Radical Post-Modernism

FAT’s fun-filled fresh Post-Modernism may seem 'radical' at a time when bulbous abstract Parametricism is the style du jour and the Post-Modern is rarely mentioned. But on this side of the Atlantic, it is not unusual to do Post-Modernism today. It is just taboo to talk about it, so this issue is welcome. A reconsideration of ideas that began to surface among American Modern architects in the 1950s and that were developed in Robert Venturi’s 1966 Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture is long overdue. And it is fun to have Charles Jencks, who popularised Venturi’s programme and other notions in the air at the time, championing the development once again. It is time to talk about communication in architecture, the value of context, the culture beyond architecture, the importance of the ordinary, the real potential of technology, and ways to use minimal means for aesthetic effect.
Jayne Merkel

Radical Post-Modernism heralds, with positive irony, the return of an intense concern with communication in architecture, the commitment to an iconography relevant to our time. But today this must take on added factors, the digital revolution that is now leading a new kind of ornament, and a flattening of taste cultures into many overlapping streams. The emergence of the iconic building in the last ten years shows the new concern for metaphorical buildings alluding to nature and the cosmos – Herzog & de Meuron are typical in this respect – while the algorithmic architecture of FOA and Cecil Balmond characterises the new pattern-making. Pluralism in architecture is now widely accepted, and this means reaching tastes of those who are usually repressed or disregarded by mainstream modernism. The resultant buildings, in a global, layered culture of many streams, are contextual but with a difference. They are not integrated or conformist but designed around “contextual counterpoint,” that is, a rich symphony of contrasting themes.
Charles Jencks