Post-Modernism and Modernism in Architecture – Key Vocabulary

These flashcards introduce essential vocabulary—architects, buildings, books, concepts, and critiques—that shape Charles Jencks’s narrative on the rise of Post-Modernism and the shortcomings of Modernism.

Post-Modernism (PoMo)

A pluralistic architectural movement from the mid-1970s onward that reacts to Modernism with irony, historical reference, contextualism, and multiple meanings.

Perfect Storm / Perfect Delta (metaphor)

Charles Jencks’s image for the 1970s convergence of social, cultural, and architectural forces that produced Post-Modernism.

Herzog & de Meuron, CaixaForum, Madrid

2001–08 museum that fuses an old power-station shell with new forms, embodying recycling, contextual counterpoint, and ‘green imperative’ ideals of PoMo.

Contextual Counterpoint

Design strategy of responding to and contrasting with the existing urban fabric instead of ignoring it, typical of Post-Modernism.

The Dumb Box

Jencks’s nickname for the blank, anonymous Modernist skyscraper that dominated city centres from the 1960s.

International Style

Modernist architectural language of glass, steel, and abstract forms that became globally dominant after the 1950s.

Le Corbusier

Modernist pioneer who called the house ‘a machine for living’; later criticised for deterministic and totalitarian leanings.

Villa Savoye

Le Corbusier’s 1929–31 white cubic house near Paris that epitomised the ‘machine for living’ ideal and influenced later PoMo roofscapes.

Machine for Living

Le Corbusier’s metaphor describing houses designed with functional rationality akin to industrial machines.

Irony (in PoMo)

Positive, playful critical stance that acknowledges complexity and difference while challenging Modernist absolutes.

Zeitgeist

Belief in an impersonal ‘spirit of the age’; criticised by Popper and PoMo thinkers for underpinning totalitarianism and deterministic Modernism.

Reactionary Modernism

Alliance of Modernist aesthetics with fascist politics in the 1930s (e.g., Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy).

CIAM

Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne; Modernist forum (1928–59) that promoted functionalist planning worldwide.

Totalitarian (Pevsner’s slip)

Pevsner’s original praise for Modernism’s universality, later recanted; highlights the movement’s authoritarian potential.

Karl Popper, ‘The Poverty of Historicism’

Philosophical attack (1957) on deterministic historical laws; influential for Post-Modern pluralism.

Ernst Gombrich

Art historian who opposed zeitgeist thinking and supported Popper’s critique of historicism.

Mies van der Rohe, Reichsbank Project

1934 design whose dark repeated curtain wall foreshadowed anonymous corporate towers in the USA.

Ghost Building (Amsterdam, 1975)

Wall painting outlining a demolished block, protesting urban renewal and symbolising PoMo preservation activism.

Bureaucratic Modernism

Post-war alliance of mass production, welfare state housing, and impersonal planning that provoked PoMo resistance.

Ronan Point

1968 London tower-block gas explosion illustrating Modernism’s structural failures and public distrust.

Pruitt-Igoe

St Louis public housing demolished in 1972; labelled by Jencks ‘the Death of Modernism’.

Jane Jacobs

Author of ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ (1961); champion of community-based urbanism versus modern planning.

Advocacy Planning

1960s movement urging planners to represent local subcultures’ interests, much like lawyers for clients.

Robert Venturi, ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’

1966 book challenging ‘orthodox Modernism’ and proposing richer, layered design strategies.

‘Businessman’s Vernacular’

Derogatory term for repetitive glass-box corporate towers derived from Miesian models.

Pluralism

Philosophical acceptance of multiple, sometimes conflicting, values and styles; core to Post-Modern thinking.

Taste Cultures (Herbert Gans)

Sociological idea that different demographic groups possess distinct aesthetic preferences forming ‘urban villagers.’

Heteropolis

Charles Taylor’s vision of a multicultural city balancing majority and minority rights within constitutional frameworks.

Too Big to Fail

Post-2007 economic mantra for institutions whose collapse would threaten the system; echoes PoMo critiques of oversized modern systems.

Lewis Mumford, ‘The Case against Modern Architecture’

1962 article denouncing glass-box towers as ‘elegant monuments to nothingness’ lacking context or humanity.

‘Apotheosis of Nothingness’

Mumford’s phrase for Mies’s pristine but empty glass boxes, symbolising functional and spiritual voids.

Minoru Yamasaki

Architect of Pruitt-Igoe and the World Trade Center; his works illustrate both Modernist ambition and failure.

Frank Gehry, Loyola Law School

1981–84 Los Angeles campus using heterogeneous forms and materials, exemplifying PoMo embrace of difference.

Iconic Building

PoMo concept of highly legible, metaphorical architecture aimed at symbolic communication and public recognition.

Ad Hoc Collage of Difference

Design approach mixing disparate forms, materials, and references to counter Modernist uniformity.

Modernism’s ‘Moral Failures’

Jencks’s critique that Modernism became complicit with power structures, massification, and ecological harm.