows the columns
leaning and twisting against each other, while the muscles and
tendons articulate this dynamic play of forces. Several of the
columns resemble the leaning trees, since they are finished with a
bark-like stone. The brick domes are hyperbolic parabolas — the
whole structure was worked out in model form prior to building.
Unfortunately only the crypt was finished. See page 117.

141 SIR JOHN SOANE, Breakfast Parlour (The Soane Museum),

London, 1812. The dome, first secularised by Palladio, is further
secularised here in this ‘temple’ of domesticity. Mirrors take the place
of religious iconography, the fireplace replaces the altar, mystical light
is replaced by indirect lighting and a very tight, layered space which
foreshortens the depth. Soane’s work is admired by Post-Modernists
such as Charles Moore and Michael Graves. (Trustees of the Sir John
Soane’s Museum).

ca =

142 PHILIP JOHNSON, Kneses Tifereth /srael Synagogue, Port

Chester, 1956. A thin plaster canopy is stretched tent-like across the
nave to break it up into vaulted bays. This use of a traditional com-
pression form in tension, and back-lit, clearly recalls, as Johnson
intended, Soane’s amazing distortion of classical grammar. (Ezra
Stoller).

85
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

143 KISHO KUROKAWA, WNationa/ Children’s Land Lodge, Yoko- 144 KIYONORI KIKUTAKE, 7okoen Hote/, Kaike Spa, Yonago,
hama, 1964—5. The heavy roof form with upturned eaves, the long 1963-4. The ‘Japan Style’ is evident in the constructional elements
horizontals and overlapping construction are all traditional Japanese and the roof restaurant with its gentle curves. In addition the building
signs; the proportions and lack of small-scale detail are, however, as is highly readable and broken into different semantic areas: board-
modern as the steel tent. rooms and conferences rooms at the base, an open deck, two levels
of hotel rooms (on the inside proportioned by tatami mats) and the
vertical stairway.

surface wit over deeper investigation, but also his very according to the method of ‘compaction composition’.
modernist commitment to ‘pure form — ugly or beautiful — Le Corbusier developed this method of Cubist Collage,
but pure form.’ '8The historicism of Johnson remains on and the Japanese, with their traditional Zen aesthetics of
the level of spotting the source, on esoteric codes rather asymmetrical balance, frequently push it toward the
than on more accessible and conventional ones. He thus refined and exquisite. While they use Brutalist materials
never really develops an argument for ornament, regional and smash them through each other, they still end up with
Suitability, or contextual appropriateness — three potential something as elegant as a Tea Ceremony Room (albeit in
aids to his eclecticism that might have strengthened it. stained concrete). As with Johnson and Saarinen they
If Johnson and Saarinen can be classified as semi- remain hesitant about tradition, and wary of a full-blown
Historicist, or one-half Post-Modern (see genealogy, eclecticism.
page 80) then so too can the ‘Japan Style’, and ‘the ‘So called regionalism’ remarked Tange in 1958, ‘is
Barcelona School’ which develop at the same time, but always nothing more than the decorative use of
toward a regionalist expression. The ‘new Japan Style’, traditional elements. This kind of regionalism is
a phrase used by Robin Boyd, is best exemplified in the always looking backwards . . . the same should be
143 sixties work of Kunio Maekawa, Kenzo Tange, Kiyonori said of tradition’.?°
144 Kikutake and Kisho Kurokawa. '® It incorporates nationalist What, might be asked, is really wrong with the decorative
and traditionalist elements within a basically Corbusian use of traditional elements — indeed straightforward
syntax. So projecting beam ends, brackets, torii gates, ornament and the Trad styles ? No one was prepared in
gentle curves, bevelled masts, constructional expression — the sixties to pose these questions in a radical way, and
all the hallmarks of Japanese architecture in wood — are so the vague modernist suspicion of ornament and
translated into reinforced concrete and juxtaposed convention remained.

86
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

| suppose the first Modern architect to use the decor-

ative moulding and traditional symbol (such as the
doorway arch) in an aggressive way was Robert Venturi. 145
His Headquarters Building for Nurses and Dentists, 146
1960, has decorative mouldings placed as exaggerated
eyebrows over the lower windows, and a paper-thin
arch bisected by diagonal struts which shouts out ‘public
entrance’. All sorts of ideas which were to have later
influence are present in this building, so it could be called
quite appropriately the first anti-monument of Post-
Modernism. Robert Stern was to develop the ornamental
ideas and many architects, such as Charles Moore, were
to learn from its funny corners, inflected walls, ugly
ironies and ‘Post-Modern space’ (but more of that later). 147
Suffice it to say here that we have finally a building that
was wilfully traditional in some respects; like Baroque
buildings it was designed in terms of the urban context,
the street line and flowing spatial requirements; like a
Mannerist conceit it played tricks with scale, bloating
certain windows and doors, while diminishing others.
Certainly its calculated ugliness and awkwardness were
Mannerist: the roof is an insult to the strength of the
weather, the boxiness carved up is an insult to the Inter-
national Style (as it was meant to be).
Robert Venturi’s polemics against modernism mostly
concentrated at first on the question of taste, and then
later on symbolism. In his first book, Comp/exity and
Contradiction in Architecture, 1966, he set up a series of
visual preferences in opposition to Modernism: com-
plexity and contradiction vs simplification ;ambiguity and
tension rather than straightforwardness; ‘both-and’
rather than ‘either-or’, doubly-functioning elements
rather than singly working ones, hybrid rather than pure
145, 146 ROBERT VENTURI and SHORT, Headquarters Building, elements, and messy vitality (or ‘the difficult whole’)
North Penn Visiting Nurses Association, 1960. The arch, a sign of rather than obvious unity. In addition to these stylistic
door, is contrasted with rectangular and diagonal elements, to (over) codes, Venturi provided two more important contributions
articulate the public entrance. Traditional decorative mouldings are to the growing argument: first was his interest in pillaging
also distorted on the windows. This bizarre, even ‘ugly’, usage was from disregarded historical work, such as that of the
nevertheless one of the first buildings which used historical ornament
Mannerists and Lutyens (who now with Gaudi becomes
in a recognisable and symbolic way.
a paragon for nearly all the PMs), and second was his
- plunge into Pop Art, then Main Street, Las Vegas, and
finally Levittown. Along with his wife Denise Scott
Brown, and his design team, Venturi looked at these
hitherto snubbed manifestations of popular taste for their
‘Lessons in Symbolism’. The results were collected in
what could be appropriately called the first anti-exhibition
of PM architecture, ‘Signs of Life: Symbols in the
American City’ (‘anti’ because it went against the con- 102
ventional museum codes of displaying artifacts).
The Venturi argument, taken as a whole, insisted on
revaluing commercial schlock and nineteenth-century
eclecticism for how they communicated on a mass level.
There were certain problems of focus, however: no
developed theory of symbolism was put forward, so the
examples multiplied every-which-way; no standards for
selecting and judging schlock were presented and the
argument was conducted on the level of personal taste —
not semiotic theory — so that the Venturi ‘bill-ding-
boards’ triumphed somewhat arbitrarily over their ‘ducks’ 65
(to use two of their fairly primitive categories). In fact the
Venturi Team’s wholesale commitment to argument by
taste and to inverting the taste of the previous generation
147 VENTURI and SHORT, Headquarters Building, plan is a dis-
was exclusivist and modernist at its core.*! By contrast,
torted box which, on the outside forms an embracing court, and on Post-Modernism which has developed from semiotic
the inside directs movement with its diagonals. The odd angles and
research, looks at the abstract notion of taste and its
skewed space of Post-Modernism developed from such plans. coding and then takes up a situational position: ie, no

87
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

The Venturi Team have definitely responded to several

codes which have heretofore remained unserviced by
architects, those coming from the lower middle class and
the commerce of Route 66. Their actual buildings, how-
ever, have usually been for a different taste culture — for
professors or colleges, or ‘tasteful clients’ — thus creating
a kind of hiccup between theory and practice.**
Their practice varies in its commitment to ‘ordinary and
ugly’ architecture. The Oberlin College Addition, 1973-7, 148-
is a decorated shed of pink granite and red sandstone —‘a 149
high school gym of the 1940s’ as they call it — slammed
onto a quietly harmonious Neo-Renaissance building. The
juncture, the texture, the roof and pattern are all dis-
cordant and calculatedly ham-fisted, and one wonders if
the justification — ‘the artists don’t want architectural
heroics’ — is enough. There is an obvious jump in logic,
caused by their prior commitment to ugliness. For why
should the coding of a 1940s high school gym be used?
The Brant House, 1971, does make the argument for its 150
coding by way of association: since the owners have one
of the great collections of Art Deco objects, there are
various signs of this in the detailing. On the outside, two
shades of green-glazed brick slide on the diagonal, and
flat streamlines in shiny metal edge the surface. On the
inside, taking cues from Lutyens, black and white marble
stairs vibrate in opposition and the entrance sequence is
148,149 VENTURI and RAUCH, A//en Art Museum, Oberlin College,
punctuated by a series of shifts in axis and scale.
1973-7. This addition to an Italian Renaissance revival building of
1917 tries to harmonise and contrast with the previous building
But, and again this is where arbitrary coding enters, the
through its proportions and pink and red stone. Semantically, how- back-side is ‘1930s Post-Office and Walter Gropius’, as if
ever, this ‘elegantly decorated shed’ is more a gymnasium than a those two sources were adequate to Art Deco. Clearly the
museum, and awkwardly, not gracefully, integrated with its neigh- Venturis are slumming and enjoying the ‘dumb’ side of
bour. things. One more quote brings out the esoteric nature of
the codes involved: they say the southern front ‘resembles
a plain Georgian country house (except there is no central
motif)’.24 Once this comparison is made, however, as with
code is inherently better than any other, and therefore the so many other modernist buildings trying to have
subculture being designed for must be identified before historical overtones, it is the Non-historical parallels which
one code can be chosen rather than another. dominate. The bow front has expanded to the point that
The Venturi Team would exclude a whole repertoire of no Georgian would recognise it, as has the gigantic side
codes, not only ‘ducks’, but also ‘Heroic and Original’ porch. The windows, colouring, details are all anti-
architecture, the grand gesture, the revival of the pa/azzo Georgian in their Mannerised proportions. One can enjoy
pubblico, and all the work they conceive in opposition to the building for its marvellous idiosyncrasy, for its careful
their decorated sheds.*? Why ? Because they still keep a distortion of codes, and its delightful wit — a nice green
modernist notion of the Ze/tge/st, and their particular spirit trellis jumps up the west side — but still wonder why the
of the age ‘is not the environment for heroic communica- Venturis have to try so hard at being original in this
tion through pure architecture. Each medium has its day’; esoteric way ? It’s as if their sensibility were still Modern-
our day, you might have heard from McLuhan, is one of ist, while their theory were Post.
symbolism via the electronic media — the ‘electrographic Two buildings which are more straightforward in their
architecture’ of Tom Wolfe. It’s amusing to note the historical allusions and enjoy an easy-going but interest-
symmetrically opposite positions of Team Venturi and ing commerce with the past, are the Trubeck and Wislocki
Philip Johnson. They both take a pr/or/ stands on’pure’ form houses, 1970, which use the Cape Cod vernacular in a
— one anti, one pro — as if such one-sided views of com- conventional yet fascinating way, and the Franklin Court Loy
munication were adequate. Since Post-Modernism is design, 1972-6, a Bicentennial homage to Benjamin
radically inclusivist (like Renaissance architecture) it Franklin. Here a very appropriate ghost image, in stainless
must fault the oversimplification of both polemicists and steel, marks the profile of the old, non-existent mansion.
attack its causes. After all, Modernism is in an important Below are the archaeological remains, which can be spied
sense nothing but the pretence of one Ze/tge/st after through various bunker-like slits thoughtfully provided
another, each one claiming to occupy the centre stage, above ground. A neo-colonial garden, laid out roughly on
each one swinging the pendulum too far its way, each Franklin’s description, is peppered with various of his
One adopting the war tactics of shock, slogan and morally uplifting slogans. Thus the Venturi Team has
exclusion. A difficulty of Post-Modernism is in adopting produced here not a building, but a very amusing garden
plural coding without degenerating into compromise and which combines meanings from the past and present in a
unintended pastiche, and a way of doing this, as we will way that isn’t excessively idiosyncratic. It’s fitting to the
190- see later, is through participatory design, something that urban context, it’s within both popular and elitist codes, it’s
193 subjects the designer to codes not necessarily his own in ugly and beautiful and thus could be called their first pro-
a way he can respect them. monument of Post-Modernism.

88
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

150 VENTURI and RAUCH, Brant House, Greenwich, 1971, intended references to country houses are so oblique and under-
southern exterior. The green glazed brick in two shades and the metal coded as to go unnoticed.
strips are in tune with the Art Deco collection of the owners, but the

151 VENTURI and RAUCH, Frank/in Court, Philadelphia, 1972-6. buildings have been restored — a convincing if modest knitting to-
An open frame of stainless steel approximates Franklin’s old mansion, gether of old and new.
the ‘surprise garden’ houses his memorabilia, while the surrounding

89
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Perhaps because Robert Venturi and Denise Scott

Brown have-had to fight Modernism to establish their
style and positions, they haven't yet been able to relax
with traditional codes, the way their followers have.
Clearly Robert Stern, who will be discussed later, has a
kind of exuberant facility with the ‘Venturi Style’, and the
Barcelona School can turn it to its local purpose.?° One
group of Barcelona designers, Mora-Pind6n-Viaplana, has
a Mins
me 28 taken cues not only from Venturi’s formal ideas, but also
from semiotics in general, to produce ironic juxtapositions
of entrance space and circulation, column and wall; while
another Team, Clotet and Tusquets, produce a heightened 152
sarcasm by juxtaposing new and old. They place a paper- 153
thin trellis above an heroic order of piers; within the piers
and on the roof of the house is the place to park the car
surrounded by a balustrade; finally, the piers which come
down to the ground act as a screen behind which are
rustic shutters and windows — out of phase with the piers.
The syncopation of verticals is masterful, the layering of
space a surprise, the contrast of meanings a delight. It’s
bi Wi rather as if one composed a classical building according
See if to International Style aesthetics (or vice-versa), a typical
conceit of Post-Modernism.
With such a building then, finished in 1972, the modern
architect a/most makes his peace with historicism and
allows himself to quote tradition directly where it has a
purpose (the building is on a classical estate). | underline
the word ‘almost’ because these designers realiy can't
go very far down this traditional road yet, and are fearful
of meeting interior decorators and Reactionaries coming
back the other way. For this is what has partly stopped
their full use of the past — the nostalgia boom, the con-
152 LLUIS CLOTET, OSCAR TUSQUETS and PER, G/orgina Belve- tinuation of reproduction architecture with its Repro-
dere, Gerona, 1971-2. This belvedere-bedroom is meant to relate to
duction Furniture, the Traditionalesque Style that never
and contrast with the classical estate. You drive in — on the roof —
died and often became Kitsch. The ex-modernists still do
between the temple’s colonnade. Double-height space is set off
against small-scale trellis and balustrade, and rustic wood shutters
not want to be tainted with establishment values, the
against white stucco, a grand irony of Post-Modernism. eclecticism that has been the style of wealth and oppor-
tunism for the last 200 years. So when they make hesitant
steps towards this eclecticism it is always distorted enough
to be recognisably still ‘modern’, structurally at least, the
opposite of Kitsch.?°®
Thus Post-Modern architects must distinguish them-
selves from the next group, those revivalists who never
were modern in the first place.

Straight Revivalism
One is often surprised to read how Gothic architecture
survived in England through the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries right into the Gothic Revival.
It never entirely died because people liked this ‘national
style’, and there were always a few crumbly cathedrals in
need of repair. In like manner, the old way of doing things
never really stopped. Rather historians stopped looking —
except H. R. Hitchcock who called one, small chapter of
his contemporary history ‘Architecture called Traditional
in the Twentieth Century’. Even Hitchcock stops his
account In the 1930s and no one, to my knowledge, tries
to bring the story up to date in a comprehensive way. The
reason for this is partly due to the fact that revivalist styles
become kitsch, traditional becomes traditionalesque, and 154
the whole thing a form of ersatz — that is, a clear sub-
stitute for the period being revived, neither a very creative
153 CLOTET and TUSQUETS, comparison of their belvedere, and extension to tradition nor a scholarly copy.27 Thus
‘dog’ house in South Africa. Decoration and symbolism here applied Pittsburgh's ‘Cathedral of Learning’, a forty-storey gothic
with a Venturian literalism. cathedral given over to study, or Moscow's seven sky-

90
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

154 DAVID HICKS, Athens Apartment, 1972. The Doric Order 155 Moscow State University, Moscow, 1947-53? Classical
painted white and turned inside-out with a deep frieze which hides realism, the architectural form of Socialist Realism, here borrows the
the air-conditioning ducts. Chairs and tables are replicated from repressive forms of czarism, the stepped pyramids, and the signs of
designs on ancient urns. The white and black graphics are fairly bourgeois power. This coercive and boring symbolism — the archi-
startling in their purity, and more modern than Hellenic. tecture of monotony — is tied to an appropriate megalomania: the
building houses 18,000 students in a kind of battery-hatch palace.
That several western Marxists such as Aldo Rossi admire these build-
ings as socialist dreams is their luxury ; but that they should be offered
as urban prototypes is laughable. The insensitivity to context and
historical meaning is droll. (Novosti Press Agency).

155 scrapers designed in Stalinist Baroque (or what Intourist

esse esese ee aeoeese [sees eneenesunes
guides call euphemistically ‘The Fifties Style’). Many such
confections were built, and some like the Karl Marx
Allée in East Berlin, or the Laboral University in Gijon, are
being revalued by Aldo Rossi and others for their urban
implications.” Rossi and the other Rationalists such as
the Krier brothers have stated that, despite accusations,
their work is not Fascist; indeed that there is no such
thing as an ideological architecture. Their confusions on
this score are grandiloquent inasmuch as they also proffer
a Communist architecture from time to time.
[The defamatory critics] are stupid because a
‘Fascist Architecture’ does not exist. There is, how-
ever, an architecture of the Fascist era, Italian or
Nazi, just as there is also of the Stalinist era.
| do have a profound admiration for the architecture
of the Stalinist period and | consider today works
such as the University of Moscow and the Karl Marx
Allée in Berlin, to be among the monuments of
modern architecture.°°
Why? Because they were ‘enormous, collective feats’
popular with the ‘simple people’, and they have lessons
today for the idea of the street and the monument.
On the positive side, Rossi has contributed to the
growing concern for the role of monuments in perpetuat-
156 ing, even defining, historical memory and the image of the
city — key ideas for Post-Modernism in coming to terms
with the collective, or public realm in architecture.
Without a clear insistence on public symbolism — and this
means monumental, permanent gestures that self-con- 156 ALDO ROSSI, Modena Cemetery, project, 1971. The ‘House
of the Dead’ in the foreground is a literally haunting image. Like a
sciously articulate certain values — the image of a city
haunted house the windows are blown out and the roof non-
becomes inchoate, the architecture evasive. But negatively,
existent — perfect for dead people and De Chirico. An empty street
Rossi fails to understand how symbolism works, why leads toward the towering ‘common grave’, unfortunately coded as
cities and ordinary people have a perfect right to go on a crematorium funnel. This partly inadvertent coding, the overtones
calling his architecture Fascist even when he sees and of ‘the Final Solution’, has led to Rossi’s popularity and shame.
28 intends it as recalling Lombardy farmhouses and the Whether a cemetery should be so remorselessly deadly is open to
memories from his childhood. That is to say, once again doubt, but beyond question is the monumental presence, the image
the architect has no general theory of codes, how they of architecture as public memory and symbolism.

91
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

are built up through usage and feedback and how they

differ according to class and background. Like the Modern
architect, he naively just sees the meanings he sees and
assumes they, and not other ones, are simply /n the build-
ing. As opposed to this Naive Realism, Post-Modernism
acknowledges the all-important contingent nature of
meanings. For instance whether Fascism has just used
stripped, classical forms or not; and the Post-Modernist
then designs with these transitory signs in mind. Of
course there is no inherently ‘Fascist Architecture’, but
equally obvious is the fact that recent usage has con-
nected totalitarianism with Neo-Classicism. The Rational-
ists are trying to resemanticise this form instantaneously
as the Fascists did: but it will take another twenty years
of new usage before the old is obliterated and they can
use it more neutrally.
If time and usage are the crucial variables in architectural
meaning, the case of the Straight Revivalists becomes more
problematic, for they, like the Modernists are often in- 157 RAYMOND ERITH and QUINLAN TERRY, Kingswa/den Bury,
sensitive to the nuance of time and context. Raymond 1971. Symmetrical temple front is placed in a recessed, diminished
entrance. Very slight visual rhythms can just be detected in window
Erith and Quinlan Terry in England have produced very
bays, but the Palladian exercise lacks any strong underlying idea, or
adequate, scholarly exercises in the classical style — a
any extension of the classical tradition.
157 country house in Kingswalden Bury, Hertfordshire, that
is Adamesque and Palladian, even Georgian in parts. But
it was finished in 1971 and there is no indication of this
fact other than a kind of wooden propriety in expression.
For a mosque somewhere in the Middle East, Quinlan
Terry is producing a dome — ‘as big as St Pauls’ — but
unlike St Pauls flanked by two Indian minarets. Again the
drawings are masterful in their attention to light and
shadow, and the proportions are nicely inoffensive, but
there is no sense of irony in the displacement of cultural
forms, or the hiatus in classical design. Although the
Modern Movement may have over-simplified and encour-
aged all sorts of disasters like Pruitt-lgoe, one can’t
pretend as these designs do, that Modernism never existed.
The climate of opinion has to be acknowledged precisely
because it is not the Ze/tge/st that Modernists claimed, but
rather a custom like the manners and speech of a nation.°°
It is adopted or honoured out of respect not necessity.
The indifference of the Revivalists on this level is
paralleled, it is sometimes claimed, by their lack of creative
force, the absence of ‘the life of forms’ (to use Focillion’s
expression) in their art. Henry-Russell Hitchcock has
pointed out the problem:
. whatever life twentieth century traditional archi-
tecture retained as late as the second and even the
third decade of the century had departed by the
fourth. Post-mortems on traditional architecture
have been many — and often premature. The causes
of death are still disputable, but the fact of dissolution
is by now [1958] generally accepted.*!
Well Post-Modernism would dispute anything so
final as death, and Quinlan Terry has argued the case
that the classical tradition, like any other, is potentially
alive.
It is like a three dimensional game of chess — the more
you play the game the more fascinating it becomes.
When | design | am playing this game; | am not
making a pastiche. The designs develop as if they have
158 QUINLAN TERRY, Mosque in the Middle East, 1975— . A
a life of their own. | find it quite fascinating.°”
classical Roman grammar of centralised buildings with additions of
The chess game of working out moves that haven't yet
colonial Indian architecture, and for the Middle East! The neo-
been taken in a tradition is one source of inspiration and Classicist is often as insensitive as the modernist in supposing his
life ;but contrary to Terry, this may even include pastiche — language to be universally applicable. Terry’s buildings, however, do
a rather misunderstood game of the moment. have a fine balance of parts, a human scale and a close-grained
The respectable design world, the academics and - texture, as his drawings show.

92
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

serious architects, are a little too quick to dismiss this sort

of design, but happily there are now several talented semi-
designers who are at work in the field. These vary from
the Gay Eclectic designers of Los Angeles — the interior 59.
decorators who go exterior on their ‘Bungaloids’ (con- 160
verted bungalows whose sex is changed from 1930s
Spanish to 1970s Rococola and other modes) — to the
Japanese architects, such as Mozuna Monta, who con-
sciously travesty the Modern Movement and the Renais-
sance, making an enigmatic art form out of parody.
Toyokaze Watanabe, for instance, bifurcates Le Cor-
busier’s Villa Savoye and Aalto’s Town Hall into one
building, or builds a colosseum inside an Ottoman castle.
Monta, who is the supreme ironist, a man who sees and
feels all the cultural confusion of a Japanese living in
Western dress — simultaneously in the twentieth and
fifteenth century — has crossed various Renaissance proto-
types: for instance Michelangelo's Palazzo Farnese with 161
Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel. The results of such hybridisa-
tion have a certain formal integrity and interest; the game
of chess had these undiscovered forms of checkmate
inherent in its rules. For a culture, like LA or Japan, which
is always copying or essentialising trends a little bit too
late, there is an exquisite sweetness to be enjoyed by
making this time-lag into a conscious art.
This caricature, or parody of serious culture, of course
undermines its pretensions, as the unconscious travesty
devalues it. But the subversion is only momentary, a short
space of time before the latent humour asserts itself and
establishes the travesty as a new level of culture. Monta,
Watanabe, Shirai, and to a certain extent Isozaki and
Takeyama, are using travesty as a kind of mirror-image
genre of cultural confusion, and if it’s practised long
159, 160 8834 DORRINGTON and 8836 RANGLEY, Los Angeles, enough, it may have the unintended consequence of
c. 1972? Bungalows restyled in various neo-neo-modes by interior uniting a fragmented society.** One of the virtues of
designers. The basic eighteen foot box is extended in front by a parody, besides its wit, is its mastery of cliché and conven-
fence, a hedge, and then stuccoed or veneered facade with various tion, aspects of communication which are essential to
exaggerated signs of status and entrance. But the Neo- styles are Post-Modernism.
mocked with a certain creative wit: note the pediment monsters — Are there moments when Straight Revivalism is ap-
lobsters — the disjunction in scale, and the violent contrasts in material. propriate, without any ironies? Conrad Jameson would
These scenographic tricks are highly readable like all good caricature. argue ‘yes’ when it comes to housing, particularly mass
housing, where pattern books are called for.*' The
argument here might be that Georgian or Edwardian
terraces work better than modern estates, because a
tradition — whichever one it is as long as It is unbroken —
contains more values, and well-balanced ones, than a
modern architect can invent or design. People enjoy
these terraces more than new inventions, they are often
cheaper to build than the system-built alternative, and
they fit into the urban context, in language and scale. 162
Thus one selects a pattern language suitable to the area
and only modifies it piecemeal, if there is need for a
garage door here, or a refrigerator there. Otherwise 163
tradition always gets the benefit of the doubt : architecture
is a social craft, not a creative art.
While Jameson’s arguments are welcome, especially for
mass housing, it seems to me they are not as exclusivist as
he intends: ‘Radical Traditionalism’ is just one possible
approach among many, and there is no reason an archi-
St RE, ASS
tect can’t use it a/so to signal non-social, aesthetic and
161 MOZUNA MONTA, Okawa House, project, 1974. ‘The renais-
metaphysical meanings only addressed to the few. Thus
sance of the Renaissance’, with the outside of the Palazzo Farnese
crossed with the inside of the Pazzi Chapel. Since the Japanese, like Jameson's traditionalism may well be adopted as a leading
the Angelenos, rebroadcast culture, and get it slightly wrong, artists strand of Post-Modernism, but it will be used as a language
such as Monta have taken this parody as their starting point and which occasionally includes eclectic elements and speaks
created serious works based on caricature. The result is sometimes of personal, even elitist ideas, as well as the social
an extension of traditional language. meanings he demands.

33
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

BE A ask ? =A ee a Seg

162 Warsaw Old Centre, rebuilt 1945—53 in replica form based on 163 HASSAN FATHY, Gourna New Town, Egypt, 1945-7, a re-
old photographs, measured drawings and personal accounts of the discovery of the vernacular. This mud-brick village, with its tight
people who lived there. The market place was rebuilt after the Nazi protected streets and traditional forms, is an instant recreation of
destruction as a symbol of Poland’s rebirth. The interiors were, of villages that have existed for 2000 years. An example of self-build,
course, remodelled in a new way, piecemeal, to suit modern require- the town is not only far cheaper than any modern counterpart could
ments and plumbing. (Embassy of the Polish People’s Republic). be, but also more varied and delightful. Jameson contends that the
architect's role is to rediscover such past building traditions and keep
them operative by piecemeal modification. Gourna proves it can be
done, but where is the western barefoot architect ? (Dalu Jones).

Already there is one strand of commercial revivalism

which is a major industry: the popular house and specu-
lator's development. There are also the well-known
pastiches of Portmeirion, Disneyland and their world-wide
variants. This tradition is developing most quickly in the
Far East, Los Angeles and Houston where ersatz new 164
towns, or at least vast housing estates, spring up as fast as 165
a plastic polymer gone berserk. Some communities are so
artificial that when you walk in the door for the first time
the Van Gogh Sunflowers are already hanging on the wall
and the concrete logs are crackling out the heat from
concealed gas jets. This ‘total service’ obviously aids a
family that has to move every two years and hasn't the
time to choose real paintings, and cut the wood. In Europe
various ersatz towns are being created, especially by the
seashore, such as Port Grimaud, La Galiote, Puerto Banus. 166
When compared with modernist new towns, or even
modern seaside resorts, these fabrications are clearly
more humane, appropriate and enjoyable — hence their
commercial success. Maurice Culot, a so/-d/sant Stalinist,
even sees them as the answer for the communist future, a
nice irony of hypertensive capitalism being the midwife of 192
history.2° Whatever ‘historic compromises’ actually occur
over ersatz new towns, it is time architects followed
speculators into this field and took advantage of such
commercial and social pressures for architectural ends.
Both society and architecture would gain from this
arranged marriage.
An American example of revivalism, which has elicited
all sorts of response from architects and critics, is John
Paul Getty’s Museum in Malibu, California, a scholarly 167
recreation of Herculaneum’s Villa of the Papyri — plus
other Pompeian delights. Architects have damned the
building as ‘disgusting, ‘downright outrageous,’ ‘too
learned’, ‘frequently lacking in basic architectural design
judgement’, ‘fraudulent’, ‘recreated by inappropriate
164, 165 Houston Housing Estate, c. 1971. The fronts are all per- technologies’ and of course too expensive ($10 million
sonalised in one of five pseud styles, while the backs — used for or was it $17, a mere hors d’ceuvre for Getty). These
parking and services — are all Bauhaus. A very traditional split between predictable outcries have been rebutted by David Geb-
images of decorum and function taken to rather zany lengths. hardt, the incisive historian from Southern California, who,

94
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

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166 FRANCOIS SPOERRY, Port Grimaud, 1965-9. Drive your 167 Getty Museum, inner peristyle garden. False windows, replica
sailing boat right up to the manicured lawn of a Provencal fishing statues and wall paintings imitating first century imitations of
village in reinforced concrete. No two houses are the same, and the marble — a very amusing and colourful recreation whose wit is per-
variety of spatial experience is well above the modernist counterpart, haps not intended. (The Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Museum).
leading this village to become the major model for resort centres in
the Mediterranean. Several Far Eastern versions are planned...

pointing out its obvious functional appropriateness, and to colour magazines, travel and Kodak, Everyman has a
popularity, thinks it one of the most important buildings of well-stocked musée imaginaire and is a potential eclectic.
the last ten years: At least he is exposed to a plurality of other cultures and
As a functioning object, the Getty Museum appears to he can make choices and discriminations from this wide
work as well as — or even better than — most recently corpus, whereas previous cultures were stuck with what
built museums... [the designers] have evinced a far they'd inherited.
more sympathetic response to the needs of a popular Thus | would argue that the Getty Museum is a passable,
audience than that expressed in any of the recently if unintended, example of Post-Modern building, com-
completed ‘modern’ image buildings which have mendable for its pluralism and opening of choice but
been constructed in the U.S.?° neither brilliant nor especially moribund. Perhaps the
Reyner Banham, known for his sometime celebration of reason it has aroused a disproportionate amount of praise
such pop recreations, condemns the whole thing for its and blame is that it raised, at the right time, the question
lifeless air, the ‘bureaucratic precision’ in detailing. of what architecture should be in the seventies, but it
The erudition and workmanship are as impeccable, didn't give the answers (so all sides were agitated).
and absolutely deathly, as this kind of pluperfect Another similar event, Arthur Drexler’s exhibition at the
reconstruction must always be ... no blood was Museum of Modern Art entitled ‘The Architecture of the
spilled here, nor sperm, nor wine, nor other vital Ecole des Beaux-Arts’ (October 1975—January 1976)
juice. also posed the same question without giving a clear
Basically, then, it isn’t really Roman enough in its feeling answer. Here was MOMA, the mother of the International
and creation, the old charge of modernists that traditional- Style in 1932, seeming to propose a return to nineteenth-
ists tend in our century to give birth to the corpse. Charles century values : ornament instead of pseudo-functionalism
Moore, otherwise sympathetic to this sort of thing, has (as Drexler would have it), urbanism and public buildings
also faulted it for lack of spatial invention. instead of mass housing, an attention to historical detail
My own impressions of this over-praised/over-con- instead of an abstract, timeless statement. While the
demned villa are somewhat different. It’s exciting in its exhibition implied such alternatives, it was nevertheless
setting, certainly delightful to experience as a good indecisive about advocating a direct return to borrowing
replica (like Sir Arthur Evans’ reconstructions at Knossus), from Beaux-Arts building. One obvious problem was
very sympathetic to the antiquities displayed and even a that this architecture had many of the faults of modernism :
challenge culturally, for it is saying that our time can it was often as impersonal, heavy, and academic as the
36 indulge, like no other, in accurate historical simulation. worst excesses of the International Style. More import-
37 Through our reproduction techniques (xerox, film, antly, at the MOMA exhibition there was no theoretical
synthetic materials) and our specialised archaeologies context given for the use of the past, and without a
(in this case archaeological and landscape specialists), coherent theory the show could only appeal to the
with our high technologies of air-conditioning and sensibility, the new taste for the past — for ‘roots’ shall we
temperature control and our structural capabilities (of say?
putting the whole thing over a parking garage), we can In the same context there were many important books
do what nineteenth-ceniury revivalists couldn't do. We published on Victorian and Edwardian architecture in the
can reproduce fragmented experiences of different early seventies, which implied an historicism without
cultures and, since all the media have been doing this for advocating it. Among those in English which contributed
fifteen years, our sensibility has been modified. Thanks to the developing argument were Walter Kidney’s The

95
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1880-1930

(1974), Edwardian Architecture and /ts Origins, edited
by Alastair Service (1975), Bay Area Houses, edited by
Sally Woodbridge (1976), The Architecture of Victorian
London, by John Summerson (1976). These historians,
especially younger ones such as John Beach, Gavin
Stamp and Mark Girouard, are on the edge of influencing
present practice, but their commitment has been mostly
to the past as being over and done with. Still, if we are
concerned with the growth of a post-modern tradition,
their historical research is needed because they show the
virtues of an eclectic architecture just before it was over-
powered by Modernism. The examples of a rich vocabulary,
that of ‘Queen Anne Revival’, that of Lutyens, were 168
brought into the limelight to be studied by the current 169
eclectics.

Neo-Vernacular
Another response to the obvious failure of Modern
redevelopment and comprehensive renewal was a return
to a ‘kind of vernacular. The inverted commas are neces-
sary here (ersatz is the age of quotation marks) because
the vernacular wasn’t straight revivalist nor accurate
reproduction, but ‘quasi’ or ‘in the manner of’ — a hybrid
between modern and nineteenth-century brick building.
The style, however, is highly recognisable and has the
following attributes: nearly always pitched-roofs, chunky
detailing, picturesque massing and brick, brick, brick.
‘Brick is humanist’, so the slogan goes (or gets cari-
catured), so humanist that you even find the ex-Brutalist
Maekawa using it on skyscrapers in downtown Tokyo
to bring back (I’m not kidding) ‘humanity’. One under-
stands why many Still-Modernists like James Stirling
poke fun at ‘The return of people’s detailing in Noddy
land’.?7 There is a kind of cosmetic thinness about much
of this work, a folksy face disguising a grim, modern
housing estate.
At any rate, ever since Jane Jacobs launched her
attack on modern planning, there has been increasing
demand for mixed renewal. This was in 1961, about the

= time Darbourne and Darke won the Pimlico competition

in London against groups, such as Archigram, who 170
favoured comprehensive rebuilding. The Darbourne and
Darke solution nicely illustrates several of Jane Jacobs’
ety
points: it incorporates old buildings such as the dark
brick nineteenth-century church; it mixes various activi-
ties, such as corner pubs, library, old age home and
housing; it has a rich variety of spaces full of trees; and
gives a definite sense of what every sixties architect was
about — ‘place’. Finally, it uses a ‘Victorianesque’ aes-
thetic of chunky brick and thus established, if not invented,
the neo-vernacular style.
This style became in the seventies, for an impoverished
and ideologically uncertain Britain, the style to fall back
on when there were no other clear directions. It was or is
acceptable to the majority of English people because it
doesn’t depart too far from the traditional family house
(although Darbourne and Darke have added such ‘un-
168,169 SIR EDWIN LUTYENS, ‘Heathcote’, Ilkley, Yorkshire, 1906.
English’, modern elements as streets in the air, quasi-
Lutyens’ ‘High Game’ style uses the full repertoire of Doric elements —
bases, columns, friezes, cornices — plus French refinements to
Mansarding and staccato, rather than individual house-
produce a magnificent pile befitting a royal residence or Town Hall. by-house, massing.)
The articulations and re-entrant angles make it an enjoyable game, In an exhibition of work, from May—July 1977, Colin
as do the face metaphors of both wings. Lutyens is being reassessed Amery and Lance Wright from the Architectura/ Review
today not only for his eclecticism, but also for his mastery of spatial mark what they take to be the typical if understated-main-
contrast, and humour. stream of English architecture running from Pugin

96
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

170 DARBOURNE and DARKE, Pimlico Housing, 1961-8, 67-70.

The chunky brick aesthetic and volumes treated as giant decoration.
This scheme mixed various uses in relatively low-rise high-density,
and also mixed new and old building, landscapes, and masonry.
The D&D projects always show a sensitivity to contrast which stems
from the Picturesque Tradition. G. E. Street's Church of St James-the-
Less has been preserved to become the focal point of the design.
Brick was chosen partly for economic reasons, partly for associations
which the inhabitants wanted: substantiality rather than ‘flimsy-like
panel construction’. (Brecht-Einzig Ltd.).

through Shaw, and Howard to the Letchworth Garden

suburb.
[It] restates particularly English virtues of domestic
architecture. At the same time as many local author-
ities were indulging in an orgy of inhuman system
building, Darbourne and Darke quietly proved that
some of the essentials of domestic life like privacy,
small gardens and good landscaping could be
provided at high densities in cities within a framework
of vernacular materials. . Then there is the side so
71 developed at Pershore — which is concerned with
bringing back traditional (and therefore genial)
materials and forms — a brick arch over the front door,
windows that are more vertical in proportion. . .3§
A more radical traditionalist like Jameson would, of
course, show how many quirky neologisms Darbourne and
171 DARBOURNE and DARKE, Pershore Housing, 1976-7.
Darke have introduced. Most seriously they have abolished
Traditional English village architecture with pitched roofs, relieving
the traditional street and created instead a large ‘housing arches, small passages and semi-private space. The window pro-
estate’ — however fragmented in appearance. Thus this portions and massing are atraditional, and some Purists have found
Neo-Vernacular was yet another half-way house, as the the shapes ungainly, but the scheme represents a step towards the
hyphenated appellation suggests, and not intended to be vernacular rather than an intention to arrive there. (Brecht-Einzig
either modern or traditional, but a bit of both. Ltd.).

oi,
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Other English architects who worked in the method and

style, again being acutely sensitive to scale and picturesque
massing, were Maguire and Murray, Ahrends Burton and 172
Koralek, Edward Cullinan, on occasion the GLC, and
interior designer/architects such as Max Clendinning.
So strong did the approach become that, by 1975, it
could almost be proclaimed as official British policy
(although policies such as these are never official, and
certainly not proclaimed, in Britain). An indication is the
Hillingdon Civic Centre, 1975-7, in its higgledy-piggledy 173
Victorianesque of-course-brick, designed very much for
and within the Welfare State by Andrew Derbyshire. He
was explicit in justifying its intentions at the RIBA
Conference.

172 MAGUIRE and MURRAY, St John’s College Staff Houses, .. We Set out in this project to design .. . a building
Bramcote, c. 1974. A picturesque version of rural stone architecture that spoke a language of form intelligible to its users
done in concrete block. These architects study the vernacular, partly (its occupants as well as the citizens of the borough)
the way Jameson does as a Craft tradition, but their emphasis is here and used it to say something that they wanted to
in manipulating this as a modest art form. Again the cost and in- hear.*®
habitants’ response compare favourably with modernist schemes of
a similar size. There follows the grandiose claims that the building will

Ht ot,

173 ANDREW DERBYSHIRE of ROBERT MATTHEW, JOHNSON, with Frank Lloyd Wright and ‘human values’. The building is also
MARSHALL and PARTNERS, Hillingdon Civic Centre, 1974-7. curiously reminiscent of the large nineteenth century resort hotels in
Decorative brickwork around the windows, a large bureaucracy America. The architects consciously attempted to design within the
fragmented into a village scale, a collision of several pitched roofs users’ language. (Sam Lambert, Architects’ Journal).

98
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

break down administrative barriers and get everyone

talking cordially with their elected representatives, as if the
friendliness of the forms would suddenly induce a cor-
responding outbreak of hospitality in the neighbourhood.
These claims, that architecture can radically change
behaviour, are Modernist ones, although the attention to
‘user-reactions’ and actual social research are Post-
Modern. Indeed the great emphasis on the /anguage of
architecture and the codes of the various groups who
might use the building is precisely the Post-Modernism
being advocated here. But the arguments are being
applied with a kind of naive populism and literalism.
Pitched roofs cover the steps of the wall section
almost to ground level so that more roof — the
protective, welcoming element — is seen than wall —
the defensive, hostile element.*°
One form equals one straightforward meaning is the
implication. The whole notion of multiple readings, and
readings which change over time, is reduced for the
grand, popular meaning — pitched roofs = ‘the protective,
welcoming element’.
While it is impossible not to commend the new interest
in actual, popular -codes, the impression cannot be
avoided that these are subtly being distorted and limited
to good taste, middle-class versions of these codes.
Indeed the work in the Neo-Vernacular sometimes
suffers from a pervasive smugness, a kind of piety about
being homespun that seeks to proclaim itself. This piety
may be preferable to the deserts of mass-housing, with
which this architecture is always contrasted, but it is
somewhat less than a close reflection of existing archi-
tectural taste codes. Already the work of Venturi and
Scott Brown had shown these to be richer than this
‘Architect’s Architecture’ in brick.
The Neo-Vernacular made obvious and fitting con-
nections with the trend towards rehabilitation and re-use
that also became public policy by 1975 — this time it was 174,175 FEILDEN and MAWSON, Friars Quay Housing, Norwich,

proclaimed as European Architectural Heritage Year and a 1972-5. Picturesque layout and the north European merchant's
house adapted to this historical site near the Cathedral Close. The
174 major approach of the GLC. A firm such as Feilden and
steep pitched roofs, variety of colour, and semi-private space add to
175 Mawson could divide its time between restoration of
feelings of historical continuity. Bernard Feilden has been involved
historic monuments, straight modernism, and vernacular with major restorations at St Paul’s and York Cathedral.
revival — such as their brick housing in Norwich designed
on the model of the tall North European merchant's
house. These designs not only went back to old proto-
types, but also adopted ancient city patterns, existing
street lines, and the wealth of accumulated accident — or
rather the specific historic facts that made a street bend
here, a row of houses twist and angle there. These
quirky picturesque odd-spots, a delightful hallmark of the
medieval city, finally became design formulae in the
recent work.of Aldo van Eyck and Théo Bosch.
176 Their scheme in Zwolle, built between 1975-7, renovates
many buildings in the old historic centre and adds to these
a mixed development: twenty-one businesses and
seventy-five new houses. These, narrow and high like the
traditional Dutch prototype, also conform to the existing,
bending street pattern. Thus a series of spaces which are
diverse: short alleys, small streets with arcades, streets
with external staircases leading to residences on higher oF as ~ Yigg
levels, semi-public space with gardens. The dwelling form
176 ALDO VAN EYCK and THEO BOSCH, Zwolle Housing, 1975-7.
truncates the gable roof — a typical Modernist decapitation Diverse functions and renovation combined with a new scheme
showing the building is of Our Time — but otherwise based on the narrow Dutch facade — only the gable has been lopped
extends traditional form in a marvellous way: for instance off. The curving blocks are knitted into the traditional urban patterns
the interior spaces open through a veiled loggia, where to keep the street lines and neighbourhood identity. Sixteen types of
one may look over the semi-public gardens, or up into residences were incorporated, many with semi-private gardens look-
177 sun-filled, distorted attic space. This rich ambiguity is ing out on the public space.

39
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Opposite
179 PETER EISENMAN, House V/ for the Franks, Washington,
Connecticut, 1975. The back side of the house continues the theme
of a large flat plane placed frontally to the approach, and various
lesser, vertical motifs placed at right angles to the direction of move-
ment. Note the column lines marked on the outside either as extended
pilaster, or wedge of space between two volumes. The front door is
around to the left, the main bedroom is on the first floor to the right,
above the living room. Find the hanging column in the middle if you
can. (Norman McGrath). See page 109.

/nset
180 Column and virtual stair. The column is painted grey, or off-
white to indicate different conditions — whether it carries a beam,
electrical conduits, or nothing — and its relation to other planes. The
false stair is painted red as opposed to the real, green stair (signifying
stop and go ?). (Charles Jencks).

we“
eee

ege characteristic of Post-Modern space, as we will argue

il later.
Heyey
‘J apeH Van Eyck was called in on this project in 1970 in a
cae, ine
ee
a]
Fi
ein
HESS typical protest of the time against inhumane city re-
development. His arguments for renewal and infill housing
can be taken as the toughest, unequivocal statement of a
Modern architect just as he is becoming Post:
What the snow image suggests in terms of the city Is
a careful adjustment, adaptation, modification and
addition. Cities are chaotic and necessarily so. They
are also kaleidoscopic. This should be accepted as a
positive credo before it is too late... . Add to this the
notion that no abstract norm imposed from above,
or any other motive, sanitary or speculative, can
further justify the wanton destruction of existing
buildings or street patterns . . . Ultimately, the world
ne pee ea a ie ' : today can no longer afford such waste, nor can it
177 Zwolle, view into loggia which acts as an intermediate space afford to overlook the right of people to maintain
between living room, garden, and top floor. both the built form as the social fabric of their
domicile if that is their choice. Anything else is
sociocide — local genocide with only the people
left alive.44
Another project, which came out of the urban activism of
the late sixties, was the Bickerseiland renewal in Amster- 17&
dam, where architects Van den Bout and De Ley also
worked with the local community to provide infill, verna-
cular houses. Again these were tall, narrow and deep with
a Dutch head flattened off just above the eyebrows, raising
the question — if a Modernist could go this far backward,
why couldn't he go the next step and get the remainder
right?
It is interesting, in this context, to compare the Neo-
Vernacular of different countries, let us say Joseph
Esherick’s Cannery in San Francisco and MBM’s Santa
Agueda in Benicassim, Spain — both worked on in the
middle sixties. The former is a transformed nineteenth-
century warehouse with modern graphics, and elevators
shooting through, and enlivening, a tarted-up_ brick 184
178 VAN DEN BOUT and DE LEY, 8ickersei/and Housing, Amster-
vernacular. Curves and arches are accentuated, the old
dam, 1972-6. Narrow, deep houses with oriel windows, ‘lightyards’
in the centre, truncated gables (compare with the seventeenth
fabric is heightened by reducing the window mullions to
century example) and semi-Brutalist detailing. Again a half-way a minimum and using strong, contrasting colours. The
house, or neo-Vernacular job, this cheap housing saved the area from result is very popular with the middle-class shopper, which
being developed by outside commercial interests, much to the grati- is why such rehabilitations have been swiftly repeated
tude of the remaining community. An example, like Zwolle, of urban from Australia to Canada. What they lose in terms of
protest resulting in positive action. authenticity they gain in terms of jollity and it is probably

100
102
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Opposite above
181 Burns House, exterior, in seventeen shades of earth colours,
which create interesting recessions in depth. Moore develops the
stucco-box tradition of Southern California, which Modernists
such as Schindler had also exploited, for its economic and figurative
potential. Any shape you want is relatively cheap. See page 126.

Opposite be/ow /eft

182 CHARLES MOORE and ASSOCIATES, Burns House, Santa
Monica Canyon, LA, 1974. The organ up the stairs give this view a
rather religious overtone, but in the whole space it is set off against
other strong elements such as a Mexican balcony (that acts as a
small house to climb into). Light spills from various points, and back-
lighting suggests a much greater depth than exists; the opposition
of layered, skew space and monumental object is quite delightful.
Moore can use traditional elements not only for their contrasts, but
also in an easy-going, relaxed way.

Opposite below right

183 Burns House view up towards the private area, the attic-study
to left, the bedroom and dressing rooms etc. to right. Handling
various formal and functional elements at once — here books, stairs
and cut-out screens— makes the space both mysterious and familiarly
like an attic stair.

this quality that is both their economic saving and psychic

curse.
The same is partly true of Martorell, Bohigas and Mac-
Kay's traditionalesque housing with its picturesque
185 pantiles and inevitable brick. Like tourist resorts and Port
Grimaud the aesthetic formula is really a class, and there-
fore an economic formula, because such comfortable and
cosy images appeal to the middle class. In fact they cut
across many social lines and appeal to the rich and poor
in different countries. It would be false to term this a 184 JOSEPH ESHERICK, Cannery, San Francisco, 1970. Nearly
universal taste, or more popular than its opposite, Neo- every historic city now has a converted area that has been somewhat
Classical terrace housing, but it clearly articulates codes of pedestrianised to the great joy of shoppers. This middle classification
of Victoriana (above all) robs it of guts, but supplies it with cash flow,
meaning that go deep: friendliness conveyed through
a worthwhile, mephistophelian deal. Twee but alive, clean but rug-
warm mixtures of wood and brick, individuality and
ged, phoney but authentic history, are the contradictory signs.
ambiguity conveyed through broken massing, familiarity
with respect conveyed by the choice of well-known
elements. If it never quite lifts you off the ground with its
brilliance or originality then it can be termed a success,
because it was meant to be modest not heroic. In summar-
ising this emergent strand of Post-Modernism at the
RIBA Conference in 1976, | put together the following
hodge-podge of a conclusion which tried to define what
all the participants would agree is an unexceptional, com-
mon position.
[Housing] should be small in scale, incorporate
mixed uses and mixed ages of buildings, be re-
habilitated where possible and put more on a craft
than high art basis. It might be architect-designed,
or based on pattern books modified to the particular en) a ph i meer

situation. Wherever possible, it would be dweller

185 MARTORELL, BOHIGAS and MACKAY, Santa Agueda,
controlled and sometimes it would be even self-built Benicassim, Spain, 1966-7. A serious version of popular vernacular
out of garbage and built in a pseudo-vernacular, housing done in a picturesque way with pantiles and window blinds
depending on the taste of the culture for which it (that extend the living room space). MBM, exemplary eclectics,
was built. Housing signifies a way of life. . .*” modify their style to suit the job; this is in one of their five current
No other architect came closer to this goal (without modes which also include the Industrial Style, Barcelona School
reaching it) than Ralph Erskine. Style, Pop Manner, and Eclectic Mode. (Xavier Miserachs).

103
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Adhocism + Urbanist = Contextual

Erskine has designed in several styles, including the Neo-
Vernacular which he used with consummate wit at Clare
College, Cambridge, 1966. Here the sma!! scale and
domestic verge on the cloying and cutie-pie, but the
whole thing is saved from mawkish charm by typical
Erskinisms such as the cheapskate corrugated detailing
and outrageous jokes — twelve feet of cantilevered door-
186 way, cantilevered in brick, three inches from a support !
Erskine has turned the expedient and ad hoc into a kind
of art form, where his own happy-go-lucky style is
clearly recognisable. At Byker, outside Newcastle, he has
built a community of housing which will probably rank
with the Weissenhof Settlement, Stuttgart, 1927, in
establishing the paradigm to follow.
First among its principles and most importantly, the
Byker community has a degree of self-government, a
certain local power to balance that of the central city. To
support this, the architect set up his office on the building
187 site and allowed the people being rehoused (9,500) to
choose their location, friends and apartment plan (within
a restricted budget). This participation in the planning
process helped form and continue the community, as
much as did the preservation of the existing social ties.
Since eighty per cent of the people remained within the
area during the building, most of the old associations
remained too.
Indeed several important buildings were preserved,
138 churches, a gymnasium and local buildings, so that the
resultant patch-work has a depth of historical association 186 RALPH ERSKINE, C/are Co/lege, Cambridge, 1972, entrance
much greater than the typical modernist new town. showing brick cantilevered almost to a support, but then saved in
Classical elements, discarded building parts, ornament time — all doors should have something odd about them.

from previous buildings were incorporated either as

decoration or use — such as Seats and tables transformed
ad hoc from column capitals.

In the Byker renewal, Erskine allowed the multi-use of

activities and corresponding multi-expression of function,
although it must be admitted this articulation is more in his
own ad hoc style than in the local codes of Byker. Every
house, and seventy per cent are on ground level, has a
private domain and is surrounded by semi-private space
such as gardens and small walkways. Even the exterior
apartment corridors in the Byker ‘wall’ are broken up and
188 given local planting, so that this large block has the
identity and safety so lacking in the old paradigm,
Pruitt-lgoe and other famous monsters of Modernism.
Erskine shows that, in the words of John Turner, a - ato

architecture really is a verb, an action not just a set of 187 RALPH ERSKINE, Byker Architects’ Office, Newcastle, 1972-4,
correct theories or prescriptions. His office became im- in a converted funeral parlour. The red, white and blue graphics rise
mersed in the Byker community by setting up shop in a as optimistically as the balloon on this office in the heart of the renew-
disused funeral parlour, selling plants and flowers (an al. The designers were accessible to the inhabitants who had a say in
obvious popular activity in England), acting as the local their future location, neighbours, and type of apartment.
‘lost and found’, that is, doing countless non-architectural
things as he got to know the people, and they his team.
Then the slow process of design and construction took
place, endless discussions and rather small decisions, so — the verb to conjugate. How one generalises or teaches
that landscape, ‘doorway’, colour, history, idiosyncrasy this art, apart from example, remains a mystery.
and other non-commensurables could find a place. The It does seem, however, that the pluralist language of
success of the result, both as an amusing and humane Byker results partly from the participatory process.
environment make this a key Post-Modern project in ‘Participation in design’ became in Britain during the
theory, if not in precise coding (there might have been seventies a respectable if loaded term which usually
more, traditional houses and renewal). But the success meant a one-sided consultation with those being
depends to a large part on Erskine’s inimitable free-wheel- designed for: they could see the plans beforehand, but
ing openness which could, without intimidation, gain the didn’t have the expertise or power to propose viable
confidence of the people and allow the process to happen - alternatives.42 At Louvain University, Lucien Kroll and

104
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

188 RALPH ERSKINE, Byker Wa//, Newcastle, 1974. A mixture of in green stained wood, circulation in blue, and untamed nature at the
materials used in a semantic way: brick in the lower two floors, base. These articulations break down a potentially massive wall, and
corrugated metal and asbestos in the upper ones; semi-private deck give it a human scale. (Bill Toomey, Architectural Press).

189 his team took the process further and really involved a too dogmatic and fixed, Kroll reorganised the teams so
community (or part of it) in design decisions. that each one became familiar with each other's problems,
The students, who were divided into flexible teams, until a possible solution was in sight. Not until then did he
participated in designing the buildings along with Kroll, draw up the plans and sections which made it workable.
who acted rather like an orchestra leader. They shifted The resultant buildings show a complexity and richness
small bits of plastic foam around in working out the of meaning, a delicate pluralism, that usually takes years
overall model. When disputes arose, or One group became to achieve and is the result of many inhabitants making

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 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

189 LUCIEN KROLL and ATELIER, Medica/ Faculty Buildings, 190 View across the main Piazza showing builders’ contribution to
University of Louvain, near Brussels, 1969-74. An artificial hill town design. The rocks grow up from the ground into brick and then tile.
of various activities, articulated with different building systems. The Participation and individualism have produced a witty environment,
large glazed area is communal, also the restaurant space; the other which only lacks normality. One longs for a bit of straight Modernism
material — wood, brick, plastic, aluminium and concrete — are also here or even Aldo Rossi.
used semantically. Traditional signs are incorporated: greenhouses,
pitched roof and chimneys signify the more private areas. The variety
and detail simulate the piecemeal decisions which take place over
time and give identity to any old city.

190 small adjustments over time. true Brussels vernacular in opposition to the Modernism
The variety of codes and uses in the buildings clearly proposed by ITT and other multinationals. When the
reflect the fact that opposite values are being realised, but multinational comes with its scheme for a disruptive high-
even here there are biases in the result. The aesthetic rise, ARAU (Ate/ier de Recherche et d'Action Urbaine)
is everywhere picturesque, as if normality and the silent meet it with a counter-proposal. This action group organ-
majority have been rigorously snubbed. ises neighbourhood support, calls a press conference,
By following only one mode of interaction in design, agitates through the newspapers and uses its counter-
Kroll has actually precluded everyday, impersonal archi- design to stop or redirect the original proposal. ARAU has
tecture, and thus one longs here for a judicious bit of the successfully fought a dozen or more such battles, using
International Style. Post-Modernism accepts Modernism attractive pastiche as an urban weapon, and it’s interesting
not only for factories and hospitals, but also for semiotic to note that this style, or several modes, come about
balance, for its place within a system of meaning. As soon through the participatory activity. Maurice Culot, one of
as the system swings too far towards the idiosyncratic and its members, has said:
Loi ad hoc, it invites the return of the Neo-Classical, even For ARAU members the city is a place where demo-
‘Fascist Style’, not for the ‘rational’ justifications which cracy could live — they reject any proposal that
its adherents may proffer, but for reasons of signification banishes inhabitants from the city ... My mission is
and richness.*4 Meaning consists in oppositions within a not to create new forms but only to explain the
system, a dialectic in space or over time. options and programmes being debated by ARAU.
The politically motivated group in Brussels, ARAU, have We do not force our own architectural tastes on
used these oppositions for their own ends: stopping people, but follow the advice of the people involved.4®
192 large-scale redevelopment in the capital of the Common The next step could be a form of architectural larceny:
Market. Basically they use pastiche, Port Grimaud and ARAU might appropriate the commission from the

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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

SSS
Brean hae.
192 ARAU, Brusse/s, 1975. This group uses various counter-designs
to stop massive redevelopment, leaving it up to the community to
choose which alternative, or combination, they want. Using pastiche,
Port Grimaud, or here Honfleur and Van Eyck as alternatives to
modernist redevelopment, they seek to confirm the underlying city
patterns.

191 BRUCE GOFF, Bavinger House, Norman, Oklahoma, 1957.

Goff is the master of ad hoc building, or the ‘Army and Navy Surplus
Aesthetic’, using any conceivable left-over materials. Here a con-
tinuous spiral of space is surrounded by sandstone and rubble picked
up on the site. A mast and steel cables lifted from boat technology
hold up the roof. But he also uses natural, organic materials, such
as the untreated, wooden mullions, cut from nearby trees. In addition
to all this Goff is the only major architect who uses schlock in a con-
vincing way. He forces us to re-examine taste-cultures which have
heretofore been disregarded.

original designers and actually build their counter-design

— then neighbourhood participation would begin to mean
something. PM. tb ee F aaa - ~~

While it’s unlikely that such illegalities would be sup- 193 NIEUMARKET protest in Amsterdam, 1975, to protest constant
ported by Shell, Ford and the World Trade Center, it’s also demolition of the old quarters for a new metro. Continual battles have
wrong to assume that this activism is entirely barren. led to some buildings and areas being saved, but the slaughter can
Aside from changing the climate of opinion (and multi- be read as ‘handwriting on the wall’ (inside the ghost image of the
destroyed buildings) : ‘loss of apartments through war 366, 10 years
nationals are now themselves adopting a form of local
of renewal 335, from the metro 115, new buildings 1946-74 6
pastiche), such protests have stopped destruction in many
apartments’. The Amsterdamers never tire of finding new ways of
large cities — for instance in the Covent Garden area In announcing their plight.
193 London and the Nieumarket in Amsterdam. Advocacy
planning in America was also effective in stopping urban
disruption, although it too couldn't initiate development. neighbourhood groups can become stronger, as strong
At Zwolle, as we have seen, the community finally acted as their suburbanite counterparts, then the long history
positively after it was threatened by redevelopment, and of indiscriminate city destruction may be reversed.
the same is true at Byker in a somewhat different context. The Modern Movement has played a role in the deterior-
Maurice Culot’s relative success is suggestive, | think, ation of cities by supporting new towns, disurbanisation
not only for its use of various styles and counter-schemes, and comprehensive redevelopment — all anti-city trends —
but also because it stems from an institutional base. but apologists would claim that really the villain at large
ARAU is formalised, it has links with lawyers and other is consumer society, the motorcar and the pull of suburbia.
professionals, and can work with the hundred or so Whoever is finally convicted of the crime, it’s clear that the
already existing action committees in Brussels. If these Modern Movement did nothing much to solve it. They

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 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Wage se =
en YS CR,
194 LEO KRIER, Roya/ Mint Square Housing, project, 1974. The 195 LEO KRIER, Echternach project, 1970. The tourist map view of
traditional street lines and block are saved, but the site is bisected this Luxembourgeois city stitches together medieval, Baroque and
by a ‘public room’ with various ceremonial and functional elements modern elements. Circuses, grand avenues, and endless bay
(including kiosks and entrance portico). Several old houses are repetition reminiscent of Bath or Haussmann. Every city, Krier seems
retained as well; the scheme only suffers from a slight case of pomp to be saying, should have its urbanist-eye-view kept in order so that
and monotony. the public parts — squares, streets, monuments — articulate its memory.

had no great political and social theory of how a city around public buildings — a cathedral or school may serve
thrives and how civic virtues are cultivated and nurtured. as the pretext for the agora. This patching of urban,
public space is the antithesis of Modernistic practice — the
The Post-Modernists, Culot, the Krier brothers, Conrad free standing, functionalist monument.
Jameson for instance, take a different view of city life and In the Echternach project, Leo Krier inserts a traditional 195
stress the active, valuative aspect. The planner, architect arcade and circus, using the existing morphology of the
or market researcher /ntervenes to bring about those values eighteenth century to create an identifiable spine to the
he supports, but he does this within a democratic, political town and a culmination of the entrance route at the
context where his values can be made explicit and debated. existing abbey. Height, scale, silhouette, building materials
The proper place for much that now happens as archi- are all compatible with the existing fabric, although ac-
tecture or planning, Jameson contends, is the political centuated to give a new emphasis to the public realm.
forum — the neighbourhood meeting or the meeting of Leo Krier uses the traditional aerial perspective of tourist
political representatives. While no adequate city forum maps to stitch these forms together, and a master-planning
exists to express or guarantee this process, Post-Modern- concept whose grand sweep is reminiscent of Bath.
ists insist on its desirability. Such historicist methods are combined with a Corbusian
Basically this is a return to an old and never perfect language of form resulting in that characteristic schizo-
institution, the public realm — the agora, the assembly phrenia of expression about which the reader must now
area, mosque or gymnasium that acted as a space for be tired of hearing.
people to debate their varying views of the good life or In his entry for the La Villette Competition Krier has 196
assert their communalty.*® While it would be premature to proposed a return to the intimate scale of historic cities
claim a unanimity of views on this, the public realm by creating a unit urban block based on a collectivity of
comes back as the major focus of design in the schemes of twelve or so families. These closely-grained blocks are
the Rationalists, Charles Moore, Ricardo Bofill, Antoine then used as a background fabric against which the more
Grumbach and the Krier brothers. Only Robert Venturi public buildings stand out along a centre spine. The idea
among the Post-Modernists takes a stand against the is areturn to the historic city of Paris, and to an architectural
agora and pa/azzo pubblico, and he does this, as we have language based on socially recognisable types.
seen, for communicational and not political reasons. These large buildings crystallise Types of buildings
Robert and Leo Krier in particular have celebrated the like The Theatre, The Library, The Hotel, into specific
194 public realm in many of their design schemes and com- architectural models. They are not to be understood as
petition entries. They have also mounted well-observed unique signs — as words in an esoteric language — but
attacks on the devastation of city fabric. They criticise all rather as an attempt to create a system of social and
the forces, whether economic, ideological or modernistic, formal references which would make up the land-
which have destroyed the texture of cities, and then marks of a contemporary city, replacing the traditional
propose elegant alternatives to patch it up, or to create new religious and institutional landmarks with building
wholes. Types of a new social content.*”
Basically the Krier brothers follow Camillo Sitte’s notion The ‘new social content’, inevitably Marxist for Krier, is
of articulating continuous urban space as a negative as Modernist as his Rationalist language of Types, and the 197
volume that flows and pulsates and reaches a crescendo latter is not bound to communicate socially, as intended, 198

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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

‘ Reed ee tip f

Te
“ad MIA
UD Sees t

i iN WS
Oa \ \ AV sn i : . : S. Tr |

i ane aN INEN )
— AV \a\ = — XC aN
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5 F Ne ae Ay
Yeye-view of Quaruerd

196 LEO KRIER, La Vi/lette Competition, Paris, 2nd prize, 1976. same). A grand public boulevard runs north/south (right/left)
Made up of small, community units of almost a dozen or so families containing the Place Centrale, Place de la Mairie, and Square des
which, Krier contends, would have local control, this scheme never- Congrés. Rolling English parks create the other axis which focuses
theless has a grand, centralised imagery (all the housing looks the on historic Paris. The biplanes are also reminiscent of Le Corbusier.

197,198 LEO KRIER, La Villette typo/ogy, of the Hotel and Cultural The meaning of form is social and temporal, and cannot be established
Centre. The ziggurat is lifted from its historical context, and Ledoux’s by fiat, especially based on abstractions. It is curious that Krier,
design for a barn is turned into a town hall cut into four parts. Krier’s who attacks Le Corbusier for his urban insensitivity, should have such
hope for a universal language that could be understood founders on similar notions, but the theory of how architecture communicates is
the same misunderstandings that plagued Ledoux and Le Corbusier. not widely understood.

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 ‘THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

199 GIAMBATTISTA NOLLI, Map of Rome, 1748. Private building 200 HADRIAN'S VILLA, Tivoli, AD 118-134. A series of axially
in grey cross-hatching is hollowed out by public space in white, oriented set-pieces brought from all parts of the Roman world in this
which may be either street, piazza, courtyard or church interior. The early eclectic complex: temples and canals were copied from Egypt,
map gives a nice idea of semi-public space and the way it mediates caryatids from Greece, and there was even a place for ‘Hades’ here.
between the major antimony, public and private. The most exquisite part of this villa retreat (it is really a small town) is
the Teatro Marittime (middle left) with its circular canals and complex
overlap of exedra, convex and concave. Here Hadrian retired to his
‘library’ to read, eat, and bathe. Colin Rowe has said ‘The Villa
Adriana presents the demands of the ideal and recognises at the
same time the needs of the ad hoc’.

because of its abstract, atemporal character. Nonetheless urban patterns of regu/ar vs irregular, formal vs informal,
the intentions of establishing a language, a public sym- types vs variants, figures vs fields (if effectively combined
bolism, and knitting this within the fabric of Paris are known as set-p/eces), centre vs infill, tissue vs boundary
exemplary. Furthermore, Krier sees this city building as edge and ho vs hum.
gaining its meaning from various dialectics — that between Such a glossary could begin with the term context.
the private and public realm, the present and the past and By definition the design must fit with, respond to,
the morphology of solid and void. This semiotic intention mediate its surroundings, perhaps completing a
and city of dialectical meaning takes us to the writings of pattern implicit in the street layout or introducing
Colin Rowe and the practice known as Contextualism. a new one. Crucial to this appreciation of urban
As a philosophy and movement, Contextualism started patterns is the Gestalt double image of the figure-
in the early sixties at Cornell University with studies into ground. This pattern, which can be read either way —
the way cities formed various binary patterns which give solid or void, black or white — is the key to the
legibility. Alvin Boyarsky looked at Camillo Sitte’s work contextualist approach to urban space.*8
for its implications, just as George Collins was doing at According to this argument, the failure of modern archi-
the time, and the most important binary pair emerged from tecture and planning, very briefly, was its lack of under-
199 Sitte’s drawings: the opposition between solid and void, standing the urban context, its over-emphasis on objects
or figure and ground. As Grahame Shane describes the rather than the tissue between them, design from the
language of Contextualism, with its inevitable abstract inside-out rather than the exterior space to the inside. By
dualities (as if the theorists had all been trained by pondering hard on the large chunks of blackened areas in
Heinrich Wollflin, with two slide projectors) there are Sitte’s drawings, and at Nolli’s seventeenth-century map

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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Such games and analogical thinking work most ef-

fectively when Rowe uses one side of his equation to
criticise the other and comes up with a compound which
includes both antinomies. Thus his ‘collage city’, based on
the bricolage of many different utopias (or the ‘vest
pocket utopias — Swiss Canton, New England village,
Dome of the Rock, Place Vendéme’ etc) has everything
both ways with a beneficent vengeance: ‘the enjoyment
of utopian poetics without our being obliged to suffer the
embarrassment of utopian politics’.
The buildings of Hadrian, his pluralist Pantheon, his 201
Rome, especially his villa at Tivoli are ad hoc compilations
and dialectical utopias. In fact during the sixties Hadrian’s
villa becomes the exemplar, a model and point of reference
for such various architects and critics as Louis Kahn and
Siegfried Giedion, Mathias Ungers and Vincent Scully —
in short Modernists and Post-Modernists. For some it is
the richness of overlapping spatial focii which is the lesson
of the villa, for others the eclecticism of sources (Egypt
and Greece), the palimpsest of meaning or the mannerism
of sharp juxtaposition. For Rowe it is the supreme instance
of fox-like dialectic.
For if Versailles may be a sketch for total design in a
context of total politics, the Villa Adriana attempts to
dissimulate all reference to any single controlling
idea . . . Hadrian, who proposes the reverse of any
‘totality’, seems only to need accumulation of the
most various fragments ... The Villa Adriana is a
miniature Rome. It plausibly reproduces all the
collisions of set pieces and all the random empirical
happenings which the city so lavishly exhibited . . .
It is almost certain that the uninhibited aesthetic
preference of today is for the structural discontinuities
and the multiple syncopated excitements which the
201 O. M. UNGERS et al, Student Hoste/ Competition, 1963. Like Villa Adriana presents . .. the bias of this [anti-
Hadrian’s Villa, a series of set-pieces are repeated and organised on hedgehog] argument should be clear: it is better to
their own axis which cross and sometimes collide. Multiple geo- think of an aggregation of small, and even con-
metries, dissonant angles, and a subtle public order. tradictory set pieces (almost like the products of
different régimes) than to entertain fantasies about
total and ‘faultless’ solutions which the condition of
politics can only abort. °°
This argument for Collision City was, like that of Adhocism
based on the method of brico/age and the importance of
memory in forming a base for prophecy and city design. °!
It mustered the examples of several semi-historicists
of Rome, the Contextualists found, as did Robert Venturi, mentioned here at the outset — Lubetkin, Luigi Moretti —
a new respect for ‘poché’ or left-over, tissue building — who juxtaposed past with presentto gain a richer meaning.
the ‘ground’ for any city’s attractive ‘figures’. | mention these common points of interest not to prove
To Colin Rowe and his Gibbonian prose fell the job of any priority of influence, but rather to show an emergent
weaving all these dualities into a spellbinding dialectic of consensus in some quarters, a consensus which is perhaps
binary pairs, which recommended itself perhaps more as best represented by the Dusseldorf scheme of James 202
suggestive analogy than as precise prescription. His Stirling. Because here by 1975 we have a leading modern 203
‘Collage City’ set up arguments between the mechanism architect using brico/age as a technique to knit and
of Enlightenment thinkers and the organicism of the sometimes jam the past and the present together, and
Hegelians, the olde worlde fantasies of the Americans mediate between that basic antinomy: the solid urban
without roots at Disneyland, and the Brave New World of tissues and the void of public realm. Stirling uses a wrap-
Superstudio with too much past in Florence. He con- around nineteenth-century facade on one side to fit into
trasted the fixed, Platonic utopias of the Renaissance with the context, and crumbles it away on the other side, thus
the ‘utopia as extrusion’ of the Futurists, the single, big indicating a knowing pastiche. He pulls a pedestrian route
ideas of the ‘hedgehogs’ and the many, little goals of the from the more dense urban fabric into a circular court and
‘foxes’. then inverts this, dialectically, into a square object (the
Palladio is a hedgehog, Giulio Romano, a fox; ground has become figure, the circle squared). This pro-
Hawksmoor, Soane, Philip Webb are probably hedge- nounced object is then inflected on its podium to ac-
hogs, Wren, Nash, Norman Shaw almost certainly knowledge a major city axis and act as a focusing
fOXESi au. monument — becoming thereby one more in a neighbour-

ital
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

; game

202, 203 JAMES STIRLING, Dusse/dorf Museum Project, 1975. A ]

sensitive example of contextual infill, where the height, scale and
masonry of the area are respected, but the symbolic elements are still
allowed their expression. The entrance cube inflects from the grid
and is also a major focus for site lines which relate to other monu-
ments. The nineteenth century facade to the left is wrapped around
part of the new museum. Glass sheeting, the only Modernist remnant,
is appropriately used in a semantic way as public circulation and
congregation area. (John Donat).

hood group. Except for esoteric references to Schinkel

and Albert Speer, and the reticence in historical detailing
(blank pediment, no pilasters) this project represents a
new stage in Post-Modern urbanism, because it shows a
modern architect acting with the kind of sensitivity
towards the historical context one would expect of a
traditionalist, with the freshness and invention of a
Renaissance architect.

Metaphor and Metaphysics

Another motive causing architects to leave the tenets of
Modernism was its obvious inability to deal with or pose
general questions of architectural meaning: what was
architecture ‘to be about’, especially now that the
Modernist beliefs in progressivist technology and the
Machine Aesthetic were seen to be so naive (or boring) ?
Architecture must have a signifying reference — the
Renaissance had its Platonic metaphysics, the Romans
their belief in Imperial organisation — what is ours to
reflect, beyond a polite agnosticism?

V2
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

One of the particularly defining characteristics of

Post-Modernism is its pursuit of odd metaphysics, ‘after
strange gods’ as it were, instead of the familiar and tired
gods of process and pragmatism.°? But even with the
machine metaphor dead, our age is not much closer to
credible metaphors or a developed metaphysics. Science,
in its agnosticism, can hardly provide the answers —
although it can refute them. Furthermore, any metaphysics
is thrown into question today for two quite different
reasons: it is often too idiosyncratic to capture the
imagination of society at large, and it doesn’t build up a
foundation in habit and ritual, since industrial society
tends to erode or commercialise this traditional base.
Nonetheless the spiritual function of architecture
remains, in fact will not go away even if a religion and
metaphysics are lacking, and thus the Post-Modern
architect like the Surrealist painter, crystallises his own
spiritual realm around the possible metaphors at hand.
The metaphysics are then expressed as either implicit or
explicit metaphor which is signified in the form. Perhaps
the earlier argument (pages 40-52) should be summarised.
The most renowned metaphorical buildings — Ronchamp,
the Sydney Opera House, TWA — vary in their coding from
implicit to explicit, from mixed metaphor to congruent
simile. An architectural ‘simile’ is, as in writing or speech,
the formal and explicit statement of a metaphor -- the
hot dog stand that has so many other cues such as
mustard and bun that one can say it is explicitly intended.
On the other hand most architectural metaphors are
implicit and mixed. The overriding metaphor which
recent architects have just started to express grows out
of the organic tradition of modernism and relates very
closely to body images and man’s continuity with the 204 MAISON DES CARIATIDES, 28 rue Chaudronnerie, Dijon,
natural and animal kingdoms. We can see a metaphysics c. 1610. Something like thirty-seven heads decorate this house,
in its primitive stage now making use of very direct similes. perhaps too many even for a Mannerist. The mixing of architectural
The human boay, the face, the symmetry of animal forms and human members is quite extraordinary in its ingenuity; note for
instance the careful asymmetries set against the ordered use of
are becoming the foundation for a metaphysics that man
pilaster-people. Windows, doors, chimneys and other places of
finds immediate and relevant. Beyond this, he responds
transition or focus were celebrated with complex metaphors, quite
willingly and unconsciously to body images, the haptic appropriate for the erogenous zones of architecture.
metaphors of inside and out, up and down, projections
of his own internal body orientation. Even his description
of architecture is coloured by this imagery. Buildings ‘lie
on the horizon’, or ‘rise up from it’, have ‘a front’ which Hebrew text, the turrets of the house are the ears, the
is more acceptable than ‘a back’ (just like living beings) furnace is the stomach and the windows, as usual, eyes.
and are ‘dressed up’ or ‘plain’. The house is, aS mentioned above (pages 63-4) often
Charles Moore and Kent Bloomer who have analysed perceived as a face, and found decapitated when given a
these body images in relation to architecture claim they flat roof.
form a basic model for the experience of the environment, During the Renaissance such body images were con- 204
and one not limited to the priority of sight. ventionalised and incorporated into architectural dimen-
By combining the values and feelings that we assign sions. The human body was inscribed both into the plan
to internal dandmarks with the moral qualities that we and elevation of churches, and the metaphor was taken so
impart to psycho-physical coordinates, [right/left seriously that Bernini was even criticised because his
etc] we can imagine a model of exceptionally rich piazza for St Peter's resulted in a contorted figure with
and sensitive body meanings. It is a comprehensible mangled arms.°® Any doubt that man is obsessed by an
model (because we ‘possess’ it), although it Is architecture in his own image, or at least his own image
much more humanely complex than a mathematical projected onto architectural facades, can be dispelled
matrix.°3 by counting the caryatids, herms, terms and so forth that
For such reasons the city, just as the home, is considered are peppered throughout any large European city, a
empty without its anthropomorphic dimensions, its veritable menagerie of funny faces and strange races.
central ‘heart’ or equivalent to the main piazza, the Recently, Post-Modern architects have taken up the
symbolic focus. anthropomorphic metaphor and metaphysics in a direct
The house has so many such anthropomorphic focii and sometimes vulgar way turning the image into an
that it may be considered a living proof of the validity of explicit simile. Thus Minoru Takeyama’s Beverly Tom
the ‘pathetic fallacy’. We project not only a heart (hearth) Hotel, 1974, is in the shape of the Shinto ‘tenri’ symbol,
but, as Carl Jung has pointed out the whole anatomy of that is to say a phallus — a symbol repeated throughout 206
the face and body. *4 In his example, an eighteenth-century the hotel in the details, down to the ashtrays! What

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 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

205 STANLEY TIGERMAN, Hot Dog House, North Western Illinois,

1975-6. A simple 14 x 70 foot vacation house built for $35 000;
blank, dumb cedar wall on the entrance side and glass-wall-
Mondrian on the viewing side. The private, weekend house in the
country has always afforded opportunity for visual puns, and hot dog
is just one possible metaphor here. Torso and ampule are coded as
well. (Philip Turner).

metaphysics justifies such metaphor ? It is clear that the

vertical shape may have led to the symbol, and hotels
are in a banal sense corridors of power, but neither
rationalisation can sufficiently explain the phallus, which
seems to be the abstract statement of primitive power in
the industrial landscape. But then again why th/s hotel as
a phallus? It’s not the equivalent of a dolmen, Place
Venddéme, obelisk, or Christian spire — the building task
can't carry here such strong content.
Stanley Tigerman also uses explicit metaphors to
generate architecture: the ‘Animal Cracker House’, Hot
205 Dog House, Zipper apartments and again a_ phallus-
shaped building called euphemistically ‘the Daisy House’.
Here the justification came from the client, who had seen
the Hot Dog House and wanted something visually edible
too. Various lubricious reasons led to the final form,
207 perhaps the most printable being that Tigerman wanted
208 to make his client laugh. At any rate, the significance for us
is not so much whether Tigerman’s or Takeyama’s
similes are ultimately justifiable and profound but rather
that, unlike Modern architects, they have felt a need to use
the metaphorical plane of expression. The results may be
raw and occasionally ludicrous, but the architect has
intended to use this mode of speech, recently confined to
the commercial sector with its giant donuts and hot dogs,
and his buildings thus are not the misfired metaphors of 206 MINORU TAKEYAMA, Hote/ Beverly Tom, Hokkaido, 1973-4.
Malapropistic Modernism, but the overfired metaphors of Eighty rooms in this hotel are syncopated in three quarters of the
Post-Modernism in its first stage. cylinder; a restaurant and roof garden are indicated by the other
Possibly because metaphor and symbolism were sup- syntactic changes. The overall phallic form is not absolutely legible —
pressed by the modern movement their re-emergence now this symbolism is coded with other, functional meanings.

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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

207,208 STANLEY TIGERMAN, Da/sy House, Indiana, 1976—7. The

plan and parts of the elevation mapped with varying degrees of
subtlety to well known parts of the male and female anatomy. These
shapes, partly due to the client's wishes, are again finished off with a
series of oppositions — the flat stucco wall versus textured cedar
curves, rectilinear window grid versus curvilinear viewing panes.
One blank side is for public entrance and kitchen, the other flat side
for viewing the lake. This elevation is a transformation of the plan
which visually implies that the phallus continues forward onto the
deck and that the windows go on into the ground. The symbolic
arched entrance presently lacks its Spanish Mission bell.

at a time of unsettled metaphysics is bound to be over-

emphatic; but Post-Modernists are nonetheless com-
mitted to exploring this level of meaning.
One of the most pervasive, implied metaphors in house
building has been the suggested image of the face.
Children often draw their home as a face, and we project,
empathetically, our feelings and dimensions onto build-
ings. Other anthropomorphic parts have been represented
in traditional architecture — a balance of supports sug-
gesting legs, a bodily symmetry, a proportion suggesting
human ratios of arm to torso — which have given it a
familiarity and welcome disposition. The row houses of
Amsterdam with their high, pitched gables, symmetrical 209
visage and face-like orifices, stare out at you like so
many prosperous and individualistic burghers in a guild
portrait by Rembrandt. This metaphor, a commonplace
for centuries, is coded in such a way that the contradiction
between competition and civic pride is directly portrayed:
each is given equal weight in these ‘cheek by jowl’
facades. Furthermore the coding is mixed and ambiguous
unlike, say, the face buildings of the Italian Renaissance —
the Zuccaro Palace in Rome, and the faces at Bomarzo. 210
209 Gable watching in Amsterdam is an enjoyable pastime since
These latter so overcode the forms that the face no longer
the faces of these buildings are as different and: engaging as those welcomes but alienates, or mystifies.
seen in typical portraits of Dutch burghers. Animals as well as the The Japanese architect Kazumasu Yamashita has taken
face and body are also literally present in the decoration. this strand of tradition to its logically absurd conclusion

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 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

in Kyoto. Here his Face House, with its round eyes and 211
gun-barrel nose, scowls and yells and ultimately swallows
the inhabitant. By mapping the forms so literally the
metaphor becomes reductive — ‘this is nothing but an
inscrutable face’. This reductivism, always a danger of
simile, should be contrasted with the Amsterdam examples
or the popular bungalows in America with their multi-
projecting foreheads, or the anthropomorphic creations
of Bernard Maybeck.
Maybeck’s houses often mix architectural and non-
architectural metaphors, codes inside the professional
elite with popular codes. For this inclusive eclecticism he,
along with Lutyens and Gaudi, has become another Pre-
Modernist for study. His Roos House, 1909, suggests 139
metaphors concerning Tudor and Gothic periods as well
as the actual location in the Bay Area of San Francisco, but
these are subtly blended with a wide-faced visage. The
forehead is perhaps more a broken eave-line; the eyes
recall first Gothic trefoils and ae// de boeuf before they
invite us to find the lens and iris; the balcony is an
exuberant version of Flamboyante before it is a mouth. So
210 FEDERIGO ZUCCARO, Palazzo facade Via Gregoriana, Rome,
the face image, which definitely looms out at us once we
c. 1592. The traditional metaphor of windows as the eyes of a
building is here dislocated to the mouth. The doorway grimaces see it, still can retreat into its former context and remain
while the windows smile. Note the way pediments, keystones and background.
cornucopia intersect the face. The flaring nostrils and general | have attempted a similar mixed coding in a studio
physiognomy are similar to that at Bomarzo. Is this the conventional building, the profile is the normal Cape Cod pitched-
entrance to Hades? roof, the mouth, teeth and eyebrows are more purely 212

ene
it “
e ° J =
re ,
& j . a aoe &
212 CHARLES JENCKS, Garagia Rotunda, Wellfleet, 1977. Sym-
metrical ends of pitched buildings often produce a physiognomic
211 KAZUMASA YAMASHITA, Face House, Kyoto, 1974. You are expression quite by chance. Here the face is partly in purdah, with
swallowed by a scowl, the eyes bulge out and the nose needs plastic the teeth basement hidden by shrubbery. The eyes and nose are
surgery. Such literalism suggests these unsympathetic remarks and Painted blue on the inside face to give a reflected light and contrast
the question — ‘ah, but where are the ears?’ Either less or more with the sky. The metaphor is somewhat veiled as a geometric
explicit coding should have been attempted. (Ryuji Miyamoto).
pattern of arches and verticals.

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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

213 MICHAEL GRAVES, Claghorn House, Princeton, 1974. Lattice

work, string courses, a broken pediment and sign of pitched roof
(parapet slant) are just recognisable in this addition to a Queen Anne
house. The architectural elements take on natural metaphors (brown,
earth base, green for shrubbery, blue framing for sky). The cruciform
post and beam frames the sky and acts as a gate proportioned to
human dimensions. (Carol Constant).

architectural in their suggestion and even the explicit

eyes and nose are here familiar enough architectural
elements to seem merely arches and plane. The face is then
perhaps not immediately recognisable; at least it was
intended to be subliminal and work as an extension to the
architectural meanings, providing them with a penumbra
of vague feeling.

Michael Graves has concentrated his attention on

suggesting anthropomorphic metaphors without naming 213
them. His elaboration of windows, doorways, and profiles,
the erogenous zones of architecture, is conceived not
just to call attention to their syntactical role, but also to
dramatise the everyday human experience of familiar
actions: standing beside a window ledge, holding it and
gazing; noticing the visual juncture between the roof and
the sky. The bodily metaphors are here much more general
and implied. Indeed they may not even be perceived as
somes drs ot iyTeenie os zs =]
such. But the constant attention to tight space, to touch-
214 ANTONIO GAUDI, Casa Bat//o, facade, 1904—6. A masterful able, close-grained details adds up to a consistent bodily
use of metaphor with a metaphysical base. Bones and lava articulate experience and is an extensive field for metaphorical play.
the bottom two floors given over to shops and the main apartment. We naturally anthropomorphise the world in speech, and
Death masks and the undulating sea metaphor articulate similar
while this may be unacceptable science or the pathetic
apartments in the middle, while a sleepy dragon looks down from the
fallacy it is still fitting to give this ubiquitous activity a
roof. The building represents Barcelona’s separatist hopes: her
Patron Saint, St. George, kills the dragon of Spain who has eaten up
response in architecture. It of course does not yet consti-
the Catalan people — the bones and skeletons remain as monuments tute a full metaphysics and that realm remains a primary
to the martyrs. (Esquela Technica Superior de Arquitectura de question mark for Post- Modernism. What indeed, beyond
Barcelona). the human and animals realms, is architecture to be about ? 214

LZ
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Post-Modern Space Opposite

Modern architecture has often taken as its main subject 217, 218 ROBERT STERN and JOHN HAGMANN, Westchester
matter the articulation of space, that is abstract space as Residence, Armonk, NY, 1974-6. Pool front with fragmented signs
the content of the form. The origins of this go to the relating to classical architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Tuscany
(the light ochre paint is stopped by a thin, virtual cornice of two red
nineteenth century and Germany when space, Raum,
bands). An odd scale and tension are set up with the woods and
void etc. had a kind of metaphysical priority :not only was
rusticated base: the stuccoed wall seems too small and thin for the
space the essence of architecture, its ultimate stuff, but base and as if it would be blown away into the woods. This fragility
also each culture expressed its will and existence through and delicacy is set up in such great contrast that it may be termed
this medium. Sigfried Giedion’s ‘space-concepts’ are the mannerist, frustrating. See page 123.
culmination of this tradition, just as are the Bauhaus, the
aa
Barcelona Pavilion and the Villa Savoye — which illus-
trated Giedion’s ideas of transparency and ‘space-time’
perception. Another tradition of modern space, perhaps
stronger, comes through the ‘rational’ Chicago frame and
its development by Le Corbusier in the domino block.
Here space is seen as isotropic, homogeneous in every
direction, although layered in grids at right angles to the
frontal plane and floor lines. The ultimate development of
this ‘warehouse’ space is with the vast, enclosed halls of
Mies and his followers. Besides being isotropic, it can be
characterised as abstract limited by boundaries or edges,
and rational or logically inferable from part to whole, or
whole to part.
As opposed to this, Post-Modern space is historically
specific, rooted in conventions, unlimited or ambiguous
in zoning and ‘irrational’ or transformational in its relation
of parts to whole. The boundaries are often left unclear, the
space extended infinitely without apparent edge. Like
the other aspects of Post-Modernism it is however
evolutionary not revolutionary and thus it contains
Modernist qualities — particularly the ‘layering’ and
‘compaction composition’ developed by Le Corbusier.°°
His La Roche house, 1923, develops several of the key
Post-Modern themes: back-lighting, punched-out, screen
space, and the implication of infinite extension created
147 by overlapping planes. To these formal motifs Venturi
added the skew or distorted space, created by sharp
angles which exaggerate perspective. Both he and
Eisenman increased the complexity of Le Corbusier's
compaction composition. Where there were a few, bold
elements juxtaposed there became a major traffic
215 accident of collisions, where a few cardboard cutouts
216 existed the walls became carved up like paper-dolls, and
layered on top of each other like a patch-work quilt. If
Le Corbusier's space Is the equivalent of a Cubist collage,
then Post-Modern space is as dense and rich as a
Schwitters’ Merz. Indeed one could say it developed partly
if indirectly from Kurt Schwitters’ great Merzbuild, the
column of memories that he constructed inside his house,
which was a literal accretion of every aspect of his life
(unfortunately the assemblage was destroyed by the
Nazis).
Yet in spite of this free-form precedent, and the Ex-
pressionist spaces of Hans Scharoun, Post-Modern space
is more an elaboration of the Cartesian grid than an
organic ordering. Thus Eisenman’s or Graves’ houses
always keep a mental coordinate system no matter how
free-form and baroque they become. The reference plane is
always an implied frontality, and the route through the

215, 216 PETER EISENMAN, House /// for Robert Miller, Lakeville,
1971. A careful collision at 45° of structure, volume, function, space,
wardrobes, and what-have-you. Following through these collisions
rigorously makes you look for and expect the presence, or absence,
of a diagonal. This is an architecture of implication, where once you
know what is implied you can follow the game. (Martin Tornallyay).

118
 RAISES, iy iN f P § E
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 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Opposite above
219 REM KOOLHAAS and ZOE ZENGHELIS, The City of the Captive
Globe, 1972. This version of what New York City is trying to do —
capture the world’s ideologies and styles — is a kind of eclecticism
and pluralism by juxtaposition. The multiple coding is delightful, but
the purity of each block is less so (although of course intended by
the authors). Expressionism confronts Le Corbusier, Malevitch is at
odds with Mies, and no dialogue ensues as the superblocks float
around in their mutual isolation. Nonetheless the recognition of plural
ideologies is a precondition for a Radical Eclecticism and public
realm — even if it isn’t realised here. The renewed interest in archi-
tectural drawing and painting culminated in 1977 with many exhibi-
tions and books; Post-Modernists borrowed the graphic techniques
of Archigram for anti-Futurist purposes. See page 128.

Opposite below left

220 CHARLES JENCKS, Garagia Rotunda, Wellfleet, 1977.
Architecture as prefabrication plus cosmetics. The prefabricated
garage, doors, ornament, pediments etc. were all chosen out of a
catalogue, the same Cape Cod catalogue and the initial studio was
constructed without supervision. Because the techniques and
material were all traditional, the shell cost a minimal $5,500, and so
the rest of the available money could be spent on cosmetics, on rectify-
222 PETER EISENMAN, 7wo steps of transformation drawing for
ing mistakes, on articulating the basic garage. Level changes,
House VI, one can see the stairs, real and virtual existing in counter-
‘widow’s walk’, bay window, porch, entry gate, and interior har-
point, the two reference planes, real and virtual, and the underlying
monics were added to the basic shell. The view shows the entry head
presence or absence of the column grid. The general grid layering is
with its seven doors and twice-broken-split pediment, which
kept throughout, thus continuing the movement in frontal and 90°
articulates the actual door of entry. See page 128.
turns, but there is a slight shift of reference planes on the diagonal,
45°.
Opposite below right
221 Garagia Rotunda, entry gate which mediates several times the
passage from inside to outside. The ocean and pond can be seen
from the traditional ‘widow’s walk’, and since the sky is also varying
blue, six different shades of this colour were used on the outside,
plus astrong red to mark the power box (top left). The gate reaches out
visually into the green shrubs and cuts them up into rectangular
slices framed in thick blue. With the passage of the sun the different
hues switch their relative density, and the darker becomes brighter
than the lighter ones. Classical elements are here ordered according
to De Stijl principles of asymmetry.

building or the curvilinear elements then relate to this

conceptual cage.
Eisenman’s House 6 is, of course, supremely Modernist
in its rigid exclusion of every contextual fact: there are no
indications of the regional style, the strong colonial clap-
179 board tradition, the woodland setting, the Frank family
that inhabit it, or even their books, paintings and memor-
abilia (rather hard for a photographer and his wife, an
art historian). The building could be upside-down or
tilted on its side and it wouldn't make much difference
(especially since columns hang in tension six inches from
the ground and a stairway runs downside-up in mirror
222 image). But the space and certain humorous touches are
definitely Post-Modern: not only the Escher-like tricks
| have mentioned, but also the play on the transformations
of syntactic elements, particularly the column.
Columns are painted shades of grey and off-white —
180 anything but a colour — to sometimes indicate their load-
bearing role, or their mechanical function, or their
decorative use, or for no reason. Walking through the
house one becomes sensitised to these variations, and
the game of architectural chess commences. The column
may be in one of the four states mentioned above, or as
its path is implied throughout the mental grid-system, 223 The absent column marching through ceiling, roof and floor
it may be present or absent, or, and this is most extra- divides the marital bed. Originally the gap opened right up into the
ordinary, it may be continued as a rectangular cut in the living room below.

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THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

surface. This absent column cuts through roof, wall and

even floor, wreaking its ultimate havoc on domesticity
(such is Eisenman’s sardonic hatred of function). It
divides the marital bed in two. A false step or leap and
you'd land in the living room, or would have until the
Franks glazed over the hole made by their absent column.
Because of their unexpected baby (unexpected by the
designer that is), who occupies the living room, several
open areas have now been acoustically shielded by plexi-
glass; other spatially flowing tricks remain, however.
Again the column has its revenge, and again in the master
bedroom, by transforming itself into a door. Ever seen a
door as a column which rotates ? And in three shades of
grey and white? It’s easy to calculate the snag. When the
column is ‘closed’ there is still about two feet of left-over
open space letting in all that kitchen smoke, guest gossip
and baby talk. But if I’ve made this sound totally un-
desirable it’s unintentional, because this pivoting column
which is ‘not a door/door’ is startling and beautiful as a
volumetric object and very amusing in its context. As a
single conceit it may be questionable, but as the trans-
formation of a theme well prepared for in advance, it’s
delightful and even sensual. One of the unlikely things
about this building, at least it surprised me, is that the
internal coding, the consistency of interrelated meanings
created ex nihi/o, made up for the lack of any external,
historical coding, the conventional signs which archi-
tecturé usually depends on for meaning. While the Purist
= =
language of Eisenman may be Modernist, his witty se-
224, 225 ROBERT STERN and JOHN HAGMANN, Poo/ House, mantic use of this language is Post-Modern; while his
Greenwich, Connecticut, 1973-4. Relating to the parent house in
exclusive concern for syntax and contempt for function
some details and the Shingle Style in others, this little folly celebrates
are Modern, the ambiguity and sensuality of his spatial
the sun and water, through orientation and rippling rhythms. A
double-height porch rotates to the view; the entrance to the left
invention are Post-Modern.
curves in under a colonnade (of three columns) which have odd, very Robert Stern, a so/-d/sant Post-Modernist, is by contrast
odd, capitals. The column, beam and roof systems have undergone, actually quite Modern, or at least Moderne. All of his work
like Eisenman’s, several complicated transformations which are fun to has the linear, cardboard quality of the International
mentally unravel. (Ed Stoecklein). Style behind it; all of it makes use of vast planes of pure,
white wall separated by primary colours and good taste
graphic abstractions. They may defer towards the vulgar
and Art Deco, because Stern believes in the importance of
Route 66 and ‘inclusivism’ (he was taught by Venturi at
Yale), but he can't get over his inherent fastidiousness.
Basically Stern has the sensibility of a New York cosmo-
polite crossed with an enlightened dilettante from Lord
Burlington’s circle, and his natural inclinations would
drive him towards the Country House Set not Main Street;
but his theory steers him sideways in more pluralist
directions. (It seems at first surprising that Eisenman, a
‘White’ and Stern a ‘Grey’ should be smoothing over their
non-colour ideologies to co-edit the writings of Philip
Johnson, until one understands they are all, first, New
Yorkers, and second, of related sensibility).
The Pool House Stern has built near its slightly colonial 224
mother house, shows an appreciation for the local context
and has historical allusions, two aspects he singles out to
define Post-Modernism. It does not indulge in much
applied ornament, his third definition, and actually con-
centrates on spatial and syntactic transformation a la 226
Eisenman to become a very Modernist building indeed.
And yet the Shingle Style, the complexities of roofscape
and skylighting, the masterful use of the indirect, back-
226 Pool House interior is very light and capricious because of the
variety of skylights — a literal metaphor for following the sun’s
lit bow shape are not found in rational architecture. One
movement. The space pivots and undulates around the fireplace to cannot infer the detached column from the regular column
the right, and is broken into by the column line and stairs at the left. grid, nor the distortions in entry and stairs — these are
A subtle tension is created between the referénce wall, its grid and circumstantial articulations that, by varying from the
these distortions. (Ed Stoecklein). norm, call attention to themselves. In other words it is 226

122
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

227 ROBERT STERN, Westchester House. Applied, painted decora- 228 Westchester Residence, interior looking at the fire place with
tive cornice set off against structural decorative trellis, that is indirect lighting from behind and punched out ambiguous space
traditional versus modern ornament. The slight, wavy curve is also reminiscent of Lutyens.
contrasted with the close straight frame. (Ed Stoecklein).

heterogeneous not repeated space, modified to com-

municate a message of entry way or passage, gutter or
calculated nonsense.
Stern’s residence in Westchester County also continues
the wit and absurdity of Post-Modernism, but combines
these with a corpus of modern motifs: careful asym-
metries slide across an off-white (light ochre) plane;
217 there’s an absence of sills and of decorative articulation
218 except for the two bands of red at the top (a diminutive
cornice, or misplaced stringcourse ?). There’s a Wrightian
podium of flat-chested, fieldstone terraces, again without
the copings and horizontal ornaments one would expect
in a more traditional building. The interior, with its bold
218 splashes of colour used to accentuate volume, could be
an Art Deco version of a Le Corbusier, so pure, light and
undecorated is it. Thus the Post-Modern architect by
name is, as my litany insists, indelibly schizophrenic,
tainted with a sensibility of Modernism which he will not
throw off, yet picking up eclectic fragments where he
wants.
The notion of ‘fragments’ is as important to Stern as
it is to Graves, and it becomes a kind of compositional
method in both of their hands. The south facade is partially
unified by broken S-curves and by broken stringcourses
and planes in shear, that is to say fragmented motifs
lifted from the Baroque and Edwin Lutyens. The plan
contains semi-circles, semi-ovals, semi-rectangles and a
semi-spine of circulation, that is to say ‘semi-forms’
rather than completed ones, forms that, as in Zen
aesthetics, demand a completion in the imagination. Kitchen
Guest wing
Maids’ rooms
229 Westchester interior space is stretched along a major axis that
Master bedroom Bt
connects the master bedroom (7) to the sunporch (9). Parallel with rec eemaes
ii aaeerasaeae
Conservatory
this axis are five minor planes of space, also layered frontally to the Sunporch EEE og ey aan ee
entrance (1). The way space is brought in and out across these axes Bedroom
s+SOWOAN
WH
OOS
=
is delightful, if hard to read : curving wall disappears into a colonnade
and screen to emerge again as a curving wall.

123
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

he

EPL
230 Chinese garden space is, like Post-Modern space, ambiguous, 231 CHARLES MOORE and WILLIAM TURNBULL, Faculty Club,
fragmented and eternally changing, but at the same time more “Santa Barbara, 1968. Punched-out walls, which are lit from behind,
precisely delineated through conventions. Here one of many walls is suggest a rich layering of space and a certain mystery as to its extent.
punctured by a ‘moon gate’ whose sign, the circle, also symbolises The ambiguity of spatial cues juxtaposed with traditional signs —
money and perfection. These meanings are further reinforced by the tapestry, neon banners — is typically Post-Modern.
greyness of the wall so that, at dusk, the hole glows brightly as the
‘moon who washes her soul’ in the pool beyond. Other representa-
tional elements include the rockery and bushes (landscape painting)
and writing above the door (‘night time’). Precisely because the
signs are traditional they have a wider base than the esoteric and become ‘irrational’ or quite literally impossible to figure
fast-changing ones of Post-Modernism. (Maggie Keswick). out. In the same manner Post-Modernists complicate and
fragment their planes with screens, non-recurrent motifs,
ambiguities and jokes to suspend our normal sense of
duration and extent. The difference, and it is a profound
The handling of space is equally suggestive and diffuse — one, is that the Chinese garden had an actual religious and
none of the obvious unities of modern architecture, but philosophical metaphysics behind it, and a built up con-
everywhere complex implications which always lead on ventional system of metaphor, whereas our complicated 230
to a climax that is never present. There is an undeniable architecture has no such accepted basis of signification.
frustration to this, both mental and psychological, used as Our metaphysics often remains private, as in the
we are to a strong ‘sense of an ending’ and graspable Surrational creations of John Hejduk. Thus, although
whole. In part the parallel must be with the decentralised Post-Modern space may be in every way as rich and
space of Mannerism, with its self-conscious ambiguity ambiguous as Chinese garden space, it cannot articulate
and contradictory spatial cues. In fact C. Ray Smith has the depth of meaning with the same precision. Its meta-
termed recent American architecture ‘Supermannerist’ phorical and metaphysical bases are just being laid, and
because of the plethora of spatial tricks — the omni- it is questionable how far they can grow in an industrial
present diagonals, violent scale changes, supergraphics society.
and whimsical punctuation.®* The comparison of Post- Charles Moore is, in his own way, trying to develop an
Modern with Mannerist space is helpful in many ways, architecture of public metaphor and his work, which pulls
but | think there is another analogous model, one of a together practically all the themes of Post-Modernism,
quasi-religious nature. shows the possibilities and present limits of this approach.
Post-Modern, like Chinese garden space, suspends the Moore has written about Hadrian’s villa and the importance 231
clear, final ordering of events for a labyrinthine, rambling of images and historical allusion in creating a sense of
‘way that never reaches an absolute goal. The Chinese place, so he is well qualified to design for the public
garden crystallises a ‘liminal’ or in-between space that realm.°° His Kresge College dormitories combine many 232
mediates between pairs of antinomies, the Land of the historical memories that are only vaguely presented —
Immortals and the world of society being the most alluded to rather than precisely quoted. The overall plan
obvious mediation.*®® It suspends normal categories of meanders and shifts violently, a cross between the
time and space, social and rational categories which serpentine walk through a Chinese garden and a tight
are built up in everyday architecture and behaviour, to Italian hill town.

124
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

232 CHARLES MOORE and WILLIAM TURNBULL, Kresge College,

University of California at Santa Cruz, plan 1972—4. A meandering
route threaded through a redwood forest has each plaza with a
separate monument to define the ‘place’. Many buildings set up their
own axial and rhythmic systems rather like Hadrian’s Villa (200),
but here on a linear L-route. The sense of place was further under-
lined by creating opposite activities at two ends of the scheme — Post
Office and entrance arena at bottom and assembly and dining areas
at the top. Hence the street is well used and keeps students going
from one side to the other. A complex water works and orange trees
reinforce the Spanish image; ‘a laundromat stands for the village
well’ unfortunately not having quite the same importance, and
telephone kiosks are turned into major archways. (Morley Baer).

The image of the Mediterranean village is inescapable

and reinforced by several cues: large white planes, a
public, two storey arcade, angular junctions between
volumes. But whereas the southern European village
gives stability and a sense of permanence, because it is
built of an encompassing stone, Kresge is made from a
cardboard-like wood, that ‘cheapskate’ material that has
always plagued Modernism. Thus a feeling of insub-
stantiality is created at the very point that the metaphor of
enclosure is about to be consummated, and the image of
the Italian hill town criticises, not reinforces, the meanings
intended.
In like manner, the references to the Spanish Steps, the
Arc de Triomphe, the cascades and waterways of the
Alhambra — all memories Moore has collected on his
many travels — call into question their present use. Is this
a kind of haute vu/garisation, or the pastiche and travesty
we have noted before ? Perhaps the first. Moore has spoken,
not pejoratively, about whimsy and nostalgia in archi-
tecture and this work has some of the virtues and vices
of both these genres. On the negative side, we can see how
the insubstantial feel of the place combines with its bright
supergraphics and flimsy construction to lead to the
student epithet, ‘Clown Town’. There is always the danger
with Moore’s work that its relative cheapness will combine
with the whimsy to produce a kind of tawdry pathos, like a
run-down summer resort, but by and large these mean-
ings are overtaken by the more powerful metaphors of
place, which he has intended.
Thus Kresge mixes the very personal scale of a village
with the calculated surprise of a walk through a garden —
33 whether English or Chinese. The two storey arcade
screens have varying syncopated rhythms, combined with
syncopated colours behind them, to increase the feelings
of suspense and discovery. Since, in plan, the buildings
pinch in perspective they can heighten the sense of move-
ment and depth; since various ‘anti-monuments’ punctu-
ate the route — post office, laundromat, telephone altar
etc. — there is some content, however banal, to anticipate.
Moore has justified this low-keyed approach as fitting
for the modest, egalitarian role of the student dormitory.
... All the inhabitants are students, there for four
or five years together. So it seemed important to us to
establish not a set of institutional monuments along
the street to help give a sense of place to the whole,
and a sense of where one was in one’s passage up
the street, but rather to make a set of trivial monu- 233 Kresge College two storey arcade and entrance stairs, tra-
ments, of things like drainage ditches made into ditional elements which are slightly exaggerated here in scale as
fountains, of the laundromat facade a speaker's are the conventional number plaques. Complicated rhythms are set
rostrum with garbage collection under...°! up which run through the whole scheme like a Mannerist pa/azzo:
This brico/age, an ironic debunking of the public realm, here ABCBCDBAC. The porches which serve for sunning and street
has the double meaning intended — to punctuate and watching, are painted underneath in strong primary reds and yellows.
define experience and to deflate pomposity — but one (Morley Baer).

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 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

longs, by contrast, for a modicum of public decorum, the

straight gesture of communal well-being. Moore has
studied the scenic planning of Disneyland and its stage-
set quality has been successfully incorporated here, but
at the cost of overwhelming normality.
Still, if we contrast this dormitory village with others
built in the last forty years its virtues become very much
apparent, even sacrosanct. As opposed to the Modern
18- university — Mies’ IIT for instance — it is carefully set in its
22 context rather than dropped unceremoniously, like an
urban bomb. Thus the backs of the buildings, in wood
painted ochre, are sympathetic to the forest, and the plan
slides this way and that to avoid existing redwoods. Op-
posed to the predictable spaces of rational architecture,
234 there is always a twist and surprise around every corner
and nook.
The depth of the metaphor involved here becomes
greater on examination: ‘place’ results not just from strong
images, but also from the careful distribution of activities.
Since the post office and assembly areas are located at
opposite ends of the L-shape there is a natural to and fro
of movement that keeps the streets occupied, and since
functions are fragmented and interspersed there are the
chance encounters, and the richness, of the historic
village. Thus the metaphors of place and community are 234 Kresge College, space spills from the library in a cascade of steps
created through use as well as image. which focus on the corner and redwoods beyond — a typical ‘skew’
Moore has extended his type of public (sometimes space of Post-Modernism. (Morley Baer).
whimsical) imagery in a more representational direction,
235 incorporating in one scheme for New Orleans precise
iconography such as the boot of Italy, and a play on the
real, historic orders (turning some metopes into fountains
called ‘wetopes’), but his most convincing Post-Modern
building, to my mind, is the Burns house, for a professor
at UCLA. Here the cut-out stage-sets, something of a
Moore brandmark, have a perplexing mystery which is
delightfully confusing but not frustrating. The walk
through the house is peppered with surprises and other
forms of architectural spice.
Each image that appears en route — a Mexican balcony,
182 an altar-like organ, inglenook etc — is at first the focus of
visual attention and then, because of back lighting,
merely the pretext for further discovery. The layering of
cut-out walls has the same effect as that in Eisenman’s
work, providing the suggestion of infinity, except here
many are set at a skew-angle, so that scale and orientation 235 CHARLES MOORE and WILLIAM HERSEY, Piazza D'/ta/ia,
are dislocated. As you move up the stairway towards New Orleans, 1976. An exedra made up from the different orders
236 the attic-study, two extraordinary mysteries unfold: the turns into a fountain in the shape of Italy (at the base). This scheme
view back reveals a perspective distortion of such com- for the Italian community mixes supergraphics with classicism,
plexity that the relative scale and position of object are bubbling water with architecture.
impossible to determine, while the route forward splits
and then widens in reverse perspective (by 1971 a con-
ventional motif).
This is the left-over, idiosyncratic stairway we might shut.
expect near the sanctum, the professor's lair, but then the The outside, with its seventeen shades of reds and 181
lower route suddenly turns into an Art Deco dressing room. oranges and earthcolours, is equally amusing and pro-
From Mexico through a church with its organ to an attic found. Several shades are contrasted to give the effect of
stair that reveals a Hollywood, back-stage dressing table — shadows where they don’t exist, thus turning the corner
the images and moods are quite unexpected, but not in- on a volume where it doesn’t. Other shades mark out a
appropriate. One looks in the first mirror, a natural stop progression from dark to light, from the dull, underplayed
on the walk, to admire one’s finery, then the next — which tower to the more important, bright functions. But all
turns Out not to be a mirror at all, but a hole, cut and these tonalities are so subtly related that they actually
placed like the previous mirror. It opens over a drop of integrate and create a whole feeling of pleasant domes-
fifteen feet. This joke and use of human vanity is just ticity, appropriate for Southern California. Without
another characteristic surprise of this Post-Modern space. specifically invoking the Spanish Mission Style and the
Everywhere there are details of colour and form that other local associations, Moore has managed to design
remain to be discovered — eyetraps which can spring - something equivalent in feeling yet superior in wit.

126
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

236 Burns House, section and plan. Space flows and zigzags to the
private study at the top. Several walls are punched out and skewed
off the right angle.

Conclusion — Radical Eclecticism ? or Stern or Kroll, but also the natural one that comes from
If Post-Modern space continues to develop in this direction a compound set of sources. Furthermore, the return to
towards the mysterious, ambiguous and sensual, it will the past has become something of a backwards race that
start to conventionalise certain metaphors of a quasi might reach renaissance proportions: we only have to
religious nature. There’s not much chance these will ever recapitulate the historicism of Venturi, the straight
be supported by a socially shared metaphysics, and so revivalisms of Disneyworlds, the Neo-Vernacular, Neo-
they will signify a general spirituality when not an obvious Ornament and Contextualism — all point in the same
idiosyncrasy. What | would guess, but it’s no better than direction, over the shoulder.
other prophecies, is that the present developments Finally, if our pattern books today include four hundred
towards complication and eclecticism would continue building systems, if ‘local’ materials now mean everything
and that we might see an architecture emerge that is down at the hardware shop, then our natural vernacular
237 quite similar to the Neo-Queen Anne and Edwardian of is eclectic if not polyglot, and even the present attempt
eighty years ago. Every indication points towards at a simple Neo-Vernacular is bound to be infected by
increasing complication in formal and theoretical con- these mixed sources. In semiotic terms, the /angue (total
cerns: the work of Graves, Eisenman, Moore et a/. is set of communicational sources) is so heterogeneous and
an elaboration of a 1920s syntax to the point of man- diverse that any singular paro/e (individual selection)
nerism; On a completely different level the theories will reflect this, even if only in excluding the diversity.
of Jane Jacobs and Herbert Gans point towards a cor- Such are the facts of architectural production.
responding heterogeneity of urban villagers and taste A corresponding argument can be made concerning con-
cultures. No doubt a case can be made for simplification sumption. Any middle-class urbanite in any large city from
and large-scale decisions concerning utilitarian structures Teheran to Tokyo is bound to have a well-stocked, indeed
such as roadways, but by and large the natural develop- over-stocked, ‘image-bank’ that is continually restuffed by
ment of a city towards increasing complexity — a patch- travel and magazines. His musée imaginaire may mirror
work quilt of contradictions and mixed intentions — is the pot-pourri of the producers, but it is nonetheless
positive, because it reflects the mixed desires and goals natural to his way of life. Barring some kind of totalitarian
that any large metropolis must fulfil. reduction in the heterogeneity of production and con-
If one looks for a historical parallel, when many styles sumption, it seems to me desirable that architects learn to
and ideologies were competing, the period 1870-1910 use this inevitable heterogeneity of languages. Besides, it
becomes even more pertinent, because then at least fifteen is quite enjoyable. Why, if one can afford to live in different
styles were in opposition (no doubt too many) and com- ages and cultures, restrict oneself to the present, the
plication and eclecticism were rife. The general trend of locale ? Eclecticism is the natural evolution of a culture
all styles towards heterogeneity was reaching a peak — with choice.
High Gothic couldn't get any more articulated or the There are, however, objections. It is constantly pointed
Second Empire Style any more bombastic. If complexity out that eclectic systems, both in philosophy and archi-
was a natural metaphor for power, then there was no tecture, didn’t produce much of originality, nor confront
116 place more complicated to go than the Paris Opera — key issues with any kind of tenacity. The charge is that
except to a thorough-going eclecticism, like the ‘Queen eclecticism is a kind of weak compromise, a mish-mash
238 Anne Style’ as seen in Texas, Los Angeles and San where second-rate thinkers can take refuge in a welter of
Francisco. In fact all styles were hybrid and becoming confusing antinomies. They combine contradictory mater-
syncretic if not eclectic — one only has to think of the ial in the hope of avoiding a difficult choice, or seeing
borrowings between Art Nouveau and the Second Empire through a problem to a creative conclusion.
Style. Today precisely such borrowings are occurring, Thus eclectics have been trimmers or dilettanti, and the
perhaps because all designers now belong to the world architecture often botched. Furthermore, eclecticism in
small-town of architectural magazines, and an idea in any the nineteenth century was often motivated more by op-
backyard on the map soon spreads elsewhere — thanks to portunism than conviction, and architects mixed their
cheap, half-tone reproduction. Hence the fragmentation modes as much out of laxness as desire. We are all
in design, not only the conscious ‘fragments’ of a Graves familiar with the vague pastiche, ‘in the manner of’

127
 THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

237 J. CATHER NEWSOM, 7330 Carro// Street, Los Angeles, 238 HOUSE on 309 STEINER STREET, San Francisco, c. 1890.
c. 1888. A twelve room house with ‘Californian’ ornament, lacy The ‘Queen-Anne Style’ was the last great attempt to merge
spindle and lattice in the ‘Moorish manner’. The elaborate shingle different styles and incorporate disparate material. Various elements
patterns, stained glass, circular contrasts and eave recessions add a are collaged together with great skill: a bay window is transformed
depth and grandeur to entry. Such virtuosity in wood was helped by into a tower and two pediments, large curves are set against spindles
the great carpenter-builder tradition which already existed. The and straight lines, decorative plasterwork against wood. Thousands
results, like Charles Moore's, were not as expensive as they look, and of these carpenter-built houses survive in San Francisco, a testimony
equally wide in reference. that inexpensive building needn't be dull nor without ornament.

Something, without being much of Anything. The Eclecticism can be projected as a possibility, an alternative
motivation was essentially one of mood and comfort and to the weak eclecticism of the past.
while these are perfectly honourable goals, they certainly A Radical Eclecticism would include areas of extreme
are not sufficient for architecture as a whole. There was little simplicity and reduction, not only for their contrast in
semantic and social argument involved, and hence nine- space, but also because of a dialectic in meaning over
teenth-century eclecticism was weak. Indeed, there was time. As opposed to the theory of Modernism, however,
hardly any theory of eclecticism beyond choosing the this reduction would never be more than momentary, or
right style for the job. situational, depending on the particular context. It would
In contrast to this weak eclecticism, it seems to me that be motivated by the original Greek meaning of eclectic —
Post-Modernism has at least the potential to develop ‘| select’ — and follow the basically sensible course of
a stronger more radical variety. The various formal, selecting from all possible sources those elements which
239 theoretical and social threads are there, waiting to be were most useful or pertinent ad hoc.
219 drawn and woven together. Indeed, the seven aspects of In a studio building on Cape Cod for instance, | selected
Post-Modernism | have outlined do constitute such an elements from the existing vernacular, from traditional
amalgam, even if it isn’t yet an interrelated whole. As | shingle construction and a basic catalogue of prefabricated
have constantly reiterated, there is room in this amalgam building parts. The selection was a mixture of new and old,
for Modernism, precisely because the theory of semiotics traditional balusters and modern pivot windows — all of 220
postulates meaning through opposition, and the possi- which was local to the area and easy to build. The basic
bility of rich meaning using a restricted language.° shell was a prefabricated garage (although finally hand-
By way of summary the common ground of the seven built) and the garage door was the cheapest way to get a
approaches can be stressed and an emergent Radical large, framed opening (and the effect of a ba/dacchino).

128
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

240 Garagia Rotunda interior with part of the harmonies visible. The
4 x 4 inch studs are painted differing shades of blue on their sides to
bring out the 3/9/5 rhythm. The underlying symmetry and axes are
brought out by blue tile lines, while corner angles are painted in
trompe /'oei/ to imitate a mirror image.
me
ec
r

=
Tab ta
eres
eed
| :~<
|<.
waht — Tete :

239 CAMPBELL, ZOGOLOVITCH, WILKINSON and GOUGH,

Phillips West 2, Residences and Offices, London 1976. Art Deco
mixed with London vernacular and pantiles create a melange which
is suitable to this mixture of functions.

Since all the basic choices were absolutely minimal,

inexpensive and based on builder's vernacular, the
majority of the money could be spent on articulation, on
changing levels, and painting harmonic colour combina-
tions. | wouldn't claim this studio as a model of Radical 4
Eclecticism — the program was too limited for one thing — 241 Garagia Rotunda plan, overlapping space modules, organised in
but it does have the mixture of languages and can be read a general S-line approach which ends in two cross-axes noted on
by the local inhabitants (for instance those who built it the floor in blue tile. The space cells are more or less on a four foot
while | wasn’t there). module and layered in axes which intersect at right angles.
There are, | think, no completely convincing examples of
Radical Eclecticism in existence, besides the venerable
buildings of Antonio Gaudi; just hints of what it might be The examples cited are just individual houses and
adumbrated by designers such as Bruno Reichlin in therefore too restricted in their coding and breadth of
Switzerland, or Thomas Gordon Smith in California. In expression. At the present time a larger model is needed,
general, however, some of its aspects have now clarified. greater in scope and urban — for instance an apartment
Unlike Modernism it makes use of the full spectrum of house in the inner city, which could take into account
communicational means — metaphorical and symbolic the existing local codes.
as well as spatial and formal. Like traditional eclecticism Theoretically at least several of the key issues are clear.
it selects the right style, or subsystem, where it is ap- One must start by defining a basic opposition in coding
propriate — but a Radical Eclecticism mixes these ele- between the inhabitant and professional, perhaps taking
ments within one building. Thus the semantic overtones as one departure point Basil Bernstein's fundamental
to each style are mapped to their closest functional distinction between ‘restricted’ and ‘elaborated’ codes. °*
equivalents — for instance in Thomas G, Smith's work the As mentioned above (pages 55-62) the varying codes
entrance and porch are given classical formality whereas based on semiotic groups may not be determined by
the sides are in the vernacular of the region. class alone, but are usually a complex mixture of ethnic

129
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

ae eS =
242 BRUNO REICHLIN and FABIO REINHARDT, Maison Tonini, 243 Maison Tonini, split axonometric. The authors quote Alberti —
Torricella Switzerland, 1972-4. A well-proportioned villa in the ‘., the “heart of the house” is the basic part, around it are grouped
Alberti/Palladian tradition, with grand arch framing view, sym- the subordinate parts as if it were a public square within the building.’
metrical axes, and very simple mathematical harmonies (visible here Thus the repetitive square rooms must be seen as little houses
is ABA’CA’BA and C = A + B). The finish and furnishings are clustered around the central heart, the piazza, where the family eat
unnecessarily prison-like, but one assumes this is a momentary around their round table. (Heinrich Helfenstein).
Calvinism and will not last with these young designers.

background, age, history and locale. The designer should In several studies concerning the way architecture is
logically start with an investigation of the semiotic group perceived I've found an underlying schizophrenia in inter-
and always keep in his mind the varying views of the good pretations which, | believe, parallels the essentially dual
life as seen by the people involved since architecture nature of the architectural language. °* Generally speaking
ultimately signifies a way of life — something not entirely there are two codes, a popular, traditional one which like
understood by the Modern Movement. The training spoken language is slow-changing, full of clichés and
necessary for this needn't entail a degree in anthropology. rooted in family life, and secondly a modern one full of
Common sense, a willingness to understand the client's neologisms and responding to quick changes in tech-
background plus a certain appreciation of etiquette can nology, art and fashion as well as the avant-garde of
suffice. Social research may help. Sympathy and constant architecture. One code is likely to be preferred by any
consultation are minimum requirements. The difficulty is individual, but quite likely both, contradictory codes exist
that since continuous traditions have been broken, and the in the same person. Since an architect is, by profession and
profession has its own language and ideology, one daily work, necessarily responsive to fast-changing codes
cannot assume a commonalty of values and architectural — and these of course include literal building codes — one
language, so an inevitable self-conscious theory must can see why he has been alienated from the slow-
suffice to link this duality. changing languages, and Modernism has had such an
In any case, the designer should first study the area,.the ideological hold on his mind. It simplified his problem
language of the tribe, and understand it fully before de- considerably to a professional one of communication
signing. The language may have an ethnic or cultural between specialists. Architectural conferences and maga-
dimension based on the background of the inhabitants zines necessarily celebrate specialist values, and archi-
and also a purely architectural dimension — the vernacular tecture as an art addresses itself to an even smaller elite, the
(which has usually been disrupted, but elements of which ‘happy few’ who are concerned to make subtle distinctions
usually exist). The kinds of thing that can be said in this and perpetuate the art — not a minor achievement. Since
traditional language will conserve the values of the local there is an unbridgeable gap between the elite and popular
group. Indeed such a conservative approach is the s/ne codes, the professional and traditional values, the modern
qua non for any urban development, for the reasons that and vernacular language, and since there is no way to
preservations, the ‘contextualists’ and Conrad Jameson abolish this gap without a drastic curtailment in possibili-
advance (see above pages 107-109). But this traditional ties, a totalitarian manoeuvre, it seems desirable that
base does not exhaust the questions as they sometimes architects recognise the schizophrenia and code their
argue. buildings on two levels. Partly this will parallel the ‘high’

130
 POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

zZ
Zz
Zza
ZZ 244, 245 Maison Tonini, hall first floor looking out onto distant view
Z
% framed between an arch and ‘small houses’ (pediments) to either
side. The left one is a kind of inglenook, for reading next to a fireplace.
The Mackintosh chairs and their place in the centre around the round
dining table constitute the larger public house within the house; it
goes up three storeys and is lit at the top. (Heinrich Helfenstein).

and ‘low’ versions of classical architecture, but it will not

be, as that was, an homogeneous language. Rather the
double coding will be eclectic and subject to the hetero-
geneity that makes up any large city. Partly this is the
‘inclusivism’ that Venturi, Stern and Moore call for, but in
addition it asks for more precise local or traditional coding
than they have yet undertaken. Their work still gives
priority to esoteric, fast-changing codes and treats
traditional ones, often, as an opportunity for historical
allusion.
Radical Eclecticism by contrast starts design from the
tastes and languages prevailing in any one place and
overcodes architecture (with many redundant cues) so that

246 PHILIP C. JOHNSON, AT & 7 Building, New York City,

1978-82, called the first ‘major monument of post-modernism’ by
Paul Goldberger, it may well represent the grave of the movement
to detractors. Basically a glass and steel skyscraper is shrunk to a
grandfather's clock and imprisoned within a granite cage — Serlio
at the bottom, Chippendale ‘refeenment’ at the top. Such dual
coding — half modern, half trad — may be annoying to both taste
cultures, although the codes are being marginally extended (e.g. the
granite sheathing acts as an environmental cover, and the Ledouxian
hole at the top will emit exhaust). One has to recall Johnson’s
‘follee’ called ‘the most sincerely hated building’ by the British
because it had an androgynous slickness. Beyond the controversy
however is an interesting possibility: the skyscraper might loose its
bland, economic coding and return to its former position as a major
fantasy form of capital (whether capitalist or socialist).

131
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

247 THOMAS GORDON SMITH, Jefferson Street House project,

Berkeley, California, 1976. Like Queen Anne and Maybeck’s work,
an easy-going mixture of grand, traditional elements with the local
vernacular. The ‘Palladian’ viewing porch treated as a symmetrical,
formal front which organises the informal, rambling sides; meaning
through opposition.

——— = Al
es

'

Ny Ox]
OY

SSS
Se
Ss —
ee

4
248 THOMAS GORDON SMITH, Paulownia House, Oakland, whole. The quoins, voussoirs and other traditional elements are made
California, 1977. A prefabricated Quonset hut, wood frame con- from stock pieces to suggest a more substantial construction than
struction and a rusticated, Serlio arch which is mirrored to make it actually exists.

it can be understood and enjoyed by different taste depending on the context and building involved.
cultures — both the inhabitants and the elite. Although it Finally Radical Eclecticism is multivalent, as against
starts from these codes, it doesn’t necessarily use them so much Modern architecture: it pulls together different
to send the expected messages, or ones which simply kinds of meaning, which appeal to opposite faculties of
confirm the existing values. In this sense it is both the mind and body, so that they interrelate and modify
contextual and dialectical, attempting to set up a dis- each other. The taste of the building, its smell and touch,
course between different and often opposed taste engage the sensibility as much as does the sight and
cultures. contemplation. In a perfectly successful work of archi-
Although it is generated in participation with those who tecture — that of Gaudi — the meanings add up and work
will use the building, it transcends their goals and may together in the deepest combination. We aren't there yet,
even criticise them. For these contrasting reasons it can but a tradition is growing which dares make this demand
be read on at least two quite distinct levels telling for the future.
parallel stories which may or may not be consistent,

132
NOTES

1 See Mies van der Rohe, ‘Industrialized Building’, originally here. See Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, |Indiana University
printed in the magazine, G, Berlin, 1924, and reprinted in Ulrich Press, Bloomington, 1976, pp. 191—221.
Conrads, Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architec-
15 l’ve discussed these debates in Modern Movements in Archi-
ture, London, 1970, p. 81.
tecture, Harmondsworth & New York, 1973, pp. 318-28, and foot-
2 See Manfredo Tafuri, ‘L’Architecture dans le boudoir’, Oppositions notes for references. The Italian press took up the controversy and
3, New York, 1974, p. 45 and note p. 60. Tafuri claims that the applied the metaphors of ‘refrigeration’ to English criticism (if my
‘accusations of fascism hurled at Rossi mean little, since his attempts memory serves me).
at the recovery of an ahistoricizing form exclude verbalizations of its
16 Philip Johnson, ‘The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture,’
content and any compromise with the real’. This escape clause is of
Perspecta \|Il, New Haven, 1955; ‘Whence and Whither’, The
course impossible; all form will be looked at historically and have
Processional Element in Architecture, Perspecta 9/10, New Haven,
conventional associations tied to it, and Rossi’s work cannot escape
1965.
this ‘compromise with the real’ any more than all other architecture.
17 See John Jacobus, Philip Johnson, George Braziller, New York,
3 Peter and Alison Smithson, Architectura/ Design, October 1969,
1962.
p. 560.
18 Letter to Jurgen Joedicke, 6/12/1961 reprinted in John
4 Peter Smithson, Architectura/ Design, May 1975, p. 272.
Jacobus: Philip Johnson, New York, 1962.
5 A. et P. Smithson, ‘Gentle Cultural Accommodation’, L’Archi- 19 See Robin Boyd, New Directions in Japanese Architecture, New
tecture d’aujourd‘hu/, Janvier/Fevrier 1975, pp. 4-13, quote from York and London, 1968, p. 102.
page 9. The Smithsons contend that they didn’t write this, although
20 See C/AM ‘59 in Otterlo, ed. Jurgen Joedicke, London, 1961,
it is typical of their ideas. See Architectura/ Design 7, 1977 and my
p. 182.
answer.
21 A fairly complete bibliography of these writings and comment
6 See Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism, Picador, London, 1975,
on the Venturi Team can be seen in Learning from Las Vegas, revised
pp. 54-6, and my article ‘The Rise of Post-Modern Architecture’,
edition by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour,
Architectural Association Quarterly, London, Summer 1976, pp. 7-14.
Cambridge, 1977. For a criticism see my review, ‘Venturi et. al. are
7 For the call to morality see Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and almost all right’, in Architectura/ Design, 7, 1977.
Architecture, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, pp. 214, 291-308. For the
22 See Learning from Las Vegas, op. cit., pp. 130 & 149.
‘Heroic Period’, see Peter and Alison Smithson, issue of Architectura/
Design, December 1965. 23 They have often pointed this out ;Robert Venturi for instance said
at a conference at Art Net, London, July 1976: ‘I apologise for all
8 Sant’ Elia’s ‘Manifesto’, July 11, 1914, is quoted from Futurismo
these Rich Men’s houses, but I'll take anything we can get’. Their
1909-1919, exhibition of Italian Futurism, organised by Northern
projects are often for more social tasks, sometimes minority groups
Arts and the Scottish Arts Council, 1972, catalogue, p. 49.
and the under-serviced.
9 A more rigorous comparison of architecture to language is made
24 See A & U, 74:17 devoted to their work from 1970-74, p. 43.
by architectural semioticians, who substitute technical terms for
these imprecise analogues. For our general purpose however, 25 See my ‘MBM and _the Barcelona School’, The Architectural
the analogies will suffice, as long as we don't take them too literally. Review, March 1977, pp. 159-65, and Arquitectura Bis, 13 & 14
Barcelona, May—June, 1976.
10 A point made by Umberto Eco in ‘Function and Sign: Semiotics
and Architecture’, published in Structures /mplicit and Explicit, 26 I've discussed this ‘threat’ of pluralism and eclecticism in
Graduate School of Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania, Vol. 2, ‘Ilsozaki and Radical Eclecticism’, Architectura/ Design, January,
1973. Republished in our anthology edited by Geoffrey Broadbent, 1977, pp. 42-8. In this article | try to distinguish between a radical
Dick Bunt and myself, Signs, Symbo/s and Architecture, Wiley, eclecticism which is semantically based and multivalent and the
to appear in 1978. nineteenth-century ‘weak eclecticism’ which was an easy-going
shuffling of styles.
11 See Umberto Eco, ‘A Componential Analysis of the Architectural
Sign/Column’, in Semiotica 5, Number 2, 1972, Mouton, The Hague, 27 | am investigating this partly in Ersatz — The /nternational
pp. 97-117. Culture of Our Time to appear in 1979.

12 See for instance Herbert Gans’ description of the five major 28 See Aldo Rossi, L’Archittetura de/la Citta, Padua, 1966. Arqu/-
‘taste cultures’ in his Popular Culture and High Culture, Basic tecturas Bis, No. 12, pp. 25-31. Gijon is a monumental form of
Books, New York, 1974, pp. 69-103. classicism with Venturi-like juxtapositions.

13 See G.L. Hersey, ‘J.C. Loudon and Architectural Associationism’, 29 See L’Architecture d’Aujourd‘hui, the issue devoted to Forma/-
Architectural Review, August, 1968, pp. 89-92. isme-Realisme, 190, April, 1977, p. 101.

14 The use of ‘naturally’ begs the important semiotic issue of 30 I'm sure there will be misunderstandings on this score as | seem
exactly how natural a sign can be. They all depend on coding, and to be having it both ways, arguing in favour of ‘the spirit of the age’
therefore convention. But the issue is too complex to be treated and against it; but the distinctions between ‘climate of opinion’ and

133
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

‘Zeitgeist’ concern the former's basis in convention not necessity, 47 Leo Krier, ‘A City with a City’, Architectura/ Design, No. 3, 1977,
choice not force, change not permanence, morality not behaviour. p. 207.

31 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture Nineteenth & Twentieth 48 See Grahame Shane, ‘Contextualism’, Architectural Design,
Centuries, Harmondsworth, Penguin edition, 1971, p. 533. No. 11, 1976, pp. 676-9, for a discussion and bibliography.
32 Quinlan Terry, ‘Architectural Renaissance’, Building Design, 49 Colin Rowe, ‘Collage City’, The Architectural Review, August,
Sept. 17, 1976, p. 18. Terry gave a lecture in a series on Post- SWS, (ox, (0)
Modernism at the AA in 1976. 50 /bid., pp. 80-81.
33 For an excellent discussion, of this trend, see Chris Fawcett, ‘An
51 See Nathan Silver's letter to The Architectural Review, Sept.,
Anarchist’s Guide to Modern Architecture’, AAO, no. 7, vol. 3, 1975,
1975, and following exchanges.
pp. 37-57. The ‘guide’ is not so much about anarchism as parody.
52 See T. S. Eliot, After Strange Gods, London 1934.
34 Conrad Jameson’s writings have mostly been published in
England, in various journals. Among the sources are: ‘Social 53 Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, Body, Memory and
Research in Architecture’, The Architects Journal, 27 October, 1971, Architecture, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977, p. 41-2.
and following controversy; ‘Architect’s Error’, New Society, 8 May, 54 Carl G. Jung, et a/, Man and his Symbols, Aldus Books, London,
1975, and following controversy; ‘Enter Pattern Books, Exit Public 1964, p. 78.
Housing Architects: a friendly sermon’. The Architects Journal,
55 See Rudolf Wittkower, Studies in the /talian Baroque, London
11 February 1976, and following controversy; ‘British Architecture :
and New York. 1975, p. 63.
Thirty Wasted Years’, The Sunday Times, February, 1977, and follow-
ing controversy. Jameson, unlike other polemicists, really knows how 56 For the notions of layering see Colin Rowe and Robert Slutsky,
to fire the nerve-ends of modern architects. His book Notes for a ‘Literal and Phenomenal Transparency’, Perspecta 8, 13-14; for
Revolution in Urban Planning, will be published by Penguin and ‘compaction composition’ see my Le Corbusier and the Tragic View
Harpers Row, sometime in 1978. ' of Architecture, London and Cambridge, 1973.
35 Maurice Culot, one leader of ARAU in Brussels, spent ten days at 57 Robert Stern has written on Post-Modernism in various journals,
Port Grimaud discussing its implications with the architect Francois among them Architectura/ Design, 4, 1977, and has defined three
Spoerry. In conversation, June, 1977, he told me he was convinced aspects to it: contextualism, historical allusion and applied ornament.
this was the type of housing for the people, but that his local Com- In America the social and participatory aspects of PM are considered
munist leaders, some attuned to 1930s models, might not accept unimportant as the argument is conducted more on the stylistic and
this, semantic levels. Stern has discussed ‘inclusivism’ in his New
36 David Gebhardt, ‘Getty’s Museum’, Architecture P/us, Sept./Oct., Directions in American Architecture, New York and London, 1969,
1974, pp. 57-60, 122. See also Reyner Banham, ‘The Lair of the re-edited with a postscript on Post-Modern, 1977.
Looter’, New Society, 5 May, 1977, p. 238; Building Design, Sept. 58 C. Ray Smith, Supermannerism, New Attitudes in Post-Modern
13, 1974; In England, The Observer and Times ran articles on the Architecture, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1977, pp. 91-9.
building.
59 See Maggie Keswick, Chinese Gardens, New York and London,
37 James Stirling, letter in Oppositions, 1976, Summer, p. 130. But
1978. The last chapter, which | wrote, discusses the notion of this
some part of Stirling’s recent work is definitely Post-Modern in its
kind of liminal, religious space, a notion which | adapted from
Contextualism — his Dusseldorf and Cologne projects, see below.
Edmund Leach’s concepts. See his Cu/ture and Communication,
38 Colin Amery and Lance Wright, ‘Lifting the Witches Curse’, The Cambridge, 1976, pp. 14, 51, 71—5, 86-7.
Architecture of Darbourne and Darke, RIBA Publications, 17 May—
29 July 1977, exhibition handbook, pp. 7-8. 60 See Charles Moore, ‘Hadrian’s Villa’, Perspecta 6, 1958, ‘You
Have to Pay for the Public Life’, Perspecta 9/10, 1975, both reprinted
39 Andrew Derbyshire, ‘Building the Welfare State’, R/BA Confer-
in Dimensions, with Gerald Allen, New York, 1977. See also the issue
ence 1976, RIBA Publications, op. cit., p. 29.
of Architecture d’Aujourd‘hui, March/April, 1976.
40 Ibid, p. 50.
61 Architecture d’Aujourd hui, ibid., p. 60.
41 Aldo Van Eyck, ‘In Search of Labyrinthian Clarity’, L’Architecture
d'Aujourd'hui, Jan/Feb, 1975, p. 18. 62 The idea has not been developed here, but see, for instance,
Juan Pablo Bonta, ‘Notes for a Theory of Design’, in Versus, 6,
42 RIBA Conference, op. cit., p. 62.
Milano, 1974. If meaning consists in relation then a restricted as well
43 The 1968 Skeffington Report recommended greater public as rich palette can articulate it. My general favouring of rich over
participation in planning, but so far this has led only to increased restricted systems is partly due to our Miesian age, and partly due
consultation, or the minimum choice about room layout, location of to the fact that elites and specialists are better at decoding restricted
partitions, etc., as in the PSSHAK project, or to the development of systems than the general public.
plans, as in the Swinbrook project of North Kensington.
63 See Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, Vols. | & II,
44 ‘Signification and richness’ in architecture are assumed as
London, 1971-3 and Linda Clarke, ‘Explorations into the nature of
ultimate values in my argument, and not justified here ;arguments for
environmental codes’, the Journa/ of Architectural Research, Vol. 3,
pluralism in politics are given by Karl Popper, for richness in art by
No. 1, 1974.
|, A. Richards. For my misgivings concerning the Neo-Rationalists,
see ‘The Irrational Rationalists’, A & U, April and May, 1977, to be 64 The studies are admittedly very fragmentary and made with |
published in The Rationalists, ed. Dennis Sharp, Architectural Press, students in England, Norway and California, although several
London 1978. interviews at buildings were conducted in England and Holland. One
study has been published, ‘A Semantic Analysis of Stirling’s Olivetti
45 See Architectural Design, No.3,1977,p. 191, the issue devoted to
Centre Wing’, in AAQ, Vol. 6, no. 2, 1974, and part of another is
Culot, Krier and Tafuri.
included in my ‘Architectural Sign’ which will be published in Signs,
46 Hannah Arendt has written about the public realm at length in Symbols and Architecture, the anthology edited by Richard Bunt,
The Human Condition, Chicago, 1958; On Revolution, New York, Geoffrey Broadbent and myself. Supporting evidence can be found
1963. Her ideas have influenced George Baird, Ken Frampton. in B. Bernstein, op. cit. and Philip Boudon, Lived-in Architecture
Conrad Jameson, Nikolaus Habraken among others in the field of Le Corbusier's Pessac revisited, London 1972, pp. 46, 65, 112.
architecture.

134
INDEX

Aalto, Alvar, 93 short-lived, 50 Gaudi, Antonio, 6, 7, 84, 87, 116, 777, 128,
adhocism, 104-112, 128 subcultural, 55-8, 99, 106 132
Albini, Franco, 81, 87 theory of, 42, 42, 55, 91, 129-130 Gay Eclectic, 58, 58, 93, 93
ambiguity, 124 traditional, 42, 90, 130 Getty Museum, 83, 94, 95, 134 (36)
Amery, Colin, 96, 134 (38) violation of, 44, 58 Giedion, Siegfried, 111, 118, 133 (7)
Amsterdam face houses, 115, 775 visual, 40, 42, 48, 52, 55-58, 69, 86, Girouard, Mark, 96
anthropomorphism, 113, 115, 117 113-116, 130-1 Goff, Bruce, 707
appropriateness, see also suitability, 15, 31, ‘Collage City’, 111 Goldberger, Paul, 6, 8, 35, 737
32, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 50, 69, 71, 72, Communist architecture, 20, 91, 97, 94, 737 Gombrich, £. H., 42, 71
73,74 Cooper, Jackie, 8 Graves, Michael, 64, 66, 85, 117, 7177, 118,
ARAU, 106 contextual, 7, 86, 104-112, 110, 127, 130, 123527,
Archigram, 96 132, 134 (37) Gropius, Walter, 31, 40, 54, 55, 78
Arendt, Hannah, 10, 134 (46) Cross, Dixon & Jones, 37 Grumbach, Antoine, 108
Art Nouveau, 62, 127 Culot, Maurice, 94, 106, 107, 108, 134,
avant-garde, 6, 7 (35, 45) Hadrian’s Villa, 770, 124, 725, 134 (60)
Cullinan, Edward, 98 Handmade Houses, see also self-build, 12,
Banham, Reyner, 64, 81, 95 713, 64, 64
Barcelona School, 86, 90, 133 (25) Darbourne & Darke, 96, 97, 134 (38) Hagmann, John, 779, 122
Bauhaus, 118 Davis, Douglas, 8 Harvard Architectural Review, The, 8
Beach, John, 96 De Chirico, 97 Hejduk, John, 124
Beck, Haig, 8 ‘Decorated shed’, 45, 45, 62, 90 Hertzberger, Herman, 21, 27
Behrens, Peter, 26, 26 Derbyshire, Andrew, 98, 98, 134 (39) Hersey, G. L., 133 (13)
Bell, Daniel, 7 dialectical, 132 Hersey, William, 726
Bernini, G. L., 113 Dijon, 113 Hicks, David, 97
Bernstein, Basil, 129, 134 (63) Disneyland, 13, 73, 32, 67, 94,111, 126, 127 Historicism, 81—90, 95, 108, 127
Bloomer, Kent, 113, 134 (53) double/dual coding, 4, 6, 8, 62, 116, 130, Hitchcock, H. R., 90, 92, 134 (31)
body-image, theory of, 113, 117 hl RSH Hodgkinson, Patrick, 30
Bout, van den & De Ley, 100, 700 dualism, 7 Hollein, Hans, 32, 32, 33
Bofill, Ricardo, 21, 108 ‘duck’, 42, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 54, 62, 87 Honfleur, 107
Bomarzo, 115, 776 Drexler, Arthur, 8, 95 Hudnut, Joseph, 8
Bonta, Juan Pablo, 134 (62) humour, (wit, jokes), 7, 54, 38, 40, 42, 43,
Boyarsky, Alvin, 110 Eclecticism, 55, 58, 67, 69, 77, 87, 93, 96, 43, 45, 46, 49, 53, 61, 63, 64, 65, 73, 76,
Boyd, Robin, 86, 133 (19) 9671167 727, 123,127,428, 133: (26) 87, 85, 90, 93, 96, 104, 121-2, 123, 126
bricolage, 111,125 argument for, 95, 127-132 hybrid architecture, 6, 62, 127
Broadbent, Geoffrey, 8, 133 (10), 134 (64) objections to, 127-8
Bunshaft, Gordon, 19, 79, 20, 20, 26, 26 Eco, Umberto, 133 (10, 11) Illich, lvan, 10, 13
Bunt, Richard, 134 (64) Eisenman, Peter, 64, 66, 100, 707, 118, 778, Illinois Institute of Technology, 15, 76,17, 77
Burns House, 702, 727 1217 127, N22, A261 27 International Style, 10, 70,14, 63,64, 71,122
Byker, 84, 104, 705 Eliot) TeSela4(02) Inclusivism, 7, 88, 116, 131
elitism, 8, 86, 93 lsozaki, Arata, 21, 22, 93, 133 (26)
Campbell, Zogolovitch, Wilkinson & Ellul, Jacques, 10
Gough, 729 Erith, Raymond & Quinlan Terry, 92, 92 Jacobs, Jane, 7, 9, 96, 127
carpenter built houses, 728 ersatz, 10) 12, IZ, 28, 37, 07, 73, 94, 96, Jameson, Conrad, 8, 93, 97, 98, 108, 130,
Chinese gardens, 124, 724 133 (27) 134 (34)
Clotet & Tusquets, 90, 90 Erskine, Ralph, 84, 103, 104, 704, 705 Japanese architects, 86, 86, 115
code, see also language and meaning, Esherick, Joseph, 100, 703 Jencks, Charles, 776, 720, 129
architectural, 6, 9, 20, 40, 42, 64, 71 evolutionary tree, 6, 80 Johnson, Philip, 19, 82, 85, 86, 88, 737,
commercial, 4 exclusivism, 7, 87, 133 (16)
conventional, 44, 52 Jung, Carl, 113, 134 (54)
double/dual, 6, 8, 90, 116, 130, 131 Face-imagery, 113, 115, 775, 117
elitist, 12, 21, 48, 116, 130 Fascist architecture, 20, 91, 92, 133 (2) Kahn, Louis, 7, 62, 64
explicit, 44-6, 776 Fathy, Hassan, 94 Keswick, Maggie, 8, 724, 134 (59)
fast-changing, 24, 50, 97 Fawcett, Chris, 134 (33) Kikutake, Kiyonari, 86, 86
internal to a work, 122 Fielden & Mawson, 98, 98 Kitsch, 7, 78, 19, 63, 73, 90
interpretation of, 16, 42, 44, 48, 52 Filarete, Antonio, 7 Koolhaas, Rem, 720
learned, 42, 44, 54 formalism, 19, 45 Krier, Leo, 91, 708, 709, 134 (34, 47)
local, 42, 43, 50, 129 Foster, Norman, 74 Kroll, Lucien, 55, 104, 105, 106, 706, 127
multiple/plural, 42, 88, 99, 727 Franzen, Ulrich, 19 Kurokawa, Kisho, 4, 40, 40, 86, 86
overcoding, 48, 48, 50, 130-1 ‘fragments’, 123
popular, 20, 21, 25, 48, 62, 99, 106, 116, functionalism, 15, 26, 44, 44, 54, 55, 64 Language, see also code and meaning, 7, 43,
130 48, 50, 52
restricted, 129 Gans, Herbert, 127, 133 (12) architectural, 7, 9, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23,

135
THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

26, 28, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58 Neo-Vernacular, 96-103 59, 62

cliché, 14, 37, 40, 52, 64, 93 Neuerburg, Dr. Norman, 82 iconic, 45, 45, 46, 54
conventional, 44, 69 Newman, Oscar, 9, 23 indexical, 54
grammar, 15, 39 Newsom, J. Cather, 728 natural, 54, 59, 77, 71
hybrid, 6, 62, 64, 90, 127 Newsweek, 8 popular, 50, 55, 62
inclusive, 90, 92, 131 Nieumarket, Amsterdam, 107 status, 25, 55, 56, 58, 61
irony, 70, 20, 32, 37, 62, 87-90, 93, 111 Nolli, G., 770 symbolic, 45, 45, 52, 54, 55, 64, 130
local, 37, 130 systematically misunderstood, 55
malapropism, 6, 19-22 Oakshott, Michael, 10 traditional, 37, 55, 93, 776
message, 78, 39, 112-117 ornament, 86, 87, 122, 123, 127 way of life, 55-58, 130
rhetoric, 30, 64 signification, 7,15, 19, 24, 40, 45, 48, 53, 54,
shared, 13, 24, 55 Pacific Design Center, 50, 50 ass, 7/, GS), OS TA!
simile, 113 Palladio, Andrea, 7 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 19, 79, 20, 26,
syntax, 39, 53, 67, 63, 64, 64, 67 Panofsky, Erwin, 8 26
traditional word, 39, 44, 44, 52, 53, 54 Papadakis, Dr. Andreas, 8 Smith, C. Ray, 8, 124, 134 (58)
Lapidus, Morris, 7, 70 participation, 8, 104, 105, 132, 134 (43) Smith, Thomas Gordon, 129, 732
Le Corbusier, 7, 9, 78, 31, 37, 48, 48, 54, 55, Passarelli Brothers, 78, 79 Smithson), Ara P., 21). 22; 23) 23724,
CH) (er(h (2, ew Cer Ney, 2k, W283 pastiche, 92, 94,111,125 133 (3; 4,5)
Levittown, 87 ‘pathetic fallacy’, 113 Soane Museum, 82, 85
Loos, Adolf, 38, 52, 53 Pei, |. M., 78, 19 Soleri, Paolo, 79
Lubetkin, 81, 87 Pelli, Cesar, 50, 50 Sparke, Penny, 8
Lutyens, Sir Edwin, 7, 87, 88, 96, 96, 116, Pessac, 62, 63 Stamp, Gavin, 96
123, N23 Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus, 6, 8, 48, 77, 78, 81 spiritual realm, 113
Piano & Rogers, 30 Stern, Robert, 7, 8, 87, 90, 779, 122, 123,
MacEwen, Malcolm, 10, 12 pluralism, 7, 70, 95, 727, 122, 127, 133 (26) VW AGH, CAS (G7)
Mackay, David, &@MBM, 100, 103, 703, Popper, Sir Karl, 81, 134 (44) Stirling, James, 21, 48, 96, 111, 772,
133 (25) Portman, John, 35 134 (37)
Maguire & Murray, 98, 98 Port Grimaud, 94, 95, 103, 106, 107 Straight Revivalist, 90-6, 127
Mannerism, 6, 87, 88, 773, 124, 127 Portoghesi, Paolo, 81, 87 Spoerry, Francois, 95
Marxism, 108 Post-Modernism 6—8, 80-132 suitability, see also appropriateness, 68, 69
Maybeck, Bernard, 84, 116 definitions, 6-8, 88, 90, 103, 106 Supergraphics, 125
Meaning, see also code and language, 42, space, 87, 87, 98, 118-126, 124 Superstudio, 111
44, 45, 45, 48, 112-117, 127 Pruitt-lgoe, 9, 9, 63, 92 Surrealist, 113
architectural, 7, 76, 20, 22, 44, 52, 53, 69, public realm, 91, 108, 727 Sydney Opera House, 42, 43, 43, 44, 45-7,
92 Purism, 9, 9, 16, 54, 55 lS a
conventional, 69, 71 Symbolism, 9, 15, 16, 20, 27, 22, 23, 24, 37,
inadvertent, 15, 19-24, 71 Queen Anne Revival, 127, 728 42, 44, 45, 56, 62, 62, 71, 72, 112-17
intended, 7, 13, 46
multivalent, 42, 45, 46, 132 Radical Eclecticism, 7, 727, 127-132, Tafuri, Manfredo, 20, 133 (2), 134 (45)
natural, 69, 71, 72 133 (26) Takeyama, Minoru, 4, 93, 113, 774
opposing, 42, 69, 73 radical schizophrenia, 24, 42 Tange, Kenzo, 28, 37, 86
unintended, 15, 19, 20, 21 ‘radical traditionalism’, 93 taste cultures, see also semiotic group, 6, 13,
univalent, 20 rationalism, 9, 10, 14, 15, 45, 50, 55, 67, 108 Lys, VASA, OWA, 1)727/
Meier, Richard, 61, 67 Rationalists, 20, 91, 92 Terry, Quinlan, 92, 92, 134 (32)
metaphysics, 112-117, 124, 127 Reichlin & Reinhardt, 129, 730 Three Orders, 74, 39, 52, 54, 69-73
metaphor, 112-117, 126 Renaissance, 7, 112, 113 Tigerman, Stanley, 114, 774, 775
architectural, 22, 40, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, Righter, Rose and Lankin, 4 traditional architecture, 90-6
49, 50, 50, 52, 55 Ronchamp, 48, 48, 49, 50, 113 Turner, John, 104
explicit, 6, 38, 42-5, 113 Rossi, Aldo, 20, 20, 91, 91, 104, 133 (2, 28)
factory, 15, 16, 76, 26, 31, 37 Rowe, Colin, 110, 770, 134 (49, 56) Ugliness, 88
hospital, 9, 22, 31 Rykwert, Joseph, 8 Ungers, O. M., 111, 777
implicit, 6, 42-5, 113, 117 Univalence, 15, 19, 25, 46
mixed, 42, 42, 43, 44, 45 Saarinen, Eero, 26, 46, 47, 82, 82, 86 urbanism, 104-112
organic, 43, 44, 45 Sant’Elia, 35, 37 ‘user-reactions’, 99
place, 125, 126 Scharoun, Hans, 118 Utzon, Jorn, 42, 43, 45-6
power of, 42-5, 127 schizophrenia, 6, 24, 42, 82, 123, 130
response to, 52 Schwitters, Kurt, 118 Van Eyck, Aldo, 99, 99, 100, 707
suggested, 48, 776 Shane, Graham, 110, 134 (48) Vallies;1i5;.25535,.37, 50 nDOnD/ DS OZ
Mies van der Rohe, 7, 74, 15, 75, 16, 76, 77, Shirai, 93 Vasari, Giorgio, 7
19, 26, 46, 66, 82, 727, 126, 133 (1) Schumacher, E. F., 10 Venturi, Robert, 7, 73, 35, 45, 45, 46, 54, 62,
modern architecture (and Modernism), 6, 7, Silver, Nathan, 134 (51) 63,87, 88, 99,108, 118,122,127, 131 (21)
10), 9(72, BA, WEN Ades, PAG), Psy, hep SY2, Gilly, CO) Sitte, Camillo, 108, 110 vernacular, 6, 8, 96-103
44, 48, 59, 92,106, 122, 126 Scott Brown, Denise, 70, 70, 87, 99, 133 (21)
Modern Movement, The, 7, 9, 10, 12, 72, 14, Scully, Vincent, 111 Warsaw Old Centre, 94
ils, 24) PAs), lop elle Gy Cpe Ore al AL Siefert, Richard, 10, 11 Watanabe, Toyokaze, 93
12271237 125,28, 129) 130 self-build, 13, 73, 64, 104, 105, 106 William-Ellis, Sir Clough, 61, 67
Monta, Mozuna, 93, 93 semantics, see also language and meaning, Wolfe, Tom, 25, 133 (6)
Moore, Charles, 7, 8, 85, 87, 95, 702, 108, 16, 20, 30, 39, 67, 67, 69, 71, 73, 74 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 78, 19, 26, 26, 54, 98, -
TWAS), NAS Psy IPAS Ae, Warf, Wrest) Shingle Style, 122, 722 123
134 (53, 60) simile, 6, 38, 42-5, 113 Wright, Lance, 96, 134 (38)
Moore and Turnbull, 724, 725, 126 semiotics, 7, 45, 49, 50, 57, 78, 87, 90, 127,
Moretti, Luigi, 81 128, 133 (9) Yamasaki, Minoru, 9
multivalence, 20, 42, 45, 46, 132 semiotic group, see also taste culture, 7, Yamashita, Kazumasu, 115, 776
musée imaginaire, 127 55-60, 130
signs : zeitgeist, 7, 88, 92, 134 (30)
Nash, John, 71, 72, 72, 73 architectural, 7, 16, 17, 78, 40, 40, 42, 50, Zenghelis, Zoe, 720
Neo-Liberty, 81 53, 55, 56, 58, 81 Zuccaro, Federigo, 115, 776
Neo-Queen Anne, 127 conventional, 20, 24, 25, 45, 54, 54, 55,

136
 NUN
3008203

NATH

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

CHARLES JENCKS

‘This is a good book and | recommend it. It’s enjoyable ‘The book of the year 1977.
and easy to read and Charles Jencks has good insights Ada Louise Huxtable.
into one of the important trends in architecture today.’
‘Jencks implies that metaphor plays a vital part in one’s
Cesar Pelli, Dean of the School of Architecture, Yale
understanding and appreciation of buildings, and the
University.
failure of most modern architecture lies in the dryness of
‘An appropriate and logical sequel to his seminal Modern its language, which fails to stimulate a response or convey
Movements in Architecture, Jencks’ new book is brimming any social meaning
with insights that supply us with the clearest articulation Ram Ahronove, 7ime Out, July 1—7, 1977.
to date of the state of architecture at the close of the
Modern Movement.’ ‘Jencks’s book is of an unusually brilliant kind that will in-
Robert A. M. Stern, Architect, Graduate School of furiate modernists and anti-modernists alike even while
Architecture and Planning, Columbia University. still winning their cap-in-hand respect. And win respect
it must as it is likely to become a classic... .’
‘Charles Jencks takes us on a journey through some of the Conrad Jameson, Vew Society, June 23, 1977.
failures of the Modern Movement and charts an alternative
course via his view of a more accessible architectural ‘There is one section that attempts to chart the different
language.’ sorts of economic processes by which buildings are m
Michael Graves, Prof. of Architecture, Princeton Uni- and there are enough other lists and categories to 1 =
versity. Mr. Jencks the Linnaeus of architectural history. Bu
all of this, Mr. Jencks’s basic point — that if God wa
‘His analysis of what has gone wrong with modern chapels to look like boiler houses he would have c™
architecture is lucid, and to. the point. And since it Chartres a smokestack — comes through with clarity (&
coincides closely with many of my own opinions, | even
find it brilliant... It is a good start, often fair, always
often enough, with wit.’ 0
Paul Goldberger, New York Times, Nov. 5, 1977. ~
readable and sometimes brilliant.’ ; a |
Charles Moore, architect, Co-Chairman Dept. of Arch. o
UCLA. Architectural Design. 136pp, 248 illustrations including 8pp colour o
UA
VMN
ALIN
TUN
WTA)
ZZOLI INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, INC.
712 Fifth Avenue/ New York 10019 ISBN: 0-8478-0167-5