Book Review: Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (original) (raw)
Related papers
Proclaiming the End of Postmodernism in Architecture
2014
In recent years, ever greater numbers of researchers have been turning their attention to the subject of postmodernism in architecture, with most starting by stating when it expired. Indeed, it is when a cultural movement is definitively part of the past that people most commonly undertake to study it. Whereas the date of its emergence is regularly put back to ear- lier and earlier moments in the history of architecture, postmodernism in architecture is commonly considered to have ended – or died – in the mid-1990s, a period that corresponds to the most recent past into which historians have commenced their investigations. From that time onwards, the field of contemporary architecture has been declared open to theory and criticism. This paper will carefully examine the conditions under which postmodernism’s death notice was given in architecture, noting further- more how this notice differed between the architectural cultures of Europe and the United States. Which historians, critics and architects conducted its autopsy? What arguments were developed, for example, in the columns of the American journal Architecture in 2011 to say that post-postmodern- ism’s time was up? Clearly distinguishing stylistic questions and anthropo- logical issues, the paper will go on to consider the possibility that the end of postmodernism was announced prematurely, outlining a number of hypotheses with a view to historicising contemporary architectural production.
Golden Years? How Postmodernity changed the Theoretical Discourse on Architecture and the City
(with Riklef Rambow) in: Identifications of the Postmodern. Representations and Discourses (= Wolkenkuckucksheim / Cloud-Chuckoo-Land, No. 42), 2022
Editorial of "Identifications of the Postmodern. Repersentations and Discourses", No. 44 of the journal Cloud-Chuckoo-Land. The phenomenon of postmodernism in architecture cannot be reduced to questions of style. For several decades, theoretical discourses played a crucial role in architectural production. Issue 42 presents the second part of our examination of so-called postmodernism. While the previous issue dealt with changing perspectives on the city, form and questions of architectural identity and their retrospective classification, the contributions of the present issue focus on questions of representation and discourse. The thinking referred to as postmodern has produced a plethora of new forms of engagement with and representation of architecture and urbanism that continue to resonate today. New forms of discourse and techniques of representation also gave rise to new role models, self-understandings and institutions. Would it be an exaggeration to speak of the "golden years" of theory? In the long run, has postmodernism led to a popularisation or a loss of relevance of architecture? Or even, paradoxically, to both? We thank Guia Baratelli, Sabine Brinitzer, Giovanni Carli, Frida Grahn, Samuel Korn, Kasper Lægring, Kenta Matsui, Giacomo Pala and Alexandru Sabău.
Fundamentals: Expressing Modern Architecture at Biennale Venice 2014
Handbook on Emerging Trends in Scientific Research ISBN: 978-969-9952-07-4, 2016
The Biennale held at Venice this year exhibit a strong intellectual challenge inaugurated by the curator Rem Koolhaas. The-Theme‖ for the 14 th cycle is-Fundamentals‖ in Art and Architecture. This theme will be presented by 40 different countries in the national pavilions. The major issue to be presented this year which is different than other years will be according to Koolhaas, the representation of-architecture‖ rather than-architects‖. In addition to this, the main theme for the National Pavilions, which will be the main focus of this paper, is the expression of architecture in different nations during the past 100 years, from 1914-2014. This will be discussed in the shadows of the dilemma of Modernism and National Regionalism. Going through the different stages of understanding ‗national' architecture, World Wars, Modernism and then globalization, the theme represents an important challenge for each contributor to express the evolution of architecture in their nations. The paper will be divided into two parts. First is a brief review of the emergence of Modernism and the International dimensions affecting its spread in different communities. Second is the documentation of the Theme of the Biennale, as well as the contributions of a selection of countries. Following that will be analysis of those contributions in relation to the theme as well as to the analysis of two main contributors from the Middle East. The paper concludes by a discussion related to the intellectual outcomes of the contributions and their relation with the national history and Modernism. This conclusion will shed light on how countries in the Middle East precisely relate to the dilemma of representation in the shadows of Modernity.
AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, 2023
The state of architecture being exhibited and (re)exposed through formats of public display does not present the central framework of architectural production. However, the condition of exhibiting architecture is opening a set of valuable prospects for the discipline-it creates a specific temporal form of displacement for architecture in which a multifaceted set of connotations and views of this discipline is being provoked. The exhibition and its structure are understood here primarily as a point in time; a specific temporal form with its own tactics of appearance that make the notion of contemporaneity occur. Taking the context of the Venice Biennale of Architecture as the most prominent platform for global overview of architectural practice, this paper will reflect on today's relevance of architecture as an aesthetic discipline related not only to designing (projection and production of architecture), but to its post-production (exhibiting architecture) as well. Claiming that architectural contemporaneity is motivated primarily by the urge for actuality-setting the new emerges as the formative property of the discipline. This paper aims to prove that the specific temporal form of exhibition reveals a proposition for regenerating the competency of architectural discipline. This proposition about being present manifests itself as a prospect for the immediacy of the discipline, as the qualitative evidence of architecture's immanency to continuously reconstitute and actualize, maintaining the passage to keep its influence in shaping our world.
Postmodernity in Architecture, by Hugues HENRI
Historically, the Modern Movement and the International Style are part of the definition of European modernity. However, it was European modernity that took root in the mid-twentieth century in the United States through an unpredictable but successful grafting of some of its masters onto the American scene: Richard Neutra, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, at the expense of American modernists such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, even though it was indebted to them for a number of its fundamental spatial concepts such as the load-bearing structure, the curtain wall and the free plane. Then, towards the end of the 1960s, a radical contestation of this grafting of European modernity into the United States was undertaken by American theorists and architects, who engaged in a different refocusing than the painters of the New York School, such as Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Franck Kline, and Mark Rothko in the publication, prior to postmodernity, of the Manifesto of the Irascibles, also an anti-European American refocusing, but expressly claiming to be modern. On the contrary, postmodernity in architecture wants to make a clean sweep of modernity. The current paradox, in the postmodern context, is the American rejection of modernity, as a whole, without an inventory having been made to restore to modernity as the "stage of the future" its archaic American part, which has little to do with European modernity.
program - abstracts: Constructions / Identitites: Pavilions, Art, Architecture
Since the early 1990s, the Biennale of Architecture shares the national pavilions of the Giardini di Castello with the art exhibition. A legacy of 19th century World Fairs, the use of the pavilion as a site for exhibiting art and architecture becomes, during the 20th century, an issue of sensationalism in architecture, urban renewal and revision of national identity. Today, only World Fairs and the Venice art and architecture biennials have kept the national pavilions structure. In the case of the Venice Biennials, the system assumes particular connotations, firstly because of the situation in Venice, a "maquette-city" that is already an open-air architectural exhibition in itself, and secondly, because of the permanence of the national pavilions. Thus, in addition to showing the projects of the current edition, the Venice Biennale is also a living archive of architecture as a form of cultural production.
Preserving the past or past preserving: sustaining the legacy of postmodern museum architecture
Built Heritage, 2022
The publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1964 signaled the end of Modernism. The reality was that the modern movement had already jettisoned its ideological underpinnings and had become merely another 'style. ' The avant garde architects in Europe and in North America were ready to move on and saw Postmodernism as a liberating antidote to the strictures of high Modernism. Historic architectural styles, which had been vilified as antiquated and out of step with modern culture, were revived, reinterpreted, and manipulated. However, Postmodernism, which had burned brightly during the 1970s and 1980s, was superseded by other architectural movements, namely, Deconstructivism, Pluralism, during the waning years of the 12th century. Even though new building forms and design theory changed during Postmodernism, building technology remained the same. Exterior walls continued to be built as skins, comprised of either glass, masonry, metal, or synthetic cladding, which were hung of steel or concrete framing. Rubberised membranes covered essentially flat roofs. Moisture infiltration was managed in ever complex composite wall assemblies. More important, environmental systems decoupled nature from interiors and were designed to manage ever demanding humidity control requirements. Through the development of new building technology, Modernism severed design style from traditional construction. In reintroducing historical forms back into architecture, Postmodernism complicated constructability. Moreover, Postmodernism and its successors rarely developed new technological ideas by introducing more intricate building forms, which were based on theoretical ideas rather than technical ones, while continuing to employ Modernism building technology into their buildings. This inherent paradox is the most consequential challenge in preserving Postmodernism. Today, approximately 40 years after its inception, we must consider if, in some cases. is it tenable to preserve Postmodern buildings? This paper reassesses three museums of the Postmodern era through the twin lenses of historic preservation and their legacy as cultural artifacts. It analyses how three iconic Postmodern museums, the Wexner Centre for the Arts in the USA, the Neue Staatsgalerie in Germany, and the Hedmark Museum in Norway, became cultural artifacts and how each of them present technical challenges for their future preservation. These museums represent late 20th century theoretical ideas, which were more a melding of pluralistic influences than design ideology, and the utilisation of Modernist technology. All of which present unique conditions for conservation.
ARTMargins, 2015
This article comparatively discusses the 14th International Architecture Biennale of Venice, directed by Rem Koolhaas, and the pilot exhibit and architectural design of Louvre Abu Dhabi undertaken by Jean Nouvel, in the context of recent big art events and world museums. Curatorial, historiographical, and installation strategies in these venues are differentiated in order to think through the question of displaying a global history of architecture. I make a distinction between the curatorial practices carried out in the Fundamentals and Absorbing Modernity sections of Venice's Central and National Pavilions as curator-as-author and curators-as-chorus, which I map onto recent historiographical and museum design practices, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, to discuss the geopolitical implications of its installation strategies. I also argue that six methodological perspectives for displaying architectural history emerge from the curator-chorus of Absorbing Modernity, which can be id...