I initially envisioned the project of this paper to be an elaboration and critical evaluation of the contrast between the respective self-understandings of postmodern and deconstructivist architects and their articulations of the positions--the points and paths of divergence, the mistakes and misconceptions--of the other. Beginning to expand my knowledge of the vast and growing literature devoted to precisely such understandings and elaborations however, led quickly to the realization that this project was not only too broad certainly, and too ambitious, but also simply naive. The reasons for the inherent difficulty of such a project may, itself, be an illuminating task to undertake, but here they will be but largely suggested and, at times, noted. As an introduction to the path that this paper would like to take, I will note two of these reasons here. First, there is a great haze and indeterminacy as exactly to whom and to what these titles, postmodern and deconstructivist, refer--what architects they lump together, and for what reasons they are so lumped. As is I think quite often the case when it comes to discussing a certain new style of art, these names were given from without and, in at least the case of postmodernism, a pejorative use was slowly transformed into one which purported to refer to the more objective style of a unified group. Rarely will architects usually conventionally placed into either one of these groups claim allegiance to a respective title, nor do they want to acknowledge much if any of a relationship between their works and those of others with respect to differing expressions of something like the same conceptual presuppositions. There are exceptions to this though, who make the discussions and debates possible--architects who understand themselves to be one or the other and, even more, are willing to write about it. Thus we have Charles Jencks giving an insider's account of What is Post-Modernism?. And men such as Bernard Tschumi, who understands himself to be doing deconstructivist architecture, though is also always quick to point out the limitations of such a label. Indeed, this brings us to the second difficulty, for Tschumi is critical of the label of deconstructivist because his architecture is attempting to oppose the very idea that there can be anything like a "single unified set of images, the idea of certainty, the idea of an identifiable language"(Tschumi, 251). Here, without yet being critical, I would simply like to draw the reader's attention to the enormity of the projects with which both sides of the debate are engaged. I am not sufficiently learned in the history of architecture to draw historical comparisons to the self-understandings which occurred at the advent of other new 'styles,' but there is something breathtaking and almost incomprehensible about the breaks with old traditions and the new constructions, or de-constructions, with which these architects are concerned. Thus postmodernism makes its break from modernism by concerning itself with at least the following oppositions: "image/form; symbolism/abstraction; ordinary/original; superficial/integral; high and low art/high art; mixed media/pure architecture; historical/modern"(Taylor, 191). While Mark Taylor, in a work making the argument that postmodernism is still modern, insists this is so because it does not "call into question the structures of order, reason, meaning, unity, wholeness, and totality"(198). Deconstructivist architecture, on the other hand, is attempting to deconstruct these six--and more. There is something about all this which is going to, at the very least, make anything like a debate between two differing positions difficult. The ideas which are being challenged here are so basic and yet so large and ambiguous, that it is hard often to be sure of what is being challenged, contested or even referred to--indeed, 'reference' itself is being challenged. These vertiginous feelings are magnified when it often seems as if these ideas, such as 'meaning,' will be taken away, and it is extremely hard to envision what will take their place. This is not to put forth a certain pre-judgment of these two architectural movements, but merely to note the implications of their concerns for the opportunity of something like a discourse between them. At the very least, this concern with almost all of our most fundamental categories is going to make it difficult for any unified, consistent positions to come forward. It strikes me, intuitively, as very unlikely that, for example, two writers are going to de-construct "order" or "meaning" in the same way, or even mean the same thing when they set out to do so. There is also a way then, in which articulating such challenges is going to be an extremely arduous task, and one in which maintaining a consistent position is going to be nearly impossible. I already notice here how difficult it is to articulate what I feel to be just a preliminary note of concern for this paper, for the above few sentences are already infested with words that both movements, though particularly deconstructivism, are attempting to problematize. This paper then, will attempt to do, on a small and cursory scale, what fills a gap, at least for its author, in the literature devoted to postmodern and deconstructivist architecture. It will attempt to draw these two un-unified styles into a dialogue of sorts, attempting to follow through some of the challenges that each side raises, and to suggest answers that the other might give. This project is still, of course, too broad. I will thus try to center this dialogue around each side's accounts of what sort of thing an architect should produce, apologizing in advance for not drawing some localities of dispute into the dialogue, for the glossing over of some, and for, at times, the over-drawn characterizations and generalities which will, inevitably, appear.
1. Postmodernist and deconstructivist architecture are both styles which have developed after and largely as a response to modernism. An understanding of either one then, necessitates an understanding of the general elements in modernism which are reacted to in these styles and a consideration of what sort of response they conceive themselves as participating in. That is: why does modernism deserve a response and what sort of response does it deserve? Charles Jencks has defined modernism as the "universal, international style stemming from facts of the new constructional means, adequate to a new industrial society, and having as its goal the transformation of society, both in its taste and social make-up"(Jencks, 31). As a "universal" and an "international" style, modernism is self-consciously resistant to considerations of context--both cultural and historical. Thus, a modernist architect, as a rule, does not take into consideration the socio-cultural and architectural conventions, symbols, mythologies or traditions of the community in which he is building. He is especially resistant to incorporating historical traditions into his work. Indeed, modernism proclaims that architecture must be absent of any reference to historical styles, for a "breach has been made with the past"(Kolb, 88). In fact, modernist architecture conceived itself as being beyond any styles, beyond the very idea of style, and instead giving a pure and honest expression of the essence of a building, of "what architecture became when it was stripped of styles and was pure functional form"(88). In this, modernist architecture finds its connection with modernist styles in the other arts and philosophy which, however, did not share either its optimistic view of technology or its progressivist aims for society. As Jencks explains:
Thus the modernist architect created for himself a dual role: to both purify the aesthetic language spoken by architecture, and to thus purify the sensibilities of society--to provide an "aesthetic-moral base--if not a political one"(32).
2. I think, in considering postmodern and deconstructivist architecture, we must remember that they are both a break from these hopes and understandings of modernism. Thus, it seems as if these two new styles must make some preliminary claim as to why modernism is no longer acceptable--why it must be replaced. Often times this question will be answered in more aesthetic terms, e.g.: "Modernist buildings are just no longer interesting or attractive." But such claims are invariably a part of larger discourse which indicate a way in which modernism has fallen short--of something. It strikes me that the manner in which an architect identifies modernism as "falling short," and what it has fallen short of, will indicate which new style he is likely to be classified into.
3. Postmodern architectural thought is, in general, interested in the way in which modernist architecture attempted to communicate with its users, to speak an honest, unadorned language, to reveal the essence of language, and thus to transform their sensibilities. In judging this attempt, a more somber, politically minded postmodernist such as Charles Jencks, is careful to stress the "social failure of Modern architecture"(15)--the way in which it "didn't make effective links with the city and history"(14). More harsh characterizations of modernism, describe its effects as a sort of violence done to society. Robert Stern presenting a paper at a symposium on Postmodernism and Beyond in 1989 describes postmodernism as much more than a style, and as "in fact, nothing short of a balm that permits modern architecture to heal the wrenching wound caused by modernism"(Lillyman, 47). In such articulations, modernist architecture is guilty of far more than ineffective communication, but of speaking a language that was harmful, that alienated its recipients even, perhaps, from themselves.
4. It is such elaborations that are the foundation for the way in which deconstructivist architecture sees itself as breaking from both modernist and postmodernist architecture. It is also the background against which deconstructivists such as Mark Taylor make the claim about the postmodernist Robert Venturi that "[w]hile never admitting it, his position implies that the problem with modernism is that it is not modern enough"(Taylor, 198). In such cases deconstructivists accuse postmodern architects of attempting to do only what modernist architects were attempting to do. The only difference between the two is that postmodernists think they know how to better go about doing it. Specifically, this "lingering attachment to basic tenets of modernism"(198), refers to the postmodernist inclination that an architect can still present a meaningful object to a user of it, that he is involved in the grave task of "restor[ing] meaning--both personal and collective"(214). This is a serious questioning of both the self-understanding of the role of the architect and of what sort of thing he may produce. There does, indeed, seem to be a certain similarity between the picture of the architect in the modernist and postmodernist conceptions. Both envision a subject who is able to create a text, by picking among the resources of language, that will deliver some sort of message to a populace. Indeed, more 'traditional' postmodernists sometimes sound remarkably like modernists: "Architecture is at its best, it seems to me, when it digs deep into culture in order to affirm, and sometimes even to reestablish, values and ideals"(Lillyman, 61). This picture then, in a magnified form, is of something like an architect with a God's-eye view, endowed with the powers to examine a culture, to unearth its values, to decide which ones are worth affirming and which may need reaffirming, and to use a vocabulary which will express, in a way which does not seem to leave much room for ambiguity or plurality, those ideas and values so chosen. I would think that, rightly, such a picture would no longer be persuasive in our post-structuralist time. It seems an inaccurate and unpleasant picture to me for political and theoretical reasons. To begin, this conception relies on a picturing of culture as a unified entity, with unified values, canonical ideas and a singular tradition. As we have learned in our multi-cultural time, however, there is never such a thing as a unified culture, and accounts which tell a story of a unified culture are, to varying degrees, but invariably, "political accounts that distort, misrepresent, and often intentionally fail to account for, the problems and contributions of many inhabitants of the context"(Narayan, 12). Further, the idea that a fixed meaning can be presented, that a building can be a signifier for a signified, is, too, hard to accept. The movement from structuralism to post-structuralism has surely spelled the end of such an idea. As Bernard Tschumi explains it:
Thus there is a provocative deconstructivist challenge to both sides of the postmodern project, informed by modern political theory, linguistics and semiotics--a challenge to the validity of what a postmodern architect conceives himself as expressing, and the very possibility of expressing it.
5. But, when confronted with such challenges, it is, I think, worth reconsidering the way in which, postmodernism did, in fact, break from the modernist approach to communication. Indeed, we might already be struck by the term 'communication.' Perhaps it should not be attributed to "the modernist approach" in the above sentence, for, while modernist architecture certainly has more in common with the logical positivist's approach to language, in which utterances were something like uni-directional propositions or presentations, postmodernist architecture is guided by another approach to discourse, in which all utterances are part of a 'conversation'--multi-directional, unfinished, and saturated with context. I assert that deconstructivist attacks on postmodernist buildings are often insensitive to this concentrated communicative element of the postmodern style. a. Indeed, a critical evaluation of Tschumi's above remarks, directed very specifically at postmodern, non-deconstructivist architecture, may be illuminating of this. His exposition of a post-structuralist reconsideration of the relationship between the signifier and signified is quite persuasive, but the conclusion of his application of this new understanding to architectural issues is perhaps not as critical of postmodernism as it may sound. In the end, he suggests the impossibility of a Doric column, for example, or any piece of an architectural work, or, by extension, any architectural work as a whole, having any "single" interpretation. With this in mind, we might remember the earliest, and the sort of 'classical,' exposition of postmodernist architecture--that of Charles Jencks, who in 1978 defined postmodernism as "double coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects"(Jencks, 14). Strange then, this attack on the unitary meaning present in postmodern architecture, when, at its most elementary level, it is concerned with mixing styles in order to deliberately communicate certain mixed messages. Not that this will entirely answer the deconstructivist challenges, but the challenge must be more complex--something like: A postmodern building communicates more than one meaning, but each of these meanings are attempting to be fixed, determinate and unitary. b. Another way in which postmodernism rejects modernist architecture, is in its revival and pronounced play with historical forms and traditions. At one time, this is a rejection of the modernist prohibition of historical elements, and the illusion of pure abstraction which this suggests. It is also a style adapted to an age which feels that it has lost its innocence. Charles Jencks cites Umberto Eco's account of double coding:
This parable suggests that there is perhaps a way to understand postmodernist architecture's use of previous forms in more depth than it is usually given in deconstructivist interpretations. Tschumi, for example, dismisses it as an "imitat[ion] of the past"(Tschumi, 258). However, what should be more striking about the historical references in postmodernist architecture, is their explicit recognition of our groundedness as historical beings--that who we are is shaped by what has come before us, that our understanding is shaped by what we have heard before, by the historical environments which give our environment its shape, that we can never, as cannot the character's in Eco's allegory, hear things without the echo of what we have heard before, that we can never communicate a-historically. These, too, are all lessons of the post-structuralist revolution. And postmodernist architecture, with its reference to and creative play with the historical forms which have shaped our understanding of our built environments, acknowledges this. Indeed, at a most basic level, this seems to be very much the picture of language which post-structuralist discourse describes: the creative play with inherited forms. c. Postmodernist architecture, too, is aware of the way in which our understanding is shaped by our contextual surrounding--by the conventions and traditions, the forms and structures which surround us and give shape to our local environments. This too, is an application of the post-structuralist understanding, abandoning the modernist search for a universal language, or the essence of language, or language in its pure and honest form, and instead realizing that forms are interpreted differently based upon the context in which they are heard. David Kolb terms this architectural approach 'regionalism.' Regionalism as a strategy then becomes the broader task of finding our native languages and vocabularies in their messiness and intersections. Instead of presuming that there is some core identity to be preserved, we should rather seek to extend those languages, taking advantage of what we find already in action. A regional tone is partly found, partly created, always changing.(Kolb, 165) Thus, again, postmodern architecture, through its allusion to and play with the forms peculiar to a building's particular region, is involved in a creative use of the forms that are the background context of our understanding. d. Postmodernist architecture is, too, concerned with speaking simultaneously on a variety of levels. In particular, this involves a mixing of, and hence a problematization of the distinction between high and low art. Often, this has taken the form of the incorporation of Pop art into a building. However, more generally, it is the "use of popular and elitist signs" to accommodate for and to stretch "different perceptions and tastes"(Jencks, 19). e. This concern for appealing to a plurality is suggestive of what is often seen as the defining moment in the break of postmodernist from modernist architecture: the embracing of figure and ornament. There seem to be two recognitions present in this break. (1) Postmodernist architectural thought accuses modernism of not divorcing their works from the use of the figure in the way they thought they had. Robert Venturi was the first to advance this critique by arguing that modern architecture "while rejecting explicit symbolism and frivolous appliqué ornament, has distorted the whole building into one big ornament"(Taylor, 194). Modernism is surely a particular style and, as such, is figurative, though its figures are mainly dull and lifeless, figuring the "brave new world of technology"(194). (2) This seems to suggest a larger point, which may be discovered by considering the discussions in b,c,d and e, which, together, challenge the idea that any form can be abstract--i.e. universal, essential or foundational. Instead, any form is a part of an ever-shifting context, both historical and socio-cultural. Moreover, a form, a unit of communication, changes amongst socio-economic types of speakers, and between individual speakers themselves. Indeed, as context is constantly changing, the "meaning" of any one form is constantly changing for every individual speaker. Forms are thus always, in a certain sense, figurative, indexing a certain context, a certain type of experience, the experience of certain types of people. There is no possibility of purely denotational, abstract, universal, essential, non-indexical language. Postmodernist architecture's embrace, even exaggeration, of the figurative character of expression may be read as an expression of this recognition. The accusations that postmodern architecture is working with an outdated model of meaning--with the modernist belief that one may deliver a fixed, unitary, determinate message--must be, I think, reconsidered. Instead, postmodern architecture must be credited for working with an understanding of the incredible complexity of communication, its indeterminacy, its refusal to be stable, the irreducible heterogeneity intrinsic to the way in which forms are received.
6. There is, I think, a more interesting deconstructivist challenge to postmodernism, which engages it on a more constructive level. This challenge finds that postmodern architecture is something like too complacent, in that it is attempting to "seek immediate union with the real"(Taylor, 222). In this characterization, the new post-structuralist understandings which shape the way in which postmodern architects communicate with the people for which they build, are but simply a reflection of the realities of modern times. That is, modern life is acutely aware of its multi-culturalism, its eclecticism, and thus postmodern architecture chooses to reflect this. Modern life is saturated with images, our world is filled with a constant, shifting, play of images, and thus postmodern architecture reflects this. Modern life is peculiarly conscious of its history, and thus so is its architecture. Postmodern architecture is thus attempting nothing more than a "[u]nion with the real," and this "regardless of how the real is understood--holds out the promise of overcoming alienation and achieving reconciliation"(Taylor, 223). Because of this, Tschumi argues, postmodernists are nothing more than "traditionalists," and people who see "the role of architecture as refamiliarization, contextualization, insertion"(Tschumi, 247). It is interesting here that deconstructivist thought nearly resembles the political inclinations that led to the postmodern rejection of modernity which were noted in [3], in that it accuses postmodern architecture of not sufficiently challenging the structures which order existence. Postmodern architecture, though attempting to make ironic sorts of comments, is concerned too much with blending in with its surroundings, and not providing works which will "dislocate the most traditional and regressive aspects of our society"(Tschumi, 259), not creating buildings which will turn architecture into "that event, that place of shock, or that invention of ourselves"(258).
7. I think that implicit in this criticism is that architecture should provide an environment in which people can experience their world and themselves in new ways, and I do not think that postmodern architectural thought would, in general, reject this. I think, too, there is the accusation that postmodern thought attempts to be critical largely through irony, and that irony relies on subtle play with familiar figures and forms, and I do not think that postmodern thought can reject this either. In nearing a close then, I just wish to suggest a couple ways in which postmodern architectural thought does address the challenges raised above in [6]. In its attempt to dismantle and deconstruct conventions, deconstructivist, as did modernist architecture, does not concern itself much with superficial figures or with historical reference, although as I think the arguments in [5] demonstrate, there is no way to divorce any work from either figure or from contextual considerations. As a result of this disdain for the superficial and contextual, however, deconstructivist architecture is involved almost exclusively with the "imaginative and consistent use of the technical language of architecture"(Jencks, 39). That is, deconstructivist constructions are, indeed, often concerned with deconstructing architectural conventions, architectural programs. Peter Eisenman is perhaps archetypical of this, as in his House X, where he "dealt with the problems of centering and multiple readings as he deconstructed the purist language of his own plans"(Kolb, 157). Like this project, deconstructivist buildings are largely self-referential, treating as secondary at best, as did modernist buildings, the historical and socio-cultural contexts into which they are built. Because of this, deconstructivist builders are labeled "hermetic" and "elitist" in the writings of many postmodern authors. And it is not clear to me how they may respond.
This paper has attempted to trace out a certain dialogue between postmodern and deconstructivist architectural thought. In doing so, it has attempted to go beyond the often superficial attacks which each side brings to the other--usually involving the claim that the other is really still modernist. Instead, I have attempted to identify the more substantial claims made against the other, and the way in which the other may be read as responding to, and often times, reversing the claim against the other. This was an artificial picture of a debate, of course, one that brought only select ideas and viewpoints into the discussion, and channeled the way in which they were presented. In the end though, it might encourage us to reach a certain conclusion about the confrontation between these two styles. Postmodern architecture is more patient, certainly, drawing us in with familiar shapes and figures, but twisting them, dropping the veil from them, exposing them, juxtaposing them--revealing them to us in ways which we have not yet seen them and thus challenging the ways we have previously considered them, and insuring that they may never be seen the same way again. Deconstructivist architecture is surely more destructive, more displacing, more encouraging of a radical re-evaluation of where we are, and who we are while we are there. It is perhaps, not as welcoming as postmodernism, however, and we cannot be changed unless we are first welcomed in. I imagine we must conclude then, what perhaps was obvious all along, that there is no reason to choose between the two, that they are both welcome, that they are both valuable because of their ability to challenge tradition, historical and cultural, and our own more personal traditions--to unsettle us, to shock us, to encourage us to be open to new possibilities, to new kinds of vision, new ways of being present in the world. But they must coexist, I think--they are good for each other. In their play with our vocabularies, postmodern buildings form creative texts, which will be the new texts which deconstruction may challenge, de-center and displace. There is no deconstruction without texts, and there are no texts without attempts to communicate. Articles are copyrighted by their authors. They may not be redistributed in whole or in part without prior written permission. You may make copies for your own private use, but include this copyright notice and proper attribution to the author.
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