The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism [Paperback]

Charles Jencks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2002

The story of a movement that changed the face of architecture over the last 40 years of the 20th century. 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 realized by the 1990s in a new and complex architecture 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. This study was the first to define the broad issues of postmodernism, and 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 11 languages, it has gone through six editions, each one seeking to give a feeling of how the issues looked at a particular moment. Now rewritten and with two new chapters, the seventh edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative, and the turn to a new complexity in architecture.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Jencks is the principal author on postmodernism in architecture, chiefly through his The Language of Postmodernism, which has gone through six editions and many translations since its first publication in 1977. This book has been standard issue in most schools of architecture for over 20 years; Jencks himself taught architecture at UCLA for many years. The book at hand is a complete rewrite of the original editions, with two new chapters. It updates Jencks's survey of world architecture to include the last ten years of stylistic evolution, climaxing with such galactic masterpieces as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany. Jencks, a transplanted Englishman, is a breezy writer. He glosses over differences in design, preferring to inscribe all schools and styles since the 1960s within the orbits of "multiple coding," "complexity," "heterogeneity," and "pluralism." He is such a readable writer that almost any library collection would benefit from this book. Peter McKee Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Charles Jencks is a designer and the author of numerous books on the theory and history of architecture and was formerly visiting professor at UCLA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (August 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300095139
• ISBN-13: 978-0300095135
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #723,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Well put!, June 25, 2009

By 

Aeron L. Knutson "Lively Designs" (Hollywood, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism (Hardcover)

A great read for postmodernism evolution and the development of contemporary architecture along with philosophies in moving design forward. It will make you want to avoid the "decorated shoebox" and give a pat on the back for those who already do;)

11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Another polemic by Charles Jencks, March 3, 2003

By 

James Ferguson (Vilnius, Lithuania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism (Paperback)

You have to admire Charles Jencks for promoting Post-Modernism in architecture for 25 years. He makes some intriguing commentaries in this book, but his arguments still ring hollow, largely due to his continued denunciation of Modernism.

He recycles his chapter on The Death of Modern Architecture, filled with the same glaring inaccuracies from the first edition. He admonishes the Modernists for inverting the traditional syntax of architecture, turning boiler rooms into chapels, and chapels into boiler rooms, which he felt was the case with Mies at the IIT campus. Yet, he hails the more recent examples such as the National Museum of Australia (2001) by Ashton, Raggatt and McDougall (ARM) for its crytpic ironic messages that took a text written by Howard Raggatt to help decipher.

But, it seems that Jencks revels in such complexities and contradictions, alluding to the seminal work by Robert Venturi which got the PoMo ball rolling in 1966. Jencks illustrates the turbulent late 60's when an attempt was made to recapture the past, heeding the call by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of American Cities (1961) for a new urbanism based on contextualism. The early PoMo figures seemed to revel in the collision of forms as seen in Venturi's work, or simply inverting Modernist icons like the Schroder House, as Michael Graves did in the Benacerraf House addition (1969). A movement really didn't take hold until the 1970's and seemed to reach its apotheosis in the AT&T Building by Philip Johnson (1978-81). However, Jencks was not content to let it go at that. In the succeeding chapters, he attempts to illustrate how Post-Modernism redirected architecture, infused it with new meaning that went beyond the corporate forms of SOM and the huge Disney resort complexes of Michael Graves and Robert Stern, which dominated the 80's.

Jencks includes a fascinating range of work, but I am left scratching my head as to whether all this is really Post-Modern. It seems a bit of a stretch to include Aldo Rossi, whose work is firmly based on Italian Rationalist traditions and the urban planning of Camillo Sitte, a 19th-century Viennese urban planner. The Ad-Hoc forms of Ralph Erskine and Frank Gehry seem to recall theories first put forward in the 1950's, notably those of Aldo Van Eyck, than they do a new paradigm in architecture. The fantastic images of Rem Koolhaas seem to recall Futurist visions from before WWI, with later references to Le Corbusier. But, such references seem to allude Jencks, who seems intent on rewriting architectural history from a Post-Modern perspective.

As he states in his introduction, this is a polemic and it should be read as such. It offers some engaging essays on current trends in architecture but lacks the depth of a thorough survey like that of William J.R. Curtis in his book Modern Architecture since 1900. I guess the ultimate irony is that Le Corbusier is back in vogue, with playful new interpretations of the Domino House by Rem Koolhaas, and architectural one-liners like "The Not Villa Savoye" by ARM, which is painted black apparently representing the antipode of Australia.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE manifesto on Contemporary Architecture, May 21, 2007

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FABRICIO FONTOLAN (CURITIBA, PARANA Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism (Paperback)

A Wonderful book (like all the Jenck's titles) about the construction and many ways that architecture has driven along the "final" of modern architecture