Postmodernism

Postmodernism as Object

One of the fields where postmodernism emerged initially was in architecture, where the term was used as an identifier of a new style that was different from and, indeed, critical of modernist design, which had risen to prominence in the 20th century but whose focus on the adoption of functionality, efficiency, and separation from the past had by the 1960s become subject to widespread criticism. It was at this time that architects such as Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Peter Johnston, and Robert Venturi began to create new architectural designs that were promoted as being more in tune with and, indeed, learning from the performance of everyday human life. The rectilinearity and standardization characteristic of modernist architecture were replaced by an emphasis on diverse surfaces, textures, and forms, which often combined elements from both contemporary popular culture and a range of prior architectural styles.

The ideas circulating within architecture began to infuse academic studies of urban design and social life, notably through the work of Christopher Jenks and Frederick Jameson, and in the late 1980s, geographers began to make reference to the term postmodernism. In many of these studies, the term was not only applied to the design of particular buildings but also used to characterize whole cities. Edward Soja, for instance, presented Los Angeles as the quintessential postmodern city because it was composed of a plethora of urban forms reflective of a series of different divisions and fractures that came together to produce a collage of fragmentary images and experiences. David Harvey made a similar argument, albeit generalizing it to a range of North American cities that he suggested exhibited postmodernity through numerous cultural signs and images that constituted a sort of messy social collage, or pastiche, of meanings within which there was no apparent order. Postmodern architects, artists, filmmakers, and other cultural image makers were, in effect, codifying and representing a condition of social life that was already being experienced by many urban inhabitants.

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