The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism

The New Paradigm in Architecture tells the story of a movement that has changed the face of architecture over the last forty years. Starting with the counter culture of the 1960s and the call for a complex urbanism by Jane Jacobs and a complex architecture by Robert Venturi, it shows how such demands started to be realised by the 1990s, aided by computer design. Often curved, warped and fractal in shape, it is more convivial, sensuous and articulate than the modern architecture it challenges. Carried forward by architects such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Peter Eisenman, it has also become a leading approach in many schools and offices around the world. The computer is now at its heart but its history, which Charles Jencks traces, is built on the desire for an architecture that communicates with its users, and one based on the heterogeneity of our cities and global culture. The highly expressive, biomorphic buildings of Le Corbusier, such as his Ronchamp church and Philips Pavilion, were the first essays in this new tradition and by the 1990s they led to the highly metaphorical architecture that communicates on many levels, and that new convention for public buildings, the enigmatic signifier, which always suggests more than it names. This, the first book to define the broad issues of Post-Modernism, led to its growth in other fields such as philosophy and the arts. First written at the start of an architectural movement in the middle 1970s and translated into eleven languages, it bas gone through six editions, each one giving a feeling of how the issues looked at a particular moment. Now completely rewritten and with three new chapters, the seventh edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative, the turn to a new complexity architecture related to the new sciences of complexity and extraordinary design potentials made possible by computer production. The New Paradigm in Architecture shows the key projects defining Post-Modernism and concentrates on the major protagonists, Robert Venturi, James Stirling, Hans Hollein, Aldo Rossi, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry. The book is comprehensively illustrated with over 390 photographs, plans, diagrams and evolutionary trees describing the major trends.