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Charles Jencks on Postmodern Architecture

(From Jencks, Postmodernism: The New Classicism in Art and Architecture)

Jencks argues that postmodern architecture "contrast(s) with the older notion of
classical rules in being understood as relative rather than absolute, responses to a world
of fragmentation, pluralism and inflation rather than formulae to be applied
indiscriminately." (330)

1. The most obvious new convention concerns beauty and composition. Instead of
Renaissance harmony and Modernist integration, we have dissonant beauty or
disharmonious harmony. In a new pluralist society an oversimplified unity is either
false or unchallenging. The juxtaposition of tastes and world views is more real than
modernism was prepared to allow. This also comes from contemporary science's
conviction that the universe is dynamic and changing. Classical forms have mirrored a
universe that was static and in harmony. The Renaissance gave us architecture that
was well proportioned, on Greek lines, and mirrored the microcosm and the macrocosm.
Now, we don't have any one theory of the microcosm that is "true".

2. Pluralism is also important. Stylistic variety is important, and the celebration of

difference is always apparent. Different "languages" of art and architecture are mixed
together. It is not just a matter of whim, but is tied to specific functions and symbolic
intentions. Ambiguity is often valued – it is up to the reader to supply the "unifying text".

3. Postmodern architects try to achieve an urbane urbanism. New buildings should

both fit into and extend the urban context, reuse such constants as the street, arcade
and piazza, yet acknowledge too the new technologies and means of transportation.
Elements of the city must be balanced – public to private, working to living, monument to
infill, short blocks to city grid. This will end up looking more like the 18th century
European city, where you have small blocks and mixed-use planning, rather than the
modern overcentralised city.

4. Anthropomorphism is another important trait. Many postmodern architects

incorporate ornaments and mouldings suggestive of the human body. There might be a
hidden or suggested face, for instance, or a full figure.

5. Another theme is the continuum between the past and the present. Recall that for
modernism there is a positive break with the past. In postmodern architecture there is
parody, nostalgia, and pastiche. It is almost like a half-remembered dream – bits of
classical reference. The technical term is "anamnesis" – suggested recollection, or
unforgetting.

6. There is a kind of return to painting in postmodernism, although it is a return that

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does not simply replicate the modernist search for form. There is a return to content.
There is no sense that we are looking for the pure "spiritual" form, but rather we are
playing with the images of the past, without the narrative of the past.

7. Postmodernism uses double-coding, irony, ambiguity, and contradiction. The

unexpected is incorporated. Opposites are juxtaposed.

8. When several codes are used coherently they produce another quality, multivalence.
A univalent work or building attempts to refer only to itself. A multivalent building
reaches out to the rest of its environment and makes different associations. This
ensures that a work will have multiple resonances, and different readings.

9. This multivalence comes only with the displacement of conventions and the
reinterpretation of tradition. A classical form may be pressed into new service, and
look strange to begin with but actually make sense once you understand the references.

10. Postmodernists also try to elaborate new rhetorical figures.

11. Postmodernism finally has a return to an absent centre. It has always been linked
with other "posts": post-western, post-Christian. It suggests a culture that has a sense of
departure, but no clear sense of direction. We don't have any grand narratives anymore,
but we are led back to ourselves and our "petit recit" through the work of the
postmodernists. And, just as post-industrial incorporates the industrial as well (it is not a
repudiation or abandonment), so the post-modern incorporates the modern as well.

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