Crimes against Culture: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century

If you are new to the Band, please see this post for an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Older posts are in the archive on the right.

The visual arts are at the top of the list of venues where the general public encounters Postmodernism directly. We are all familiar with the confusion, revulsion, and/or dismay that accompanies a piece of "abject" art or the sight of a monstrous architectural form. But Postmodernism in architecture is quite narrowly defined, and while it is dehumanizing, many of the works people find off-putting are technically Modernist, to be precise in terms of historical periodization. A quick summary:

Kazimir Malevich, Black Circle, 1915, oil on canvas, 106.4 × 106.4 cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, 1948-51, Chicago

Barbara Hepworth, Sculpture with Color (Deep Blue and Red), 1940-42, wood, painted white and blue, with red strings, on a wooden base, 27.9 x 26 cm, Private Collection

Modern art rejects any external reference (tradition, representation, beauty, meaning) for an extreme focus on pure forms.

Robert Rauschenberg, Choke, 1964, oil and silkscreen on canvas, 122 x 152.4 cm, Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis

Philip Johnson, AT&T Headquarters, 1978-1984, New York

Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Yellow), 1994-2000, high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 307.3 x 363.2 x 114.3 cm, The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Collection

Postmodern art reacts to Modernism by bringing back cultural references, but does so in ways that are ideosyncratic and often ironic. Rauschenberg collages everyday objects, Johnson quotes a stylized classical pediment, and Koons references a balloon animal. What Modernists and Postmodernists share is a rejection of beauty or aesthetic pleasure as goals of art.

For many people, the distinction between the two periods is unimportant, but it is very significant within the "discourse" that makes up the contemporary art world, and there are few other places as thoroughly theory-ridden as visual culture studies. Over the next while, we will unravel how the concept of "art" developed historically, then how it transformed into its complete opposite while maintaining the same terminology and privileged cultural position as it held before. For now, we will focus on architecture, since that is where the term Postmodern first came into usage, and it is the aspect of visual culture that impacts us most on a daily basis.

Some of these buildings can be quite striking:

Philip Johnson, Glass House or Johnson House, 1949, New Canaan, Connecticut

Johnson's design is Modern for its lack of symbolic, traditionally-inspired, or decorative elements. The forms are driven purely by the "logic" of the materials: metal and glass.

Arthur Erickson, Museum of Anthropology, 1972-76, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Erickson's design can be considered Postmodern because its form (dominant vertical and horizontal beams) is based on the traditional log structures of the indigenous cultures showcased inside.

In both these examples, the buildings are appealing, but in the manner of a particularly impressive abstract sculpture. They rely heavily on the aesthetics of their sites (Johnson's house is on a large tract of wooded New England countryside and Erickson's museum sits on the stunning Vancouver coast), and strategic lighting to create a magical, almost fantastical, experience. But nearly anything can be made to look awesome with the right setting and light. When viewed up close, in normal conditions, much of the magic disappears. 

And these are the striking ones. The general dislike for the different strains of twentieth and twenty-first century architecture comes from soulless, decontextualized monstrosities like Boston City Hall, that shatter organic neighborhoods and tear apart the fabric of the city with vast, inhospitable concrete wastelands. On the other hand, they are extraordinarily ugly and built to an unwelcoming inhuman scale. So there's that. An alien visitor considering this blight would conclude that the rulers ensconced inside must hate the community that they preside over.

Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles, Boston City Hall, 1968

This sort of ugly, seemingly random concrete architecture is a branch of Modernism known as Brutalism, from the French art brut (or raw art) for the unadorned concrete. But the adjective brutal fits even better aesthetically.

When you step back for a moment and really think about it, this is a bizarre situation. Try and recall another example of ruling powers deliberately installing huge alienating structures that almost no one admires as a symbol of civic identity and authority. It actually makes a pretty good metaphor for a self-serving political class that happily sells out the posterity of its constituents for personal profit. The question that jumps to mind is how did this come about? Or put another way, how did the leading Italian architectural export go from Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli to Renzo Piano?

Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, St Andrew's Church, 1747-54, Kiev

Rastrelli was the favored architect of Russian Empresses Anna (1730–1740) and Elizabeth (1741–1762), and under their patronage transformed St. Petersburg. His style, known as the Rastrellian Baroque, was carried on by his Russian followers.

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Centre National d'Art et Culture Georges Pompidou, 1971-77, Paris

Piano's design for the Pompidou Center in Paris is an example of a relative of Postmodernism known as "High Tech" architecture. It looks like the interior elements of the structure are on the outside. 

American Philip Johnson is sort of the Pied Piper of twentieth-century architecture, turning up at the center of three major movements over the more than six decades of his career. His MOMA catalog and later book with Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The International Style (1932), introduced Modernism as an avant-garde style; he was at the forefront of the return of historical reference in Postmodernism; and he theorized Deconstructivist architecture with Mark Wigley, which is a response to Postmodern design. 

Philip Johnson, Klein Biology Tower, 1965, Yale University, New Haven, CT

This is a fine example of late International Style with Brutalist flavor. Note the avoidance of decoration for simple geometric form that clearly expresses the structural logic. It stands like an autonomous abstract sculpture, disregarding the style and scale of the Gothic styled buildings to the right.

John Burgee, U.S. Architects Doing their own Thing, cover of Time magazine, January 8, 1979

Philip Johnson, PPG Place, 1979–84, Pittsburgh

A feature on the new Postmodern architects when the cover of Time meant something. PPG Place is Postmodern in its historical reference to a Gothic cathedral, but this is completely decontextualized and reused according to Johnson's imagination. The reference is a bit like a Benjamin's allegory.

Philip Johnson, Gate House ('da Monsta'), 1995, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut

Deconstructivist architecture "deconstructs" expectations about form by resembling fragments. Shapes, like words in deconstructive linguistics, are arbitrarily chosen, but the appearance of fragmentation is consistent. 

Johnson appears to have understood that architecture in the twentieth century, like the visual arts in general, was a about as close to the Postmodern notion of discourse as one could find, and over his long career, he managed to stay abreast of the current trends. But whether a visionary or skilled self-promoter, Johnson illustrates how architecture as a discipline is built around a relatively narrow range of theoretical assumptions and a tight historiographic structure of canonical works and names in standardized periods. The nature of architectural training ensures that practitioners will operate in an environment that reflects academic theory, and architectural history and architectural criticism overlap to the point of being indistinguishable.

Philip Johnson and John Burgee, Gate of Europe, 1989-96, Madrid

Consider Johnson's career as both theorist and practitioner. He literally writes the discourse that his designs perform. Theory and practice intertwine in ways that are impossible to separate. 

Even though architecture is everywhere, it is a relatively small circle that determines trends and styles. The vast majority of people in architecture, landscape architecture and related design fields (branches of urban planning, interior design, engineering, etc.) are not starting movements and shaping the discourse. The number of truly influential "name" architects, critics, and institutions are few.

Walter Gropius, Emery Roth & Sons, and Pietro Belluschi, MetLife (orig. Pan Am) Building, 1963, New York

Johnson studied at the Harvard School of Design, which was founded by Walter Gropius, who, as much as anyone can be said to have "invented" modern architecture. Faculty and alumni have included the likes of Frank Gehry, I. M. Pei, Michael Graves, Moshe Safdie, and Paul Rudolph. Prestigious and influential centers like this let a small group of people set the ideological tone for the entire discipline.

This is one of Gropius' late designs, and shows the typical Modernist sensitivity to the historic Manhattan cityscape.

When a new architectural style or movement appears, it is not an organic development in the practice or a response to public opinion or client demand as much as a theoretical move within a closed discursive framework. In fact, part of being a name architect is freedom from the banalities of pleasing viewers, because unconstrained personal artistic "vision" is the reason why these individuals are hired in the first place. The client obviously has functional needs that must be met, but an architect like Frank Gehry will always retain aesthetic control. When the media attempts to popularize the latest developments in the field, they turn to the same name architects and critics who are shaping the discourse in the first place.

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, 1993-97, Bilbao, Spain

Gehry's Deconstructivist design for the Guggenheim is visually striking, even stunning from the right angle. But it offers no sense of human comfort; nothing to relate to. It exists like an abstract sculpture without connection to its environment in any way. There is a grandeur here, but it is a cold, alien one, not an expression of a community. 

The symbolism is revealing; a dehumanizing, fragmented, unstable form as a hall of culture. What future does one build with this architecture? What value does it have other than one-off showpieces like this one?

Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry, Dancing House, 1992, Prague

Rhetorically, destabilized forms like these are not conducive to residential tranquility. Though eye-catching, they create a sense of disorientation. Contrast these with the stately house next door on the left, with its air of dignified domesticity. The insensitivity to the aesthetic and historical character of the site is consistent with Modernism and its descendants.















How did it come to pass that something as old as civilization - on a physical level, the history of architecture is the history of civilization - could become so narrow, self-important and filled with disdain for the public that has to live with its creations? Readers of this blog know how such an academic and theoretical field would be susceptible to Postmodern debasement, but why is something so fundamental built on unfounded dogmatic pronouncements in the first place? Architectural history is a parade of mindless aphorisms accepted on faith and intoned with reverence in design schools everywhere until they are suddenly replaced with new ones.

Harley, Ellington & Day; Detroit Housing Commission; Smith Hinchman & Grylls, Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, 1935-1952, Detroit
Le Corbusier, Plan Voisin, Paris, France, 1925, drawing and model, Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris

The roots of urban poverty are too complicated to ascribe to a single cause, but soulless Modernist housing projects like this certainly didn't provide an environment suited to growing healthy, organic communities. This concept of warehousing people in bland towers originated in Le Corbusier's sociopathic Voisin Plan for Paris. He proposed razing the historic core of the city to make room for rows of identical concrete towers for personal reasons worth considering:

"The street consists of a thousand different buildings, but we have got used to the beauty of ugliness for that has meant making the best of our misfortune... On Sundays, when they are empty, the streets reveal their full horror. But except during those dismal hours men and women are elbowing their way along them, the shops are ablaze, and every aspect of human life pullutates throughout their length.

It is worth clicking on the Le Corbusier quote, because it links to a brief piece that he wrote on his abborhance of "the street". How do we reach a point where weird, agoraphobic, anti-human rantings become the basis for public housing policy, with predictably terrible results? As with Postmodern epistemology and history, this is a situation with deep roots that needs to be unraveled from several angles. Our earlier analyses will help frame the theoretical atavism and strange historiography of "Postmodern" architecture, but there are characteristics of the field that complicate it in unique ways. 

First of all, buildings are material objects with defined physical and functional requirements that prevent a complete slide into the deliberate meaninglessness of Postmodern literature and art.

Norman Foster, Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, 1979-1986, Hong Kong

Foster's design follows the Modernist logic of form and function, but anticipates Deconstructivism by inverting the traditional relationship and placing the structural supports on the exterior. While he is "problematizing" traditional assumptions, his building still has to serve as an office tower. This limits the scope of his ability to subvert architectural norms. 














Architectural vision is constrained by the realities of engineering and material science, and architectural projects are expensive, meaning that the client class is unlikely to be moved by concerns about "oppression" when soliciting a design. Name architects are themselves aspiring glitterati who must maintain the "elite" public image necessary to move in the right social circles. As a result, architecture is tied to notions of status and prestige to an even greater extent than other branches of the arts.  

Our picture is also complicated by the obsession with classification that plagues the study of modern visual culture in general and resembles periodization gone haywire.

Alfred Barr, diagram from the cover of Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

MOMA curator Barr's diagram attempted to trace the genealogy of Modern art up to his time. What he actually demonstrated was the preposterousness of treating these solipsistic whims as historically significant.

Charting the meaningless connections between self-declared "movements" resembles the mastery of minutia of an obsessed sports or science fiction fan. It is a way that "insiders" maintain the borders of the "group" that confers their privileged status, because anyone who doesn't know the arcane chains of references (doesn't speak the discourse) can be dismissed as a philistine. 

It makes sense to begin thinking about this theoretical dognatism in architecture by trying to sort out the major movements for clarity's sake. This post began by distinguishing between Modern and Postmodern architecture in very general terms; now we can look a bit more closely with a more historiographic eye. As always, these classifications are a way to organize a sprawling array of material for analysis, and are by no means comprehensive or conclusive. Architectural critics and historians disagree on taxonomies, and there are far too many movements and sub-movements in the twentieth century and beyond to sum up in a single post. But the reality is that on a broad enough level, all these trends are offshoots of, or reactions to, ideas that were introduced with Modernism.

Modernist Dogma

As noted in an earlier post, the original modernists of the late nineteenth century did not see themselves as the latest "period" in a long history of them, but as something completely new; a total rupture with the past. Two major developments drive this thinking: the widespread social changes brought by industrialization and the philosophical legacy of the Enlightenment and Romanticism that placed an unfounded faith in the human ability to grasp the truth.

Thomas Jefferson, University of Virignia, designed 1804-17; constructed 1817-28, Charlottesville.

The rational clarity and cool Neoclassical style of Jefferson's architecture epitomizes the Enlightenment faith in human reason. 

McConnel and Kennedy Mills, 1797-1959, Manchester

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution introduced the need for, and the means to build, huge, cost-efficient, purpose-built structures.






In the visual arts, this led to the eventual replacement of the traditional dogmas with new ones that were equally arbitrary, but were pitched as consistent with modern times. The result was the rejection of anything hinting of beauty or culture in favor of truly bizarre abstract and dehumanizing "rules."

It is difficult to grasp how weird the culture of architectural modernism is without actually reading some of its brighter lights. We aren't exactly dealing with intellectual heavyweights. Take, for example, our aforementioned crazy French philistine Le Corbusier, who assembled an absurd collection of overwraught declarations with no argument or justification beyond his own authority into influential manifestos.

Photo of Le Corbusier and a passage from his Towards a New Architecture (1923, English, 1927). 

In his lunatic vision, Le Corbusier saw himself as an architectural prophet of a new age, unconstrained by anything outside his personal beliefs about form, surface, and plan. There is no argumentation here, just a series of proclamations, but it is possible to smell the "Spirit of the Age" in his screed. His dehumanized aesthetic is based on the mechanical efficiency of modern engineering. Apparently he alone can taste this epochal flavor, which took the form of huge lumps of badly-aging concrete.











The correct repsonse to "Le Corbusier said..." is "who cares" but that isn't how things work in the world of architectural criticism. The discourse is based on historical concepts that are contradictory: the desire for absolute theoretical principles and the notion of the artist as an inspired genius. The former is a demand for constant rules, while the latter celebrates individual, outside the box creativity. This leads to the odd scenario where the proclimations of designated "genii" are accorded the weight of philosophical first principles. Except these principles change with each subsequent shift in the discourse. Epistemologically, it this incoherent, and will be further unraveled in a later post, but the practical outcome is that the line between subjective experience and transcendent truth is blurred.

Commandments

One of the most enduring articles of Modernist faith is the declaration that "form follows function." This deceptively simple maxim is actually quite ambiguous, since the definition of "function" seems to fluctuate. The layperson generally assumes it refers to the purpose of the building, and perhaps its symbolic or ideological message. But function can also refer to a more nebulous statement of the basic nature of a structure or even its materials, and it is this more abstract concept that drives design. Consider the origins of the idea.

Adler and Sullivan, The Wainwright Building, 1891, St. Louis, MO

American architect Louis Sullivan is a seminal figure in the development of architectural Modernism, though his reputation is overshadowed by his famous student Frank Lloyd Wright. As a member of the first Chicago School, Sullivan and his partner Dankmar Adler were among the small group of designers who essentially invented the modern skyscraper in the late nineteenth century. 

The skyscraper was a quintessentially Modern building because it depended on new industrial products. The Bessemer process made high-quality structural steel readily availiable for lightweight curtain walls, floating pile foundations provided stable support for heavy masses, and James Otis' elevator made height above five floors viable. 

Architects were already struggling to adapt traditional architectural vocabularies to previously unimagined vertical proportions, and the burst of new projects exacerbated this problem. Sullivan's proposal was for a completely new system of articulation that reflected the essential nature of the tall building, or the quality that most distinguished it from other structures. In his formation, the function that the form must follow is not only "practical", in the sense that the necessary parts of the building be logically organized, but also more theoretical. On a general, abstract level, the function, or purpose, or definitive categorical identifier, is to be tall, and therefore, its form, or appearance, should articulate this impression of height. 

Corinthian column from the Temple of Vesta, reconstructed 181 AD, Rome

Sullivan was not a-historical in a Modernist sense, in that he rooted his need for a new architectural language in the practical limits of traditional forms. He was not opposed to ornament, just ornament that was disharmonious with the new building types of his day. In fact, his basic strategy for skyscraper design was derived from a classical column.

The service floors of the Wainwright Building correspond to the pedestal beneath the column while upper stories are sectioned into base, shaft and capital sections. The ornament under the cornice is based on plant forms, like a Corinthian capital.

For his part, Wright modified Sullivan's vision with an approach that he called Organic Architecture, taking design cues from the nature of the surrounding landscape. This attentiveness to surroundings is anathema to the Modernist dogma that the work of art is autonomous and disconnected from external reference of any sort. 

Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1908-10, Chicago 

The low-slung appearance and earth tones of his early Prairie Style reflect the terrain around his native Oak Park, Il.

In the hands of the first true European modernists like Walter Gropius, the idea that form must follow function on an abstract essential level, became writ. The notion overlaps with another nineteenth-century concept, truth to materials, which held that works of art must not visually contradict the nature of the things that they are made of. This thinking originated as a call for traditional craftwork in the circles around Ruskin in England, and reflected a dissatisfaction with the new industrial goods. Nineteenth-century traditionalists criticized mass-produced goods as dishonest, because they were impostors falsely standing in for the "authenticity" of hand craftsmanship. Craft differed from art in that it had a utilitarian purpose, so functionality was also part of the truth to materials idea from the beginning. But this became a bizarre principle in Modernist hands.

Phillip Webb, Table, by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., circa 1865, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The long strips of this table follow the grain, respecting the nature of the wood, while the design meets the need for a sturdy dining surface. It is true in form and function to its materials. The American Craftsman style of Stickley furniture epitomizes a truth to materials aesthetic.

The modernist attack on the illusion of depth in painting is an offshoot of truth to materials thinking. The materials of painting are pigments on canvas, which is a flat surface. Therefore images that appear to recede or project in three-dimensions are in violation of the inherent flatness of this material nature. The result is a formulation that casts traditional painting as ontologically dishonest (hiding your essential nature behind illusion is a lie) and therefore morally inferior to Modernism. The fact that the "lies" of traditional art served the oppressive Church and aristocracy of the ancien regime only made this position more compelling. 

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10, 1939-42, oil on canvas. 80 x 73 cm, Private Collection

Mondrian is a textbook Modernist painter because he strove for absolute flatness in his compositions. This is consistent with truth to materials thinking because it uses the painters materials, the rectilinear surface and paints, to define the "essence" of painting as an art. Painting must avoid any illusion of depth because this would violate the essential flatness. The very notion that painting, a medium invented in prehistory to represent things, could be ontologically bound to the shape of a canvas is absurd, but no one ever seemed to notice.

Truth to materials is essentially the same thing as form following function, as is apparent in Gropius' design for the Bauhaus, an incredibly influential technical school in Germany where he preached his Modernist dogmas to receptive student "radicals" before gifting his wisdom to America. 

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Building, 1925–1926, Dessau

The structural steel framing is clearly visible from the exterior, the glass is installed in flat, identical sheets, and there is no ornament to distract from the appearence of rectangular linearity dictated by the materials. At the same time, the function of the school - organized living and working space and brightly lit workshops - is met. 

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gropius' successor at the Bauhaus and a major proponent of Modernism in post-war America, made the unadorned plainness of Modernist buildings into a new maxim with his famous quote "less is more". The idea that the appearance of a building should be as formally simple as possible, a polyhedral cage of structural steel and curtain walls, was the central principle of the mature International Style of the 1950's and 1960's. 

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Chicago Federal Center, 1958-1974, Chicago

Mies is the preeminent representative of the postwar International Style. As the name suggests, it is a globalist intruder that violates the local character of the cityscape.

Pulling back, what we see is a process by which circumstantially relational ideas are transmogrified into universal theoretical precepts. Sullivan was responding at least in part to a limitation of traditional design. Ruskin was reacting to the decline of artistry and quality craft work in the Industrial Revolution. Even Gropius defined his architecture for a new Modern age in terms of what it wasn't according to the Academic curriculum of the previous century. In each case, their conclusions are responses to a narrow set of contemporary assumptions, and make sense in those terms. But there is nothing, other than arbitrary proclimation, to give them positive authority going forward. 

A Game of Theory

The combination of oracular authority and misclassified critique comes to define architectural discourse within narrow circles of influence, which helps understand the newer movements that appeared in Modenism's wake. Each one is a personal and circumstantially-specific response to a precept of modernist design without any reflection on the epistemological legitimacy of discursive precepts in the first place. 

Thomas Eakins, The Chess Players, 1876, oil on panel, 29.8 x 42.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

We can think of architectural theory as a multiplayer game with set borders and a limited set of permissible moves. The analogy is imperfect, but the but the fixed sub-structure and disconnect from the outside world is spot on.

This notion of a theoretical game is Modernism's lasting legacy, and provides the context for all subsequent developments in the field. American architect Robert Venturi is generally seen as pioneering Postmodern architectural theory in his book Learning from Las Vegas (1972), which called for a return to contextualization and ornament. But this only makes sense as a response to the monotonous, abstract authoritarianism of Modernist aesthetics. In his designs, Venturi had spearheaded a return to historical reference, but in a way that placed the architect outside of any other rule-based constraint. In fact, he went out of his way to demonstrate that his historicisms were completely arbitrary decisions, and not compelled by formal or functional logic in any way. In this way, he rejects both the truth to materials and less is more pillars of Modernist dogma.

Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, 1962-64, Philadelphia

Doric Temple, circa 420-410 BC, Segesta, Sicily

Venturi designed this house for his mother and included a functionally-unnecessary facade inspired by the pedimented front of a Classical temple. But he calls attention to the fact that this is a purely ornamental decision that serves no structural purpose. In ancient Greek architecture, the pediment is also the gable of a shallow pitched roof, and as such is a load-bearing extension of the wall. Venturi's gable is clearly a false front that extends above the roofline. The only possible reason for the inclusion of this element is the whim of the architect.

This resembles Modernism in its disregard for contextual reference. The historical forms are not expected to conform to the function of the building, and Venturi is uninterested in the symbolic connotations of the pediment.

Market Gate of Miletus, 2nd century AD, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Hellenistic Greek architects broke their pediments, but even here, the shape is determined structurally, by the pitch of the roof behind.

Forum of Augustus, dedicated 2 BC, Rome

The entrance further demonstrates the arbitrary, idiosyncratic application of Classically-inspired ornament. In ancient architecture, a relieving or discharging arch over a lintel has a structural purpose because it removes pressure and prevents the opening from collapsing. Venturi traces an arch over a lintel, but breaks the arch at its center to show that it is non-functional. The arrangement of the entrance and the window to the left also subtly break the symmetry that was an essential aspect of the Classical temple front. Venturi asserts his freedom from rules by deliberately violating them is the most obvious ways.

Postmodern architecture is older than the philosophical Postmodernisms examined in earlier posts; the Venturi House was planned over half a decade before Derrida appeared on the scene. It is also narrower, since it was conceived as a move within the theoretical game of modern architecture. It's call to historicize seems at odds with the hostility towards tradition in Postmodern theory, but it really isn't, because its notion of history is consistent with the fragmented meaninglessness of discourse. Postmodern architects use historical, and other contextual, references idiosyncratically and often ironically, detaching them from their traditional connotations and transforming them into free-floating design elements. Insofar as there is any point to the reference, it appears to be academic; it gives the suitably educated viewer something to recognize in the work. What it does not do is convey the range of associations traditionally associated with the form. 

Léon Vaudoyer, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, 1838-67 

The Beaux-Arts architecture of the French Academy jumbled ancient motifs without concern for their historical uses. Vaudoyer's trade school is a cluster of elements plucked from the history books that made up the curriculum, and assembled to show originality of design. The rigid dogmas of Modernism were a theoretical reaction to this "eclecticism". The goal of ennobling the urban landscape with grandly beautiful structures obviously differs from Postmodernism but the treatment of historical forms as fragmented design elements is the same. Both reflect the inevitable consequence of institutionalizing architecture as a theoretical discipline.

Readers may be struck by the similarity between this attitude towards history and Benjamin's allegorical historiography. In both cases, the past is used as a repository of disconnected forms to use as the "storyteller" sees fit. It is this perspective that most strongly links Postmodern architecture to other branches of theory, as well as the beloved children's classic from Hasbro.

Postmodernists would scoff at a parallel with the "stuffy", "authoritarian", "hide-bound", to say nothing of "oppressive" Beaux-Arts, but they share a common origin in the institutionalization of architecture as an academic discipline. What differs is the epistemological foundation that determines what "academic" means. French Academy training involved rigorous study of countless elements drawn from architectural history and presented in isolation in pattern books. These became the building blocks of their designs which were organized according to classically-inspired notions of taste. Contemporary architectural training is university-based and includes some study of architectural history and criticism, only seen through a conceptual framework shaped by the anti-Western hostility of Postmodern higher education.

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, Sainsbury Wing extension, 1991, National Gallery, London 

This is a typical example of Postmodern historicism in that decoration clearly references the Beaux-Arts classicism of the original building. But Venturi and Scott-Brown's version is more allusion than quotation, and the stylistic difference is obvious. 

In a more sinister vein, note how the decoration seems to dissolve as you move further from the original museum, extending into undifferentiated blankness as you turn the corner. This is an apt metaphor for the Postmodrn dissolution and destruction of the Western heritage, which lingers like the ghostly echo of Benjamin's fragment, or even Derrida's Trace, before disappearing from history altogether.

The aesthetic violence of the design is apparent in the "fit" with the surrounding street. 

Deconstructivism is another discursive reaction to Modernist dogma that accepts the underlying premise of a theoretically-determined discursive reality. Only here, the response is to break up the formal stability and simplicity, rather than hide it beneath a facade of idiosyncratic historicism. Once again, we have an arbitrary theoretical imperative (fragment, rather than historicize, in this case) and beyond that, the choices are entirely up to the architect. This set-up also only makes sense within a set of narrow discursive assumptions. 

Coop Himmelblau, Gasometer B, 1999-2001, original Gasometers, 1896-1899, Vienna

A typical Deconstructivist intervention. The new tower "deconstructs" the standard form of a highrise by seeming to flex and twist. The result is a form that inverts the Modernist belief in simple abstract standards while still refusing to acknowledge the context. 

Zaha Hadid, Heydar Aliyev Center, 2013, Baku, Azerbaijan

Hadid's visionary style is sometimes called parametricism, or classified as deconstructivist, for its melting forms. Her designs rely on computer modeling and high-tech materials to produce contemporary abstractions popular with authoritarians. The human rights abuses are predictable.  

Her work can be stunning in a futuristic, science fiction sort of way, but like its Postmodern precursors, is best suited to grand sculptural showpieces rather than any basis for a sane community.

The fit with the surrounding context is also typical of these architectural megaprojects. What culture does this cultural center signify?

The final piece to the puzzle is a consequence of the institutionalization of the discipline in the twentieth century. It has been axiomatic since the Reniassance that architectural training involved the study of past masters, and when this moved into the universities, it overlapped with academic architectural history. The latter is a branch of art history, and is bound by the same need to organize and classify a vast glut of material as any historical sub-discipline. As in other fields, Modernism rejected the notion that it was a historical style like English Tudor or Ancient Egyptian, but in time, its claims of radical novelty faded into history. To a twenty-first century academic, Modernism is simply a spot on a timeline, and reactions like Postmodernism can be interpreted as historical shifts akin to the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism. But they are not the same.

Temple of Isis, begun circa 690 BC, Philae, Egypt

Historical periods developed more organically, with discursive moves tempered by the need to please patrons, and communicate to the public. The pylon facade of this temple had been used to signify a religious structure for centuries by the time this was built, and its smooth surface was a good place for carvings celebrating the glory of the pharaoh. National tradition, and secular and sacred authority combine in a single form.

Architecture was used as a form of address or propaganda, and was therefore contextually attuned. And the discourse, such as it was, was less codified and structured than the contemporary global knowledge industry, and lacked the ability to exert a Modernist stranglehold. Even Louis XIV, the ultimate early modern cultural absolutist could only impose stylistic control on France; other nations showed his influence, but this mingled with local cultural preferences. It is only with Enlightenment Neoclassicism that we see an effort to establish a universal architectural language, but this collapses back into national styles in the Romantic era.

Persepolis, begun 515 BC, Fars Province, Iran

Forbidden City, completed 1421, Beijing

Grand Palace, Peterhof, begun 1714 by Jean-Baptiste Le Blond, expanded 1740 by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, St. Petersburg.

These three structures used size and grandeur to overwhelm visitors with imperial power. The Persian and Ming emperors built in their local architectural styles, while the Russian emperor opted for a variation of pan-European classicism. Russian elite were imposing alien cultural forms on their people long before the Soviets.

Apadana or Audience Hall of Persepolis, 1st half of the 6th century BC

Hall of Supreme Harmony, 1406, last rebuilt 1695-1697, Forbidden City, Beijing

Tsar Peter I and many architects, Grand Cascade, 1715-22, Peterhof

The palaces communicate the same message, but do so with expressive forms that relate to their contexts. A megaproject can be subtly identity-forming, because dominates the landscape and creates a common experience. These attempt to give their authority a positive cultural resonance. What does a fragmented cube project? This isn't a rhetorical question.

There is nothing organic about Modernism and its offshoots. The chess game is a completely different disciplinary paradigm than traditional approaches, and its products do not have the same relationship to the public. Historical period styles are classified inductively, examining actual buildings for common traits, then seeking the underlying explanation behind the symbolism. Modernisms are declared in the moment, and basically consist of what the designated name architects are up to. This is how someone like Philip Johnson can flit from period to period; the periods are not designated with the perspective of hindsight, but on the basis of contemporary proclamations and projects. 

Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, Fagus Factory, 1911-1913, Alfeld on the Leine, Germany

Often considered the first truly Modernist building, it exemplifies the clarity and simplity of truth to materials and form following function.

Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, 1919-1924, Potsdam

Expressionist architecture rebelled against the formal restrictions of early Modernism. The need for abstract detachment was the same, only the authority was the architect's emotions, rather than Modernist dogma.

Ilya Golosov, Zuyev Workers' Club, prior to renovation, 1927-1929, Moscow

In the Soviet Union, architects claimed to give expressive Modernism a Communist purpose with a style called Constructivism. The generic, soulless abstraction symbolized the break from all ties needed to forge the new Soviet man, while the dynamism reflected their expansionist ethos.

But what is truly important isn't the awareness that this sort of built environment was literally used to dehumanize, in the sense of shattering the connections that create human meaning. The key point is that they were true to their materials.

Jan Duiker, Zonnestraal, Sanitarium, Hilversum, Netherlands, 1925-1931

Constructivism in turn influenced Western European Modernism, where the traitorous avant-garde has always been a fifth column for collectivist authoritarianism.

Rudolf Schindler, Lovell Beach House, 1926, Newport Beach, California

This differs from American Modernism, where the meaningless geometries express the freedom and optimism of the New World because of reasons. At least the materials are truthful.

And so on.

There are far more "movements" than these in the early decades of the twentieth century, each with a theoretical slant on an anti-Western agenda. But somehow, this theory became primary source material for the discourse of postwar Modernism, which in turn begat the offspring discussed earlier. 

Tracing geneologies gives a sense of intellectual significance. Plus, they provide fodder for reams of empty debate over which metal and glass polyhedron influenced the other and why.

Arne Jacobsen, SAS Royal Hotel, 1955-1960, Copenhagen

Alberto Linner Díaz, Jenaro Valverde Marín Building, 1976, San José, Costa Rica

Some postwar offspring, presented without further comment.

Architecture as a discursive construct (a field shaped by institutional theory) can be thought of as an empty shell, or a form without content. The notion that architecture needs theory goes back to the Renaissance, and was solidified in the Academies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the theoretical base that defined the discipline reflected broader cultural attitudes about truth and beauty. Modernity threw out the value system but maintained the theoretical imperative like an empty vessel, keeping the concept "architecture", as an art form distinct from "building", but without any of the characteristics that originally distinguished it. 

This image appears at the opening of the first book of the second part of François Blondel's Cours d'architecture enseigné dans l'Academie royale d'architecture (1675), the textbook for the French Academy for a century. It depicts the invention of the capital as the inspired result of the study of nature and the historical legacy of architectural tradition. This is a very different basis for rules than the dogmas of Modernism.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this. When Modernity rejected traditional notions of beauty and symbolism, it rejected the very things that had legitimated architecture as a distinct expressive form. This was not simply a style change, but a transformation of the very purpose of the art. In Aristotelian terms, a shift in period style occurs primarily on the formal level of causality, meaning that the form, or appearance of the building is changed, but the other drivers remain the same. Modernity, however, also transformed the final cause, the purpose or telos that impelled the art of design. Modernist dogma harnesses architecture to a fundamentally different set of goals and expectations that those that the discipline formed to express. It literally is not the same thing, though it appropriates the artistic and intellectual credibility amassed over time. On this level it resembles its modern academic home, an inhuman impostor animating a corpse that once embodied the cultural heritage and intellectual achievements of the West. 

Leendert van der Vlugt, Van Nelle Factory, 1925-31, Rotterdam

When Le Corbusier calls this "the most beautiful spectacle of the modern age", or critics refer to it as "a poem in steel and glass", beauty and poetry have lost all meaning. The debasement of culture is a common leftist goal.

How did this come to pass? The next post will consider the history of architectural theory more closely, with an eye on the features that made it susceptible to corruption and debasement.