Postmodern…

The differentiation between postmodern culture and postmodern architecture can be read as a symptom of a larger problematic – the inadequacy of labeling the present cultural condition as postmodern, or any other conditional classification era for that matter. The start of the twentieth century can be read as the beginnings of modernism through a response to the mechanization of production. Though there were several fields of thought within the architectural discipline, modernism fermented in this time frame, leading to the association between modernism with the turn of the century.

Viewing the past under a historicist’s lens, one can trace both genealogical and archaeological webs of architecture during a specified timeframe. However, when this tactic is applied to the present state of architecture, the web can only be perceived as vague, obscure, or fundamentally incomplete. Thus, attempting to categorize the present as postmodern or something other is the equivalent of solving an equation consisting primarily of variables. The task of classification is of lesser importance than the attempt of understanding the variable(s) latent in the present cultural condition. The proliferation of technology, re-urbanization of cities, and shifts in climate and ecology are a few components that – although not dictating the conditions of present architectural discourse – surely present intensive constraints within which architects operate. In The Third Typology, Anthony Vidler presents an alternative to the two primary typologies of the production of architecture. He states:

“We might characterize the fundamental attribute of this third typology as an espousal, not of an abstract nature, nor a technological utopia, but rather of the traditional city as the locus of its concern. The city, that is, provides the material for classification, and the forms of its artifacts provide the basis for re-composition.”

The provocation of this essay suggests an architectural typology that is neither modernist nor romanticist. Rather, this ‘third typology’ suggests that, instead of architecture “writing history” (Vidler), architecture instead responds to the constantly-evolving city. In contrast to the beginning of the twentieth century – when physical spaces of production were appropriated to greater programmatic conditions – architecture in the present is closer to Mark Wigley’s definition of buildings as “slow and low.” Specific economic conditions that facilitate the need for rapid construction or urbanization predominantly equates to typologies with materiality, structure, and systems that may be repeated, while polemical experiments in built form are few and far between.

An alternative typology, opposed to both modernism and postmodernism, need not be objectively defined to facilitate our understanding of the present condition of architecture. By accepting the premiss that the present cannot adequately be analyzed in its totality, the unstable nature of the present can be a boon for creating architecture that is both relevant and projective. Although this alternative typology has a higher level of subjectivity in its classification, objective methods of classification are necessary. Perhaps, by identifying the controls of the present, ie, specific social, economic, or urban conditions in a minimal state of flux, one can better determine the key variables that trigger new architectural typologies.