Postmodern architecture’s surface fascination masks underlying conflicts between place-rootedness and cosmopolitan style.
Evidence
The masking arises not only out of the postmodernist penchant for eclectic quotation, but also out of an evident fascination with surfaces. Jameson (1984b), for example, regards the reflecting glass surfaces of the Bonaventure Hotel as serving to ‘repel the city outside’ much as reflector sunglasses prevent the seer being seen, thus permit ting the hotel ‘a peculiar and placeless dissociation’ from its neigh bourhood. The contrived columns, ornamentation, extensive quotations from different styles (in time and space) give much of postmodern architecture that sense of ‘contrived depthlessness’ of which Jameson complains. But the masking nevertheless confines conflict between, for example, the historicism of being rooted in place and the inter nationalism of style drawn from the musee imaginaire, between function and fantasy, between the producer’s aim to signify and the consumer’s willingness to take the message. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 548
Categorization
- XREF: Directly engages Jameson’s ‘contrived depthlessness’ and the Bonaventure analysis — connects to the reader’s stated purpose of comparing rival periodization accounts. — connects to: Postmodern architecture debates are aesthetic mystification masking socioeconomic causes — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 583; Jencks defined postmodern architecture as stylistic double-coding of old and new, high and low — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 61; Postmodern architecture’s celebration of spectator freedom masks shared social meaning — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 587 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Postmodern architecture deliberately packages an older structure inside a new, alien skin
#corroborates(0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 286 - Postmodern urban imagery erases class relations and production from its aestheticized surface
#complicates(0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1998