Complexity? Contradiction?
 What is Post-Modernism?
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Pompidou Center, Paris, 1977
Pruitt-Igoe demolition, July 1972
Mies van der Rohe, TD Centre, Toronto, 1967
Philip Johnson, AT&T Building, NYC, 1984
McKim, Mead & White, Municipal Building, NYC, 1908 and JohnsonÕs AT&T
already vastly quotedÉClevelandÕs Terminal Tower (1930), ChicagoÕs Wrigley Building (1920s), JohnsonÕs AT&T (1984)
AT&T Building: Sources
Philip Johnson, PPG Place, Pittsburgh, PA, 1981-84
Philip Johnson and John Burgee, PPG Plan
Johnson and Burgee, PPG Place, Pittsburgh, 1981-84
Cathedral of Learning, U of Pittsburgh, 1926-37
Philip Johnson and John Burgee, Lipstick Building, NYC, 1986
Robert Venturi, b.1925, Philadelphia
Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1959-64
My mother's house was designed for her as an elderly widow with her bedroom on the ground floor, with no garage because she didn't drive, and for a maidservant and the possibility of a nurse - and also as appropriate for her beautiful furniture which I had grown up with...

I have written of the house as modern but also as referential/imageful - as a generic/iconic house - as not striving to be original as architecture, but to be good. It connects with ideas of mine of the time involving complexity and contradiction, of accommodation to its particular Chestnut Hill suburban context, to aesthetic layering I learned from the Villa Savoye, its pedimented roof configuration derived from the Low House of Bristol, Rhode Island, its split pediment derived from the upper pediment of Blenheim Palace, and the duality-composition derived from the Casa Girasole in Rome, and involving explicit applied elements of ornament.
Colonial Philadelphia
Vanna Venturi House: Plans of 2 levels
Vanna Venturi House: Drawings
Vanna Venturi House, views
Venturi House: Views
Venturi & Rauch, Guild House, Philadelphia, 1960-65
A vernacular neighbourhood
Venturi and Rauch, Guild House: granite column and glazed brick
Venturi and Rauch, Guild House, Plan: Avoids monolithic form
Venturi and Rauch, Guild House, view from rear
Venturi & Rauch, Guild House, Philadelphia, 1960-65
Venturi and Rauch, Guild House, Common room
Venturi & Rauch, Guild House, Philadelphia, 1960-65
Robert Venturi: theorist
Duck or Shed
ÒDuckÓ
Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977):
Modes of Architectural Communication: Words
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966
Complexity and Contradiction, 1966
Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966
I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experienceÉ
Robert Venturi

Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966
Venturi urges one to look at the everyday landscape, Òvulgar and disdained, that we can draw the complex and contradictory order that is valid and vital for our architecture as an urbanistic whole.Ó
Robert Venturi

Charles Jencks, b.1939
Charles Jencks, theorist
Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? (1986)
Cover: Peter Blake, ÔThe MeetingÕ or ÔHave a Nice Day, Mr HockneyÕ, 1981-83
(Ô60s Pop meets Ô80s post-modernism; monumentality and banality; timeless and transient; Courbet and Pop)
Charles Jencks on Post-Modernism
In its infancy in the 1960s Post-Modern culture was radical and critical, a minority position established, for instance, by Pop artists and theorists against the reduced view of Modern art, the aestheticism reigning in such institutes as the Museum of Modern Art. In architecture, Team Ten, Jane Jacobs, Robert Venturi and the Advocacy Planners attacked Ôorthodox Modern architectureÕ for its elitism, urban destruction, bureaucracy and simplified language.

Charles Jencks on Post-Modernism
By the 1970s, as these traditions grew in strength and changed and Post-Modernism was now coined as a term for a variety of trends, the movement became more conservative, rational and academic. Many protagonists of the 1960s, such as Andy Warhol, lost their critical function altogether as they were assimilated into the art market or commercial practice.

Charles Jencks on Post-Modernism
In the 1980s the situation changed again. Post-Modernism was finally accepted by the professions, academies and society at large. It became as much part of the establishment as its parent, Modernism, and rival brother, Late-Modernism, and in literary criticism it shifted closer in meaning to the architectural and art traditions.

Charles Jencks on Post-Modernism
But because its meaning and tradition change, one must not only define the concept but give its dates and specific context. To reiterate, I term Post-Modernism that paradoxical dualism, or double coding, which its hybrid name entails: the continuation of Modernism and its transcendance.

Jencks, Three types of society
Jencks, Evolutionary Tree of Post-Modern Architecture
Charles Moore, 1925-1993
Charles Moore, Piazza dÕItalia, New Orleans, 1978
Charles Moore, Piazza dÕItalia, 1978
Charles Moore, Piazza dÕItalia, New Orleans, 1978
Charles Moore, Piazza dÕItalia, New Orleans,
Michael Graves, Portland Building, Portland, Oregon, 1980
(government offices)
Slide 53
Urban context: Whidden and Lewis, Multnomah County Courthouse (1909-13) and Portland City Hall (1895)