cover image The History of Postmodern Architecture

The History of Postmodern Architecture

Heinrich Klotz. MIT Press (MA), $75 (478pp) ISBN 978-0-262-11123-2

In response to Mies van der Rohe's famous dictum that ""less is more,'' Robert Venturi said ``less is a bore,'' implying that the pure, unembellished architectural style in the modernist tradition of Mies, Gropius, Le Corbusier et al. had reached a dead end. The decisive turn from modernism to postmodernism, notes the author of this provocative survey, occurred around 1960 as architects were again designing buildings that expressed meaning as well as function. Klotz, director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt, first traces the progress of modernism from the 1920s to 1960. He then discusses in depth the works of Venturi, Charles Moore, James Stirling, Aldo Rossi, Hans Hollein and many other postmodernists. Central to his thesis is the idea that postmodern architecture has a fictional contentunlike modern architecture, it refers to events outside itself. Illustrations. (May)