Modern architecture in a post-modern era

Abstract

The history of modern architecture has been well covered in the classical surveys of Sigfried Giedion, Kenneth Frampton, William Curtis, Alan Colquhoun, and others who traced the developments of this major movement that dominated the architectural landscape of the 20th century until the beginning of the 1970s, when a major contesting movement appeared on the scene, labelled as Post-Modernism. Taking a similar approach, this book explores the different tendencies that affected the developments of the past six decades, beginning around the 1960s, when a new wind started to blow from within Modernism, leading to different reactions and counter-reactions, the effects of which are still felt today. This book provides a survey of contemporary developments, starting with an introductory chapter on the transitional period of the 1960s and then examining the different movements that followed, charting a middle course between the ‘aesthetic’ histories that examine architecture solely in terms of its formal aspects, and the ‘ideological’ histories that subject it to a critique that often skirts the discussion of its formal aspects. Global in scope, each chapter begins with a theoretical overview of the ‘paradigm’ in question, leading to an examination of its main actors and projects. The survey concludes with a section on more recent trends, including environmental concerns that placed sustainability as one of the main objectives in architecture in parallel to an aesthetic direction that blurs the boundaries between architecture and art, relying on technological innovations to develop ever more complex forms.