Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism

Author(s): Mary McLeod

Source: Assemblage, No. 8 (Feb., 1989), pp. 22-59
Published by: The MIT Press
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 Mary McLeod
Architecture and Politics
in the Reagan Era:
From Postmodernism to
Deconstructivism

Mary McLeod is Associate Professor of "Postmodern architecture is the architecture of Reagan-

Architecture at Columbia University ism." Among many leftist architects and critics, this kind
where she teaches design and history and
of statement has become a clich6. The pseudohistorical
theory.
nostalgia, the fabricated traditions, the pandering to a
nouveau-riche clientele, the populist rhetoric that often
sounds more paternalistic than democratic, the abandon-
ment of any social vision - all seem related in some way
to the conservative turn in American politics. On the other
hand, neoconservative critics Daniel Bell and Hilton
Kramer have vehemently attacked postmodernism from
their perspective, claiming that it undermines social stabil-
ity and fundamental spiritual values.' This attack on dis-
parate fronts immediately reveals the difficulties of any
simple equation between postmodernism and a political
position. The relation between style and ideology has
always been a complex one, but in the instance of post-
modernism the problem is compounded: first, by the con-
fusion surrounding what postmodernism is and, second, by
the ever-quickening cycle of consumption that seems to
cause political meanings to change with increasing rapid-
ity, raising more fundamental questions about the nature
of architecture's political power.

Postmodern Architecture: Some Definitions

Almost inevitably, any essay about postmodernism must

confront the problems of defining this diverse and pluralis-
1. Philip Johnson holding a
tic movement. Attempts at definition have varied from
model of the AT&T building,
cover, Time, 8 January 1979 broad-scale historical periodization (Fredric Jameson), to

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 assemblage 8

philosophical equations (postmodernism as the cultural one-man movement, advanced by Peter Eisenman; but in
equivalent of poststructuralism), to specific stylistic trends recent years a number of other architects, most notably
or intentions, often at odds from one field to another several young "neoconstructivists," have been grouped with
(autonomy and formalism, for example; are seen as mod- him in this alternative reaction to the failings of modern-
ern in one field, postmodern in another). In American ism. How "postmodern" this phenomenon actually is
architecture, where the word was first popularized, the remains suspect as new labels ("schismatic postmodern-
critic has the potential advantage of its widespread usage. ism," "decomposition," "deconstructivism") are continually
The first, and still the most common, understanding of the being introduced, juxtaposing this group to the other
term refers to the tendency that rejects the formal and "postmodernists. "3
social constituents of the modern movement and embraces
What is immediately apparent in either of these concep-
a broader formal language, which is frequently figurative
tions of postmodernism, however, is that some of the dis-
and historically eclectic. While advocates of postmodern tinctions that can be drawn between modernism and
architecture have often agreed more about what they reiect postmodernism in other fields cannot be sustained in
than about what they endorse, certain themes have consis-
architecture. Although modern architects were frequently
tently been explored: historical styles, regionalism, decora-
engaged in highly sophisticated, abstract formal explora-
tion, urban contextualism and morphologies, among
tions, modernism in architecture was never commonly
others. If there is any single objective that unites these var-
conceived, as it was in painting after World War II, as
ious concerns, it is the search for architectural communi-
being "art about art" or as implying autonomy of the disci-
cation, the desire to make architecture a vehicle of cultural
pline. The modern movement was seen by both its early
expression. Postmodern practitioners and critics have practitioners and its historians as intrinsically involving
tended to seek ideological justification, not in program,
new techniques, mass culture, and a broader social role.4
function, or structure, but in meaning. A manifesto by the
And if postmodern advocates have produced their own
editors of the Harvard Architectural Review declared that
more reductive, monolithic version of modern architec-
postmodernism is "an attempt, and an important one, to ture, it is one that asserts, even exaggerates, the modern
respond to the problem of meaning which was posed but
movement's social concerns. Thus the commonly assumed
never solved by the modern movement."2
polarity of modernism/artistic autonomy and postmodern-
ism/mass culture (cultural "contamination") simply does
As architects themselves have been influenced by critical not hold. Indeed, postmodern currents, whether historicist
discourse and events in other fields, another understanding or poststructuralist, can be viewed as a return to architec-
of postmodernism has arisen in the past few years: one that ture as a primarily formal and artistic pursuit, one that
attempts to link architecture to a general epistemological rejects the social engagement of the modern movement;5
situation, frequently associated with poststructuralism. with few exceptions, the eclecticism and pluralism of post-
Here, the objective seems almost the inverse of that of the modern architecture have operated almost entirely in the
earlier postmodernists. Whereas the first group criticized formal sphere. And yet, in delineating this retreat to tradi-
modern architecture for being abstract, arcane, and in- tional boundaries, it is also important to acknowledge
accessible - for having forsaken architecture's traditional architecture's more visible cultural role. Postmodernism
communicative role - this second group accepts, even has coincided with the public's increased attention to
celebrates, this same disintegration of communication and architecture. More buildings in the United States are now
consensus - the impossibility, in fact, of postulating any designed by architects; more students are enrolled in archi-
meaning at all. Although these two positions are dialecti- tecture schools;6 more design criticism appears routinely in
cally opposed, the territory of debate remains the same: magazines and newspapers; and at least a few architects
meaning and its dissolution. At first, this later interpreta- have achieved the celebrity status that earns them advertis-
tion of postmodernism seemed, in architecture, to be a ing endorsements and Time Magazine covers.

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 McLeod

Architecture and Politics to a particular social context and historical moment. 10

These two political dimensions of architecture, production
Linking architecture and politics presents certain difficul-
processes and formal reception, are, of course, not unre-
ties. Neither field can be reduced to the other; nor is it
lated - building techniques can convey meanings - but
self-evident that architecture's relation to politics has any
their political roles can operate independently, each
major impact on power relations. It might appear that exerting influence at different moments and on different
architecture is always political in the sense that anything is
groups. I"
political, the meaning of politics being diluted to some
generalized cultural association; or else that architecture is
The modern movement in architecture was deeply con-
rarely political, in which case the definition is narrowly
cerned with the first of these political dimensions. The
confined to those activities directly influencing power rela- of standardization and serial production, the
advocacy
tions.7 Notwithstanding these qualifications, it would be
emphasis on housing as a social program, the concern for
impossible to deny that some real, if ambiguous, connec-a mass clientele - all were examples of the modern archi-
tion exists between the two realms. The intersections tect's attempt to redefine architecture's economic and
between architecture and politics can be seen as twofold:
social role. When Le Corbusier made his passionate plea
the first involves architecture's role in the economy; "Architecture
the or Revolution. Revolution can be avoided,"
second, its role as a cultural object. he was arguing not for formal isolation, but rather for an
What, in fact, immediately distinguishes architectureexpansion
from of architecture's role to address social prob-
other arts - notably painting, music, and writing - is the If in the case of Le Corbusier this position
lems.12
remained an issue of polemics more than practice, in the
enormous expense it entails.8 Although any art form can
instance of many German practitioners the production of
be seen as reflecting market pressures, architecture's depen-
dence on the sources of finance and power extends to architecture radically changed. Ernst May's program for
mass-produced
nearly every facet of the design process: choice of site, pro- housing in Frankfurt and Walter Gropius's
experiments with standardization in Dessau are two
gram, budget, materials, and production schedules. These
economic and utilitarian parameters ordinarily limitobvious
archi-examples.
tecture's transgressive and transformative power, but they
In retrospect, the forms of the modern movement can also
also inscribe areas for potential social action. In other
be seen as embodying ideological positions. The rejection
words, architecture's production processes imply possibil-
of monumental imagery in public buildings, the radical
ities of institutional change itself. Here, architecture's con-
reorganization of the home, the elimination of explicit
nection to politics appears more direct than that of other
gender references in interior design, all challenged existing
arts.
social patterns. Occasionally, such ideological intentions
But just as architecture is intrinsically joined to political were specifically stated (for example, Hannes Meyer's
and economic structures by virtue of its production, so, claim that the open glazed rooms of his League of Nations
too, its form - its meaning as a cultural object - carries project would eliminate "backstairs diplomacy," or the fre-
political resonances. In this sense, owing to its utilitarian quent associations of the free plan with democracy);'3 but
value, its political impact may be more diffuse, if more for the most part, the architects of the modern movement
sustained, than that of other arts. Buildings are rarely per- did not conceive of form as an independent critical or uto-
ceived at once for their aesthetic qualities and "content"; pian tool. It was seen as either the result of structural and
rather their impact occurs gradually through use and functional concerns or an expression of the zeitgeist of the
repeated contact.9 From this perspective, spatial configura- machine age. In other words, the new forms reflected
tions, tactile qualities, and functional relations are as either materially or symbolically the changes in produc-
important as figurative dimensions in architecture's recep- tion. Architecture's political role was conceived first as a
tion. And as with art, this reception is always closely tied question of process, and only secondarily as a question of

25

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 assemblage 8

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2. Manhattan Office Comple- '45 '50 '55 '60 '65 '70 '75 '80 '85 '89
'45 '50 '55 '60 '65 '70 '75 '80 '85 '89
tions, "Commercial Property,"
special section, New York
Times, 11 May 1980 3. Defense Spending, New
York Times, 23 October 1988

form, although to separate the two would have been vir-

tually impossible in the minds of the early pioneers. 14 Both 100.000- -Apartments Built
necessitated radical change, if architecture and society 75000 .. Under Section 8
were to be transformed. 5'00 .' Program
50.000-
Postmodernism (in its first sense) emerged in part from a
disillusionment with this social vision. The unprecedented
brutality of Nazi Germany, the purges of Stalinist Russia,
the advent of the atom bomb, and the increasing domi-
nance of multinational capitalism all undermined hopes of
'82 '83 '84 '85 '86 '87 25.000 - .
Source: Journal of Housing
architecture's redemptive power. But just as significant to
this loss of faith were the manifestations of modernism
4. Apartments Built Under
itself. By the 1960s architects and social critics no longer
Section 8 Program, New York
saw the revolutionary zeal of the modern movement as
Times, 1 February 1988
productive, but as destructive; they cited the desolate mass-
housing projects, the wasteland of urban renewal, the
alienation resulting from an architectural language that
now seemed arcane, mute, and of little appeal outside a
narrow cultural elite. Advocacy planning and the self-help
projects of the 1960s were one response to modernism's
apparent failure, but the collapse of those efforts only con-
tributed further to the architect's sense of political impo-

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 McLeod

tence. What both the activists of the 1960s and the first
back to traditional aesthetic parameters, it also reflected a
new
postmodern critics of the early 1970s were reacting to interest in cultural signs, spurred by semiology and
was,
communication
in fact, the evolution of modernism in the postwar decades theories. Meaning, not institutional
reform,
into a routinized corporate modernism that seemed headed was now the objective.
in two equally unpromising directions: the expressionistic
excesses of a Stone or a Saarinen, on the one hand,Postmodernism
and and Politics
the "scientific" determinism epitomized by the researches
What
of Christopher Alexander or the technological fantasies of is immediately apparent in any survey of architec-
Archigram, on the other."5 But if this modernism already developments of the 1960s and 1970s is that the
tural
stripped of most of its revolutionary content spawnedpolitical
the impulses linked to this change in perspective had
mixed
first criticisms of modern architecture, the focus of the connotations. To critics of the traditional Left, mos
attack soon reverted to the modern movement, which notably
was Tomais Maldonado, Kenneth Frampton, and Mar
tin Pawley,
seen as instigating the demise of architectural meaning and the rejection of social engagement represented
an
artistic expression.16 And just as form and content were abdication of the architect's responsibility. They criti-
cized the split between form and social institutions as inva
inseparably intertwined in the minds of the early modern
lid and argued that a rigorous structural rationalism and
pioneers, so too were they inextricably linked in the post-
modern reaction. What was considered wrong with the functionalism were still essential to answering the mass's
needs in an age of late capital. But to the early critics of
modern movement was equally its forms and its political
content. Together they had produced the failures of modernism,
public not yet dubbed "postmodernists," it was
exactly this position that had led to the public's alienation
housing complexes and the destruction of the center city.
and to the disintegration of any sense of urban community
In the United States, this critique of modernism appears to early 1970s, influenced by the social theories of
In the
be related to the economic cycle of construction itself.
Karl Popper, Colin Rowe condemned the utopianism of
Numerous International Style skyscrapers were built in the
modernism as a form of totalitarianism akin to the apoca-
1950s and 1960s, when the economy was booming and, lyptic visions of Marxism. He claimed that the universal
not coincidentally, when modernism had its first realrationalism of modernism suppressed diversity and com-
opportunity to manifest itself in the United States (the
plexity; the objective instead should be a city of fragments,
Depression and World War II had severely limited private
a "collage city."'17 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
construction). The theoretical reassessment of modern also attacked the "environmental megalomania" of modern
architects "as a curse on the city." In a response to Pawley
architecture only emerged in full force during the early
1970s when young architects were almost without work. in 1970 they stated, "We suggest that the architect who
Designers such as Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves starts with what is . . . will be less harmful and more
were making professional careers of an annual house effective
addi- than the petulant rhetorician grandly and dryly
tion or interior renovation (leading to epithets such ascontinuing
"the to evoke 'the impact of technology on Western
civilization' and 'the relationship of the nascent science of
cubist kitchen king"); frequently, they were busier writing
than building. The dismal economy not only permitted design to human goals and aspirations.' We are in favor of
science in architecture but not of science-voodooism,
theoretical speculation, but also further fueled perceptions
of the architect's diminished social role. twenties or sixties style."'8

This
The result, all too familiar today, was a return to the debate echoed the running argument among leftists i
con-
the
cept of architecture as art. Architecture's value no longerlate 1960s and early 1970s between those believing in
the
lay in its redemptive social power, its transformation of instrumentality of technology yet condemning com-
productive processes, but rather in its communicative modity culture and those rejecting the determinacy of
technology
power as a cultural object. If this new perspective harked but finding in popular culture the impulses of

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 assemblage 8

new order. Following Herbert Marcuse, many Marxists

believed that technology was essential to alleviating oppres-
sive work conditions and improving social life, but that the
masses were so manipulated by advertising and the media
that it was impossible to determine from contemporary cul-
T H1 E P 0.W E R ture any genuine needs or values. Many of the New Left,
however, found in mass culture the stirrings of a grass-roots
AND THE GLORY. populism that embodied legitimate needs and aspirations,
regardless of the economic and political institutions that
.do".e..The .*.t-1. end..an"e gote*n g dee e.. .. ..e *e i eg t ocA * wo e he ne ow et $ tI Ctl h .. . them . .. t :o -
the po t fet * *e out top aetehttotes to dnettn'thl teronal tt nf ppow*? d*etanng@o
generated them. At the heart of this conflict was the critics'
'hemontn.1hi% W VLht thebettn mft n nnen., b motenm tsondtho qftnnbareI? th~e pohts Wth * e toftb mae
relation to mass opinion: the issue of elitism vs. populism.
Did the masses know what they wanted or were social aspi-
rations to be determined only by a critical, educated elite
shrewd to the forces of capital? Or were the so-called
populists denying the masses' needs by restricting their
vision to the image presented by a media culture? It was
exactly over this issue that architectural debate took its
most acerbic form. Frampton charged that Venturi and
Scott Brown's interest in Las Vegas was "elitist" and "con-
IL /# BBB$
servative," a "de facto rationalization of the polluted envi-
ronment," and Maldonado condemned their position as
"cultural nihilism."'9 In the pages of Casabella, Scott
Brown caustically returned the charges, stating that
European-based "armchair-revolutionary pot shots"
reflected a disdain for American culture and legitimized a
"repressed upper-middle-class prejudice" against a "hard-
hat majority. "20

Even among the early critics of modernism, however,

5. "Architecture: The Power the position concerning audience was hardly cohesive.
and the Glory," Avenue, Although Learning from Las Vegas (1972) embodied clear
November 1987
populist sympathies, Venturi's earlier and more influential
work Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)
vividly illustrated the tensions between an elitist apprecia-
tion of high art and a populist embrace of Main Street that
would be so characteristic of the later postmodern move-
ment. Indeed, the balance of the argument and the num-
ber of plates (346 of 350) in the book clearly favors the
former. Throughout the 1970s, Charles Moore consistently
and enthusiastically embraced popular culture; but Rowe
was steeped in a kind of nostalgia for nineteenth-century
bourgeois culture, while Michael Graves longed for a pub-
lic who could appreciate the world of Poussin and Roman
villas. Whether elitist or populist, what these factions

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 McLeod

shared, however, was a sense that modernism was failing to

communicate to any group besides design professionals; in
THE
this respect, the architects' critique of the modern move-
EDIFICE
ment allied itself with earlier criticism in the social sphere,
COMPLEX:
most notably Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of the DOES
Great American Cities of 1961 and Herbert Gans's The
ATTENTION-
Levittowners of 1966.21 The populism of the 1960s led to GETTING
advocacy efforts; conversely, in the early 1970s, these same DESIGN
impulses were channeled to the formal sphere. SELL
BUILDINGS?
A passivity vis-a-vis economic and political power has con- Look-at-me
tinued to be one of the major reasons for leftists' unease architecture used
to be ridiculed.
with postmodern architecture. However critical postmodern Nolw it'sa markceting tool.
architects were of corporate skyscrapers and government BY JOANNA KROTZ

housing projects, it was soon apparent that their focus was

on form and style. With amazing rapidity, postmodernism
became the new corporate style, after Philip Johnson's
notorious Chippendale top for AT&T instantly convinced
patrons of its marketability and prestige value. The office
building boom, which followed on the heels of New York
City's financial recovery, further fueled the acceptance of
the new style. If the reassessment of modernism occurred
in a tight economy, which encouraged reflection and criti-
cism, postmodernism began to flourish in the boom econ-
omy of the early 1980s. Architects seemed to stop writing
and theorizing; most reacted hungrily to the opportunities
to build.

The domination of American political life by conservative

forces since the advent of postmodernism has only rein-
6. "The
forced the Left's assessment. In the private sector, the pro- Edifice Complex,"
Avenue, November 1987
liferation of luxury apartment towers, amenity-packed
condominium developments, planned resort communities,
larger suburban homes, and ubiquitous shopping centers,22
all spurred by the emergence of the new "yuppie" class,
have given postmodernism a fertile field in which to grow.
In the public sector the Reagan administration's ninety-
percent reduction of funds for public housing and its dras-
tic curtailment of social programs have virtually eliminated
commissions oriented toward the poor and minority
groups.23 The only public commissions have been for tra-
ditional institutions such as museums. Although nothing
in the polemics of postmodernism has precluded architects
from addressing social programs, neither has there been

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 assemblage 8

anything to encourage architects to challenge their elimi- Historical Styles

nation. Collectively, postmodern architects have exhibited
These ambiguities become immediately apparent in one of
a marked indifference to economic and social policy.
the fundamental themes of postmodernism: the rediscovery
Thus, if any dialectical tension with the dominant power of history. Postmodern architects universally rejected the
structures exists in postmodern architecture, it resides not modern movement's messianic faith in the new and con-
in institutions but in the content of architectural forms. As demned the notion of a zeitgeist that obliterated the past
already noted, most postmodern architects hold as a basic and wiped out differences in tradition and experience.
assumption some concept of architecture's communicative Their motives for embracing historical styles, however, var-
power; and, indeed, it is here that a few critics and archi- ied considerably. Some postmodernists, notably Robert
tects have made political claims for their discipline.24 After Stern, Allen Greenberg, and Thomas Beeby, sought to
acknowledging the difficulties of finding "uplifting social establish cultural continuities and a renewed sense of com-
content" to include in contemporary architecture, Charles munity. Quoting Daniel Bell, Stern stated that the central
Jencks states that the architect can "design dissenting build- issue facing postmodernists was "whether culture can
ings that express the complex situation. He can communi- regain coherence, a coherence of substance and experi-
cate the values which are missing and ironically criticize ence, not only form."28 History provided a more commu-
the ones he dislikes."25 And in Complexity and Contradic- nicative language; it was a means for architecture to regain
tion in Architecture, Venturi more modestly asserts, "The the public role that the hermeticism of modernist abstrac-
architect who would accept his role as combiner of signifi- tion had denied it. This historical revivalism emerged from
cant old cliches - valid banalities - in new contexts as the egalitarian and populist impulses of the 1960s' critique,
his condition within a society that directs its best efforts, itsbut its assumptions were largely social integration and
big money, and its elegant technologies elsewhere, can preservation, not social change. In contrast, other post-
ironically express in this indirect way a true concern for modernists, such as Venturi, Johnson, and Stanley Tiger-
society's inverted scale of values."26 This raises immediate man, saw history as promising freedom and change, if only
questions, however, about the legibility of architectural on an aesthetic plane. Technological progress did not man-
forms: Do buildings convey clear messages? Is it appropri- date one style, but made possible many styles, and the past
ate to discuss buildings as critical or constructive in politi- offered an infinite field of possibilities. This was hardly the
cal terms at all? For our purposes here, it is probably eclecticism of nineteenth-century architects who sought a
sufficient to mention the difficulties of equating architec- moral fit between style and social function. Instead, for
tural forms with words, the problems of consensus con- Venturi, the model was the eighteenth-century garden.29
cerning architectural meaning, the distracted mode of Historical styles offered a means to represent a variety of
architecture's reception, and the shifting nature of any experiences, moods, and allusions; in other words, history
meanings that might be conveyed. 27 All of this challenges provided the material for a complex and diverse vision of
Jencks's claims that architecture can communicate clear the present. For Johnson, stylistic eclecticism meant sim-
political positions. But if it is difficult to grasp what archi- ply aesthetic liberation: an invitation to a new art for art's
tectural meaning might entail, it also refutes everyday sake. As early as 1961, he declared to Jiirgen Joedicke,
experience to deny the connotative and suggestive power of"There are no rules, absolutely no given truths in any of
forms. Architectural meaning is shifting and ambiguous, the arts. There is only the sensation of a marvelous free-
which inevitably results in ambiguous, and double-edged, dom, of an unlimited possibility to explore, of an unlim-
political readings. Thus any analysis of architectural ideol- ited past of great examples of architecture from history to
ogy must go beyond simplistic labels of good and bad, and enjoy. . . . Structural honesty for me is one of those infan-
must search to discover in this complex matrix instances oftile nightmares from which we will have to free ourselves
both social entrenchment and genuine critique. as soon as possible."30

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 McLeod

7. Robert Venturi (Venturi and, Short), Vanna Venturi House,

Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, 1961-65

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 assemblage 8

8. Thomas H. Beeby, Harold

Washington Library Center
Competition, first prize,
Chicago, 1988

9. Robert A. M. Stern, Pool

House, Llewellyn Park, New
Jersey, 1979-81

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 McLeod

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10. Advertisement for luxury 11. "The New Traditionalist,"

apartments in the Grand Sut- advertisement for Good House-
ton designed in 1987 by Philip keeping, New York Times, 9
Birnbaum (architect, Costas November 1988
Kondylis), New York Times, 13
November 1988

33

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 assemblage 8

There was something at once exhilarating and resigned in ket increasingly co-opted postmodernism, the value of
this rediscovery of history. On the one hand, it meant free- variety itself became suspect. Many styles and many pasts
dom and a chance to recoup lost values; on the other, it began to appear as one style and one past. By the mid-
suggested that the present was no better than the past, that 1980s, the real-estate ads had designated postmodernism a
aesthetic and political choices might be arbitrary. In the historical style in itself.
most successful postmodern works, such as Venturi's
Vanna Venturi house (1961) and James Stirling and
Regionalism
Michael Wilford's Stuttgart Museum (1977-84), historical
references are used to express just this tension.3" Reinstat- Postmodernism's interest in regionalism, closely linked to
ing a dialogue with the past, the architecture installs and its historicist focus, is yet another response to the modern
then subverts conventions in parodic ways that make movement's universalizing tendencies: the latter's postula-
explicit the inherent paradoxes and provisionality of a his- tion of a method (mass production) and an aesthetic (the
torical moment. The dualities of tradition and innovation, International Style) that would obliterate cultural differ-
order and fragmentation, figuration and abstraction help ences. It is on these grounds that such ideologically
articulate the contradictions of modernism and its ideologi- opposed critics as Jencks and Frampton have placed hopes
cal context. In Venturi's work especially, the very emphasis of political dissent and resistance. Jencks claims that in
on surface and image elucidates the discursive and contin- order to design "dissenting buildings," the architect "must
gent dimensions of our present historicity. But in most make use of the language of the local culture; otherwise
postmodern architecture, such insight appears too painful his message falls on deaf ears, or is distorted to fit this local
to acknowledge. Historical allusion rapidly becomes nostal- language."32 Although Frampton rejects Jencks's emphasis
gia, escape, or enjoyable simulacrum - a denial of history on sign and image, he too turns to regionalism in the early
itself. In the case of i'Leral revivalists, such as Greenberg 1980s as a locus for creating an "architecture of resis-
and John Blatteau, tension and parody are eliminated in tance," one that will answer Paul Ricoeur's quest of "how
academic recreations of the past. And all too often, the to become modern and to return to the sources."33
references to Lutyens, colonial plantations, and imperial
Leaving aside difficulties of what might constitute a "dis-
monuments evoke a one-sided past, a "history of victors."
senting" architectural message, two problems immediately
For other practitioners, such as Stern and Johnson, irony
present themselves: first, the paucity in the United States
looses its critical edge, as historical caricatures are openly
of vital "local" languages - especially in the major areas
acknowledged as diversions from the routine of daily exis-
of new construction - and second, the difficulties of con-
tence. Cartooned exaggeration alternates with esoteric,
vincingly recreating or transforming these languages, given
mannered quotation; history is randomly scavenged to
financial constraints, changes in construction processes,
create an aura of historical depth.
and new building types - often of a radically different
But whether in literal copybook recreations or in exuberant scale. Although buildings such as Venturi's Nantucket
displays of random quotation, the rediscovery of history has houses or Graves's library at San Juan Capistrano are less
reflected with uncanny ease the interests of the market- obtrusive in traditional surroundings than the brutal struc-
place. More than the stripped-down forms of modernism, tures of the two preceeding decades, the postmodern use of
revived historical styles signaled the desire for the instant regionalism rarely extends beyond surface image; such
acquisition of the values of family, tradition, and social designs are mere fabrications, without any real cultural
status that surfaced with a vengeance in the 1980s. The roots.34 And given the conciliatory aspirations of most
marketing tactics of Ralph Lauren, the period revivals in designers, only occasionally do these designs gain a self-
furnishings and fashion, the long-standing eclecticism of consciously critical dimension; more often they seem to be
suburban development - all found aesthetic allies within the architectural equivalents to conservative yearnings for a
the architectural establishment. Paradoxically, as the mar- simpler American past.

34

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 McLeod

12. Robert Venturi and John

Rauch (Venturi, Rauch and
Scott Brown), Trubek and Wis-
locki Houses, Nantucket Island,
Massachusetts, 1970-71

13. Michael Graves, San Juan

Capistrano Library, San Juan
Capistrano, California, 1980

35

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 assemblage 8

Decoration

The emphasis on ornament, color, texture, and pattern in

postmodern architecture is still another response to what
many architects have considered the excessive limitations
of modernism: its formal monotony, repetitiveness, and
narrow expressive range. By the 1960s the austerity of
modern architecture no longer represented a critique of
bourgeois values and oppressive stereotypes; it reflected
instead the relentless rationalization and routinization of
the business world. Again advocates of postmodernism
claimed that advanced technology need not be so restric-
tive or determinate. Rather than preclude ornament or
traditional styles, it made them potentially available to a
broad range of people. And where costs remained prohibi-
tive, signage and simulacra might successfully substitute for
traditional forms. The initial embrace of decoration, like
14. Carpetland, Wheaton, Maryland the rediscovery of history, thus appeared as a liberating ges-
ture; it opened up new possibilities and broke down tradi-
tional hierarchies, whether between architecture and
Nor have Frampton's more abstract criteria of light, topog- interior design, structure and ornament, abstraction and
raphy, and technique been widely adopted; his essay figuration, or "educated" taste and popular taste (as well as
"Towards a Critical Regionalism" omits American ex- the "purported" modernist bias toward the former in each
amples. And those buildings that he does cite as models - of these pairings). Postmodernism sanctioned a new appre-
works by Mario Botta, Tadao Ando, Jorn Utzon - often ciation of sensuality, comfort, and the body - almost a
share more with each other than with their respective hedonism, which challenged the mundane, the prosaic,
locales.35 This raises the question of whether "region" or the matter-of-fact rationality of modernism. Even dimen-
some more universal criteria of artistic quality - crafts- sions stereotypically condemned as feminine, weak, or
manship, detail, quality of materials - are the source of frivolous - pink, chintz, boudoir chairs - received vali-
their "resistant" qualities.36 The homogenizing forces of dation. Just as the abstract forms of the modern movement
mass media and the increasingly multinational scale of could be seen in the 1920s as dissolving traditional images
finance and the construction industry certainly leave little of gender identity, the more sensuous, decorative forms of
regional heritage to recover. In the United States, the large postmodernism could be seen in the 1970s as challenging
size, low budget, and rapid timetable of most (nonluxury) this same abstract language, which was now associated
contemporary developments further mitigate against the with a masculine, corporate world - severe, removed, and
kind of attentive design that Frampton prescribes. mechanistic. In a tone foreign to a previous generation,
Charles Moore notes, "If our century's predominant urge
The one regional attribute of pressing political concern in
to erect high-rise macho objects was nearly spent, I
this energy-consuming society is climate. But postmodern-
thought we might now be eligible for a fifty-year-long res-
ism's rejection of "biological" determinism and its empha-
pite of yin, of absorbing and healing and trying to bring
sis on style have generally precluded the investigations of
sun orientation and ventilation that were of such concern our freestanding erections into an inhabitable
community. 38
to modern architects. (As one critic at a conference on
regionalism caustically noted, "The air conditioner is Thus the first phase of postmodernism played a role some-
Florida's regional identity.")37 what akin to modernism itself after World War I: it re-

36

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 McLeod

invigorated architecture's vocabulary by discovering new

"pasts," new vernaculars, and new aspects of mass culture.
If in the 1920s the sources were the Acropolis, the auto-
mobile, and Mediterranean villages, in the 1970s they
were Ledoux, Levittown, and Las Vegas. Some architects,
such as Graves, Greenberg, and Blatteau, drew on classi- II

cism and a high-art heritage; but others, such as Venturi tftVio~~

tit It A~z~
and Moore, mined suburbia and the "strip" for new aes-
thetic images. And probably, it is in the realm of ornament
that postmodern architecture has come the closest to the
. . . . ---------

spirit of pop culture and contamination that one equates tv ur T-

t 'Otfil Ir zin
with the postmodernism of other fields.39 But if all of this --;;- i?tN
raised certain hopes, the flip side revealed another picture: fj 0?
llttf? tz 0010H14441

pretensions, blatant materialism, pseudoculture, a level of

ostentatious display that would make Veblen shiver. And
what first emerged as endless freedom, by the mid-1980s
seemed rigidified and codified. Mauve and gray, falling
keystones, giant pilasters, and temple fronts had all become .

ubiquitous clich6s, now mass-produced by the culture

industry.

Urban Contextualism and Typology

The postmodern urban critique recapitulates the themes
15. "The secluded oasis for the
expressed earlier - the universalizing, homogenizing,
affluent professionals," Battery
dehumanizing qualities of modern architecture - only
Park, West Side Spirit, 1 June
now on a much larger scale. Although the American post- 1987
modern movement was initially more concerned with
image than with urban form, by the mid-1970s both
Rowe's theories of contextualism and the Italian investiga-
tions of type had had a major impact. And if Rowe's poli-
pedestrian bridge as urban solutions; and it has contributed
tics conjure up images of Disraeli and Queen Victoria, the
to the meteoric rise in preservation. Although contextual-
Italian Rationalist movement identified itself firmly with
ism has produced boring buildings - notably, the numer-
the Left; in fact, Paolo Portoghesi cites Solidarity's docu-
ous brick boxes of Boston and the Upper West Side - it
ment on architecture as a defense of postmodern urban
has frequently produced better urbanism, reversing the ear-
aspirations.40 In the United States the postmodern critique
lier priorities of building over city, private over public.
joined widespread public disenchantment with urban
This is not to deny that it may have also inhibited more
renewal, itself partially a product of leftist protests and
exciting and challenging urban solutions: how often has
grass-roots action in the 1960s.
Battery Park City generated the remarks "It could have
It is in its rejection of the modern movement's urban been better" or "It could have been worse"? Postmodern-
vision that postmodernism has probably had its most posi- ism's urban intervention are not so much regenerative as
tive social impact. It has all but eliminated the isolated simply resistant, an attempt to preserve, not transform,
block, the vast terrains of concrete, the ne'er-traveled areas of community life.

37

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 assemblage 8

But even this claim to resistance can be challenged if one exhausted. By the time the AT&T building was completed
looks further at that area excluded from postmodern theo- - the initial shock of its historicist forms dissipated - the
ries: architecture's relation to the powers at large. The re- battle with modernism was largely won; but by that time,
vitalization of the urban metropolis has coincided with the too, postmodernism itself became subject to the forces of
return to the city of a young professional class. This so- consumption and commodification.
called good contextualism is almost exclusively the prov-
ince of the prosperous and upwardly mobile. Whatever its This is probably nowhere clearer than in the architecture
merits, it has contributed to the gloss of gentrification, culture itself. It is almost as if the populist bias of the
itself slowly eroding neighborhoods and producing another movement invited new levels of publicity and promotion.
more insidious kind of uniformity. In the past decade, few The proliferation of books and labels - five different edi-
opportunities have been taken to explore what contextual- tions of Jencks's The Language of Post-Modern Architec-
ism might mean in poorer neighborhoods or in the endless ture, architecture drawings in the art market, editions of
sprawl of suburbia. Certainly here, change, not continuity, the complete works of architects under fifty, architect-
of context is sometimes in order. designed teapots and doghouses, glossy magazine articles,
advertising endorsements for Dexter shoes - signaled
Affirmation and Commodification architecture's new popularity and marketability. The image
of the architect shifted from social crusader and aesthetic
From the 1960s to the present, postmodernism seems to
have changed from being essentially a movement that criti- puritan to trendsetter and media star. This change in
cized aesthetic and social parameters to one that affirms professional definition had ramifications throughout archi-
tectural institutions. In the 1980s most schools stopped
the status quo. However contradictory its generating im-
offering regular housing studios; gentlemen's clubs, resort
pulses, postmodernism's interests in tradition and regional
hotels, art museums, and vacation homes became the stan-
cultures emerged from more than a desire for novelty and
spectacle; they embodied a genuine dissatisfaction with the dard programs. Design awards and professional magazine
course of modernization, one that pointed to the failures of coverage have embodied similar priorities. Advocacy archi-
tecture and pro bono work are almost dead.
technology and artistic novelty as social panaceas.41 By the
early 1980s, however, postmodern architecture largely
abandoned its critical and transgressive dimensions to cre- If this bleak picture of commodification threatens to over-
ate an eclectic and largely affirmative culture, one strik- shadow postmodernism's contributions - its critique of
ingly in accord with the tone of contemporary political modernization and its renewed sense of the city and public
life. It was a trajectory traced by the careers of many archi- space - it poses much broader problems about the power
tects: for Robert Stern, from a critique of public housing in of architecture to counter the forces of capital, indeed, its
the Roosevelt Island Competition to luxury suburban capacity to sustain any critical role at all. Certainly, as the
developments; for Charles Moore, from a sensitive search first critics of the modern movement revealed, architec-
for place and a regionally responsive vocabulary at Sea ture's role has been increasingly diminished by larger eco-
Ranch to outlandish walls and amusement parks at the nomic and social processes.42 But it is also important to
New Orleans World's Fair; for Michael Graves, from the consider what role the theoretical and formal assumptions
startling forms of Fargo-Moorhead to the cartooned imag- of postmodernism may have played in these processes.
ery of Disney Dolphin hotels; and for Andres Duany, Eliz- Commodification suggests the importance of cultural signs:
abeth Plater-Zyberk, and developer Robert Davis, from the that the consumption of objects is as integral to questions
1960s idealism that inspired Seaside to its present Victorian of power as their production. But it also suggests a process
condominiums for Atlanta lawyers. If there were bumps that automatically vitiates any sustained critique, a recy-
and jags in this course, and moments of genuine quality cling of images that leaves material forces untouched.
and insight, the potential for opposition was soon Could it be that postmodernism, by focusing exclusively

38

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 McLeod

16. Robert A. M. Stern, Roose-

velt Island Competition, first
prize, New York, New York,
1975

17. Stern, The Hamptons, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1985

39

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 assemblage 8

18. Charles Moore (Moore,

Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker),
Sea Ranch Condominium, Sea
Ranch, California, 1963-65

19. Charles Moore and William

Turnbull, Wonderwall,
dismantled, New Orleans,
Louisiana, 1982-84

40

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 McLeod

20. Michael Graves, Walt Dis-

ney World Dolphin and Swan
Hotel/Convention Complex,
Walt Disney World, Florida,
1988

41

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 assemblage 8

THE
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64dogabo
22. "The Prince of Princeton,"
House and Garden, July 1988

21. Robert A. M. Stern starring

in Suzanne Stephens' article
"The Fountainhead Syndrome,"
Vanity Fair, April 1984

42

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 McLeod

on image, by detaching meaning from other institutional

issues, might have lent itself readily to commodification,
even potentially spurring its development in architecture?
Th fie Signifilcance
(ClassicStrudes Poststructuralism, Deconstructivism
A new architectural tendency, associated both with post-
structuralist theory and constructivist forms (in school jar-
gon, the slash-crash projects and the Russian train wrecks),
? :: & sii"j, ii,, is in part a vehement reaction against postmodernism and
Vv Alichad4ravc what are perceived as its conservative dimensions: its histo-
ricist imagery, its complacent contextualism, its concilia-
:::4 :4: :,
tory and affirmative properties, its humanism, its rejection
of technological imagery, and its repression of the new.43
This recent wave of critics and designers claims that post-
modern architecture does not confront the present and the
a:. : . ., .l. . current impossibility of cultural consensus (here, despite
/ . t:p.r..3. their rejection of any concept of history, many post-
structuralist advocates fall into zeitgeist and periodizing
? :::.:::i !0 :A rhetoric). Instead of seeking cultural communication,
? : :.i:.[ i
architecture, in their view, should make explicit its pur-
ported obliteration. Fragmentation, dispersion, decenter-
ing, schizophrenia, disturbance are the new objectives; it is
from these qualities that architecture is to gain its "critical"
C'I S

edge.

But the question arises of whether the political role of this

new architectural avant-garde - this second strain of
"postmodernism" - differs significantly from that of the
first movement. Is deconstructivism, with its iconoclastic
rhetoric, its blatant defiance of structural and material con-
23. Michael Graves in adver- ventions, any more potent than postmodernism in counter-
tisement for Dexter Shoes, ing the dominant conservatism of the Reagan era? Or is it
appearing in New York Times, yet another, perhaps even more extreme, manifestation of
1987
the social retreat of recent years?

Before examining some of the political claims of this new

tendency and their possible ramifications, however, several
qualifications must be made. Like the earlier postmodern
architects, these practitioners comprise a disparate group
with different styles and intentions; but unlike their prede-
cessors, who shared a critical assessment of the modern
movement and recognized their own similarities over a
decade of debate and criticism, these individuals have
worked independently for years - and in some instances

43

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 assemblage 8

before the full emergence of historicist tendencies. They

have been connected to each other not by themselves but
by a handful of critics, and through the institutional
sanction of New York's Museum of Modern Art. The
categorization "deconstructivists" itself presents numerous
problems, not the least of which is that many of the partic-
ipants in the recent MoMA exhibition "Deconstructivist
Architecture" themselves reject the label. Among those
included (Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Frank
Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind,
and Bernard Tschumi), only Eisenman and Tschumi pub-
licly espouse an interest in the philosophy of Jacques Der-
rida; yet his theory of deconstruction - which argues that
meaning is infinitely deferred and that there exists no
extralinguistic beginning or end - has been widely used
by critics to explain the philosophical underpinnings of this
new formal trend.44 At the same time, the implication of a
single formal source - early Russian constructivism - is
similarly misleading: other important formal influences on
these designers include Russian constructivism of the mid-
and late 1920s (Koolhaas, Tschumi), German expression-
ism (Coop Himmelblau), the architecture of the 1950s
(Hadid, Koolhaas), and contemporary sculpture (Gehry).
24. Peter Eisenman (Eisenman/ Of the MoMA participants, only Coop Himmelblau,
Robertson), Biocenter for the Hadid, and Libeskind are involved with the extreme frag-
University of Frankfurt, Frank- mentation of diagonal forms - the dismantling of con-
furt am Main, 1987
structivist imagery - that curator Mark Wigley claims as a
basic attribute of deconstructivism.45 Nor do these practi-
tioners share a common cultural heritage or architectural
background. In contrast to the first postmodern critique,
which started as a particularly American movement and
only later became associated with contemporary develop-
ments in Europe, this second tendency has been explicitly
international from the beginning, with the Architectural
Association in London and the former Institute for Archi-
tecture and Urban Studies in New York, both international
exchange centers, being the largest common bonds. At this
moment, as only a few of these designs have been realized,
"deconstructivism" exists primarily as a theoretical debate,
and it remains questionable whether it will gain the wide-
spread currency of the earlier postmodern movement -
whether, in fact, it warrants the designation "movement" at
all. The cost of constructing these "antigravity" fantasies

44

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 McLeod

----- ,L_ = , , - -,
o-.

o i~

i "I

P===L

,-' -- 25. Daniel Libeskind, Micro-

megas, 2, Time Sections, Cran-
brook, 1979

will undoubtedly either inhibit deconstructivism's extension Formal Hermeticism

or tempet its present aesthetic.
The focus on form in deconstructivist architecture, as in
As a reaction to postmodernism, deconstructivism shares postmodern architecture, suggests that here, too, any polit-
certain aspects with modernism. Its preference for abstract ical role that would challenge existing structures must
forms, its rejection of continuity and tradition, its fascina- reside in architecture's nature as an object. And indeed,
tion with technological imagery, its disdain for academi- this would seem to be the thrust of explorations by such
cism, its polemical and apocalyptical rhetoric - are all diverse practitioners as Coop Himmelblau, Hadid, and
reminiscent of an earlier modern epoch. But deconstructiv- Libeskind as well as by poststructuralist apologists such as
ism, as already suggested, also emerged from many of the Wigley and Jeff Kipnis. Site, client, production process,
same impetuses as postmodernism.46 Like postmodernism, and program are rarely the subject of investigation or radi-
this new tendency rejects the fundamental ideological cal transformation.47 In built work, existing institutional
premises of the modern movement: functionalism, struc- boundaries are generally accepted; in theoretical projects,
tural rationalism, and a faith in social regeneration. For all they are simply ignored.
its rhetoric against historical quotation, deconstructivism
also looks to the past for formal sources, only now the It should also be noted, however, that two of the architects
search centers on modernism and machine-age forms. in the MoMA show, Eisenman and Tschumi, have
Finally, deconstructivism, too, emphasizes the formal claimed to stress process over form and have used the
properties of architecture. (In this regard, it is ironic that poststructuralist notion of intertextuality to assert a new
Russian constructivism, with its political and social pro- contamination that challenges the autonomy of the
grams, is considered the primary source.) designed object. Initially a reaction in literary circles to the

45

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 assemblage 8

......... .

.......

--- .......

.. ......

26. Zaha M. Hadid, The Peak (a

gentlemen's club), Hong Kong
Peak International Competi-
ca

tion, first prize, 1982

46

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 McLeod

27. Bernard Tschumi, aerial

view, Parc de la Villette, Paris,
1982-85

ture. In contrast, architects influenced by poststructuralist

formalism of the New Critics, this idea holds that meaning
theory have intentionally stressed abstract compositional
begins before and extends beyond the text; in other words,
not only is literature indebted to previous texts, but a procedures
text's that tend to preclude references beyond form.
very existence depends on all texts. Eisenman translates In the essay "The End of the Classical: The End of the
this concept in architecture through a metaphor of the Beginning,
pal- the End of the End," Eisenman describes his
impsest; Tschumi works literally with superimpositions objective
of as "architecture as independent discourse, free of
external values - classical or any other; that is, the inter-
systems. These excavations and layerings, however, almost
section of the meaning-free, the arbitrary, and the timeless
always operate on a compositional rather than on an insti-
in the artificial."48 Similarly, Tschumi states that "La Vil-
tutional plane, and all involve the architect's (as opposed
to the client's or user's) role in the design process. Thelette . . . aims at an architecture that means nothing, an
combining of conventional functional programs in the architecture
Fol- of the signifier rather than the signified, one
lies at Tschumi's La Villette perhaps comes closest to that
chal-is pure trace or play of language.'49 In its continual
lenging institutional boundaries; but even here it mustdeferral
be of meaning, in its celebration of the endless signi-
acknowledged that in the initial competition brief thefier, gov-poststructuralist theory appears to have produced
ernment had largely conceded the definition of program another
to kind of aestheticization, which privileges form
(language) and "textuality" and which refuses any reality
the architect and, further, that parks themselves lie outside
of traditional strictures of utility (hence follies - and outside
their the object (text). Andreas Huyssen has written that
long history in landscape design). "American poststructuralist writers and critics . . . call for
self-reflexiveness, not, to be sure, of the author-subject,
but of the text; . . . they purge life, reality, history, society
One could, in fact, readily argue that the poststructuralist
influence has led to an even greater focus on form as froman the work of art and its reception, and construct a new
end in itself than was the case in the earlier postmodern autonomy, based on a pristine notion of textuality, a new
experiments. The notion of communication embracedart by for art's sake which is presumably the only kind possible
after the failure of all and any commitment.""5 This formal
many of the historicist postmodernists, however na'ive,
hermeticism seems to be doubly problematic in architec-
countered a completely hermetic conception of architec-

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 assemblage 8

ture, which, as already suggested, does not lend itself read-

ily to the linguistic analogy. The poststructuralist literary
critic can assert that the very process of meaning's displace-
ment involves content, even if its presence is ultimately -
and solipsistically - denied; but for the architecture critic
involved with the abstract formal explorations of decon-
structivist design, even this modest claim is difficult.
Although architecture never completely escapes referential-
ity, highly abstract architecture, like instrumental music,
refers essentially to itself. In other words, signification may
not be so much displaced as nonexistent from a conven-
tional linguistic perspective; instead of an endless signifier,
the result may be a self-reflexive or static signifier. Inter-
textuality, then, is constricted to the realm of architectural
form.

The aestheticization of deconstructivist architecture is cer-

tainly a further retreat from social processes, but it would
be a mistake to dismiss its formal explorations as politically
neutral or irrelevant. Even artistic abstraction has social
implications, and, given the increasingly conservative con-
notations of postmodern figuration, deconstructivism may
well be an instance where abstraction takes on progressive
resonances, as modernism did initially. Nor are the forms
always as mute as their practitioners sometimes claim them
to be. 51 Compared to the tired classical images of post-
modernism, these neoconstructivist forms possess for the
28. Tschumi, diagram of super- moment a freshness and energy that embrace the present
imposition points/lines/surfaces, and the future. Even when the imagery harks back to Rus-
Parc de la Villette, 1982 sian constructivism, it invokes (however self-consciously)
the Revolution's dream of a heroic future. Technology is
here a source of pleasure and play - something to be
exploited and stretched in order to realize new spatial pos-
sibilities. Similarly, steel, glass, corrugated sheet metal,
chain link - the signs of industrial economy - offer new
options and imagery. Some of the designs in the MoMA
exhibition, such as Hadid's and Libeskind's, are arcane,
almost precious, space-age displays of refinement; others,
particularly those of Frank Gehry, gain power from their
matter-of-factness - their rough joints and inexpensive
materials. Whatever despair these projects may ultimately
convey on the social front, they project a vigorous opti-
mism on the artistic front.

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 McLeod

29. Frank O. Gehry, model,

Familian House, Santa Monica,
California, 1978

30. Gehry, Loyola Law School,

Los Angeles, California,
1981-84

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 assemblage 8

But the implications of other aspects of deconstructivism's

formal hermeticism are more problematic. One conse-
quence is a potential narrowing of audience. Although the
general public might respond to the images' aesthetic exu-
berance and technological bravura, most likely only a
small cultural elite will appreciate the iconoclasm of
forms, the inversions of common sense and everyday
expectations. This is not to suggest that this hermeticism
will allow deconstructivism to escape commodification, but
rather that its marketing appeal may well be to a narrower
group than that of postmodern designs. Indeed, decon-
structivist architecture risks the elitist charges that modern
architecture faced with the postmodern critique.

Another consequence of deconstructivism's formal hermeti-

cism has been a denial of urban context and a renewed
focus on the building as object. The fragmentation and
formal explosion of these works means that not only do
they contrast radically with a traditional urban fabric, but
they cannot join readily with other buildings to form
defined public space.52 The single building once again
becomes more important than the city, individual creation
more important than collective accretion. In cities such as
Los Angeles this may be a realistic position, perhaps just a
conformist one; in older urban fabrics it becomes an act of
rebellion and opposition. And here the power of the vision
is paramount. Just as in a few of the earlier postmodern
works historical references could illuminate the tensions
between continuity and fissure, past and present, in certain
deconstructivist projects the fragmentation stands as a tell-
31. Daniel Libeskind, offices ing comment on banality, loss, and poverty of context. It is
and housing, IBA City Edge an urban vision of negation, rejecting past solutions and
Competition, first prize, Berlin,
1987
denying possibilities of reconstituted community. As mar-
ginal avant-garde gestures, these projects promise a certain
critical power, but as larger endeavors - as a general strat-
egy for the numerous and repetitive problems confronting
urban space - they represent a closure, one at odds with
the exuberance of many of the forms themselves.

Politics and Formal Subversion

It is in this moment of negation, the disruption of both the

traditional city and the conventions of architecture, that
several poststructuralist advocates have made their political

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 McLeod

course and have thus brought to light strategies of racism

claims. Using such words as "unease," "disintegration,"
"decentering," "dislocation," Eisenman, Tschumi,sexism,
and colonialism, and the like, in architecture these
critical possibilities are largely precluded once again by
Wigley have stated that this work challenges the status
difficulties of the linguistic analogy. To the extent that
quo, not from the outside, but through formal disruptions
architectural meaning is ambiguous, the connections
and inversions within the object. In other words, formal
between
strategies themselves have the power, in their view, to architectural form and political oppression are
undermine codes and preconceptions - in fact, the rarely
entire as self-evident as those between language and poli
cal oppression.
apparatus of Western humanism itself. If architecture for- And in those situations where the connec
tions are more obvious (for instance, in the monumenta
sakes a political role in the sense espoused by the modern
architecture of Nazi Germany), the political and econom
movement - one seeking the transformation of production
circumstances often mitigate against change in a purely
processes and institutional boundaries - it now gains
political power simply through the cultural sign, orrepresentational
more sphere. Certainly in the present Ameri
context,
precisely, through revealing the disintegration of that sign. any claims linking the formal fragmentation of
deconstructivist architecture to political subversion rema
This objective is indeed an inversion of the optimistic
suspect; any critical properties center on architecture
claims of the earlier postmodern movement. Practitioners
such as Moore, Graves, and Stern thought that they itself.could
54
reconstitute community and regional identity through the
Beyond these particular problems of translation from liter-
formal properties of architecture; some deconstructivist
ary theory to architecture, deconstruction raises deeper
practitioners believe that they can reveal the impossibility
political
of such reconstitutions through the cultural object. Likeand ethical questions that are at the heart of some
Jean-Frangois Lyotard, they proclaim the death of of the difficulties of allying this philosophical position with
master
political praxis. In a world of endless textuality, how can
narratives: equality, reason, truth, notions of collective
the institutional and material causes of representation -
consensus, and so forth. 53 With this collapse of values, art
gains a new redemptive role, one that negates utopianand oppression
aspi- - ever be determined or examined suffi-
ciently
rations but finds hope within contemporary disintegration. to be countered? In a world without truth, history,
or consensus, what is the basis or criterion for action? In
Quite clearly this is no longer the negation of Theodor
Adorno and certain members of the Frankfurt School, other words,
who how does one choose the objects, strategies,
called for artistic retreat in order to preserve a utopian of subversions? Is there any way to avoid total
and goals
vision of the social and political sphere. relativism - a sense that anything goes?

The introduction of deconstruction to architecture Ithasdoes not, of course, take much imagination to envision
contributed to an atittude of critical skepticism andsubversions
scru- of the status quo resulting in greater inequities
and injustices. Regardless of epistemological questions,
tiny, a questioning of existing conventions of composition
and form. Already, deconstructivism has played a some major values, however provisional, and some notion of col-
lective
role in undermining the pseudohistoricism, mindless con- identity are probably essential to political action and
textualism, and conciliatory values of postmodernism.social betterment." But if these issues seem to place an
unjust burden on form, it may be because poststructuralist
Here its impact can be compared to that of traditional
avant-garde practices of negation and subversion. advocates
But out- are caught in delusions of architecture's transfor-
mative power, a situation strangely reminiscent of an ear-
side of the formal sphere, the critical role of deconstructiv-
lier modern period. Even more than the problem of total
ism remains elusive; indeed, many of the more progressive
relativism,
political contributions of poststructuralist theory have dis- the political problems posed by a poststructural-
appeared in its application to architecture. While inist architecture
liter- reside in the paradox whereby the architect
ary criticism poststructuralist analyses have pointedis absolved
out of obligations of authorship but the object is
granteddis-
internal inconsistencies and irrationalities in oppressive considerable subversive power.

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 assemblage 8

IN fl1lw11
*MM

NOW'

DECONSTRUCTING WITH
Aw"Fl%
PETEREISENMAN

BY NNW

JOHN TAYLOR IP
. . . . . . . ....

las do up

opppl,

Ow

em

THE At
wfxm

VM "MR.01
Sit PS

32. "Jo
the Ar
New Y
October 1988

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 McLeod

Such absolution underestimates the architect's power and

precludes a political actor. Following Michel Foucault's
and Roland Barthes's famous declarations of the death of
the author, poststructuralists have denounced authorial
subjectivity and its concomitant claims of intentionality,
originality, truth, and transparent communication.56 In
part this position is an elaboration of modernism's own
denunciation of idealist and romantic notions of creation.
But as the critic Huyssen has asked, how radical or even
useful is such a stand when few today would deny the role
of external forces in creation and reception? Is it a refusal
of responsibility? An inadvertent acceptance of the status
quo - allied with, rather than opposed to, the processes of
modernization?57 And, finally, does the denial of author-
ship prohibit the emergence of alternative voices that
would challenge the ideology of the architect (almost
always male, white, and middle class)?58

At the same time, the overestimation of form's role does

not take into account the power of capital to numb acts of
subversion. Uneasiness, fright, a sense of disruption are
hardly alien to contemporary society; they are in fact so
much a part of our everyday life that they can be easily
ignored or consumed - common fates of avant-garde cul-
ture. Any sensations, pleasurable or painful, instantly
become fodder for both high culture and mass consump-33. "Out," W, 13-20 January 1984
tion. The brief history of deconstructivism leaves little
grounds for political optimism. Just as the progressive
impulses of the postmodern critique became largely swal-
lowed by the movement's own success, so too the critique
posed by these frenzied forms threatens to be undermined
by its sudden fashionability. If anything, the cycle seems
ever more rapid; proclamation and consumption are almost
simultaneous. How subversive can a movement be when it
gains simultaneous sanction from two major museums in
New York City? How sustained can any challenge be when
the forces that have promoted it (Philip Johnson, Century
Club lunches, Princeton University, Max Protetch, and
MoMA) have uncanny similarities to those that helped
institutionalize what it purports to criticize - postmodern
architecture? Ironically, the rhetoric of the death of the
author seems not to dampen the spirit of self-promotion,
hype, and commodification that became so integral to the
dissemination of postmodernism.

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 assemblage 8

Should deconstructivism, however, manage to sustain any overlooked is that the initial critique of modern architec-
subversive qualities in the face of these forces, other ques- ture stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the forces that in
tions arise: Are radical formal statements necessarily the fact constitute "technocratic and bureaucratic society." In
most appropriate means to shelter people whose lives are other words, the reification and reductivism of modernism
already filled with the disruption and frustration that were partly a product of those forces that both strains of
deconstructivist architecture celebrates? Would scarce postmodernism have "reinforced." From the same perspec-
resources for public housing be more appropriately spent tive, historicist and poststructuralist advocates could not
on day-care centers, sports facilities, and larger housing have anticipated the power of an increasingly commercial-
units than on structural acrobatics? The avant-garde desire ized society to control the evolution of an artistic move-
"epater la bourgeoisie" may fulfill the architect's need for a ment, how rapidly efforts to preserve and modify a cultural
radical self-image, but it does little in this era of social situation would themselves become sterile and
retrenchment to improve the everyday life of the poor and commodified.
dispossessed.
What seems to be operating in recent architectural devel-
Perhaps not surprising, women, blacks, and other minori- opments is a process by which a movement, whose initial
ties have been notably silent voices in these recent theoret- critique and experimentation is vigorous and challenging,
ical debates. While the reasons are complex and diverse, a becomes increasingly lifeless and routinized as it becomes
few immediately come to the fore: the elitist atmosphere part of the dominant culture. Thomas Crow has described
induced by both the hermetic forms and an obscure dis- the avant-garde as "a kind of research and development
course, the aggressive rhetoric of subversion that rings of a arm of the culture industry.'"61 Both postmodernism and
new machismo, the exclusionary forums of promotion, deconstructivism can be seen as having staked out areas of
and probably most fundamental, the denial of real institu- cultural practice that retain some vitality in an increasingly
tional transformation.59 Deconstructivist forms reject nos- administered and rationalized society: the postmodernists
talgia, historicist fabrication, and the postmodern denial of by looking to forms that predate the hegemony of bureau-
the present, but they embody another kind of forgetting - cratic modernization; the poststructuralists by challenging
a forgetting of the social itself. A tendency that began as a the precepts of rationality and of order itself. But just as
reaction against the conservative ethos of postmodernism both these tendencies discover areas not yet part of com-
and contemporary political life threatens to become an modity culture, they make their existence discrete and
even more extreme embodiment of that same ethos. visible, and thus subject to the market's manipulation.62

This cycle of appropriation can easily be used to justify the

A Fin de Siicle? cynicism and social passivity that are such strong compo-
In 1980, summarizing architecture's new political cast, nents of postmodernism in all of its colors. Indeed, it is
Robert Stern wrote, "Post-modernism is not revolutionary precisely this cycle that has bred the split between politics
in either the political or artistic sense; in fact, it reinforces and aesthetics: "There's nothing to be done"; hence "Any-
the effect of the technocratic and bureaucratic society in thing goes." But these conclusions assume the total impo-
which we live - traditional post-modernism by accepting tence of the cultural sphere, an impotence that is belied by
conditions and trying to modify them, schismatic post- the fears of both Right and Left and by the initial vitality
modernism [i.e., Eisenman] by proposing a condition out- of postmodernism itself. In some ways, the political resig-
side Western Humanism, thereby permitting Western nation of contemporary architecture is simply a reversal of
Humanist culture to proceed uninterrupted though not the utopian aspirations of the modern movement. Both fall
necessarily unaffected.'"60 However disturbing, Stern's into an either/or mentality that obscures the complexity of
assessment, made on the eve of the Reagan era, seems on relations between form and politics. It would appear that
the mark. But what Stern and most of his contemporaries part of the problem lies in postmodernism's criticism of

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 McLeod

modernism itself. Both the historicist and poststructuralist

the Arts (Westport, Conn.: Green- ment are fully acknowledged in
many of his essays (see especially
tendencies correctly pointed to the failures of the wood
modern Press, 1985), 19-46.
his introduction to Five Architects
3. Stern
movement's instrumental rationality, its narrow teleology, uses the term "schismatic
[New York: Wittenborn, 1972] and
postmodernism"
and its overblown faith in technology, but these two posi- in his essay "The
his essay "The Architecture of Uto-
Doubles of Post-Modern," 75-87,
tions have erred in another direction: in their abjuration of pia," in Mathematics of the Ideal
citing as examples the work of John
all realms of the social and in their assumption that form Villa [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Cage, William Gass, and Peter
Press, 1976]) and in fact become a
remains either a critical or affirmative tool independent
Eisenman. ofEisenman himself
subject of criticism in the setting
social and economic processes. That contemporary employs
archi-the term "decomposition"
forth of his own polemicalagenda.
tecture has become so much about surface, image, toand describe his own work, beginning
The involvement of the modern
with his book House X. The term
play, and that its content has become so ephemeral, so movement with technology and
"deconstructivism" recently received
readily transformable and consumable, is partiallyofficial
a prod-
sanction with the Museum
mass culture has been a topic of
considerable interest among con-
uct of the neglect of the material dimensions of architec-
of Modern Art's exhibition Decon-
temporary scholars, including Man-
ture - program, production, financing, and so forth
structivist-Architecture. Joseph
fredo Tafuri, Stanislaus von Moos,
Giovannini claims to have first
that more directly involve questions of power. And by pre- Nikolaus Bullock, and Jean-Louis
coined the term. See Joseph Gio-
cluding issues of gender, race, ecology, and poverty, post- Cohen.
vannini, "Breaking All the Rules,"
modernism and deconstructivism have also forsaken the
New York Times Magazine, 12 June 5. The word "historicist" refers in
development of a more vital and sustained heterogeneity.
1988. this instance, as it commonly does
The formal and the social costs are too high when the in discussions of postmodern archi-
4. In many instances, of course, tecture, to the use of historical
focus is so exclusively on form. these themes were more visible on a
forms and styles in designs. Until
formal than a material plane. There the emergence of postmodernism,
is no equivalent in architecture crit- the term was most frequently asso-
icism to Clement Greenberg's or ciated with revivalist and eclectic
Notes and experimentation suggest that he Theodor Adorno's theories of mod-
tendencies in nineteenth-century
I would like to thank Alan would not be in sympathy with the
ernism as artistic autonomy. In the architecture, which rejected the
Colquhoun, Stephen Frankel, Rob- subsequent development of post- first generation of historians of
modern architecture. See Daniel static ideal embraced by the previ-
ert Heintges, Mark Treib, Bernard modernism, Nikolaus Pevsner and
Bell, The Cultural Contradictions ous classical concept. Nineteenth-
Tschumi, and, especially, Joan Siegfried Giedion created genealo- century stylistic eclecticism was
Ockman, who all generously of Capitalism (New York: Basic
gies that incorporated the social linked to the emergence of the
reviewed and commented on an Books, 1976), 51-55, 264; idem, vision of the Arts and Crafts move-
philosophical concept of historicism
earlier draft of this article. I am also "Beyond Modernism, Beyond Self" ment, the structural rationalism of in late-eighteenth-century and
in The Winding Passage: Essays
extremely grateful for the insightful engineering, and the aesthetic inno- early-nineteenth-century Germany,
criticism and encouragement of and Sociological Journeys 1960-
vations of cubism (the first two for but it did not result necessarily in
Richard Pommer, Michael Hays, 1980 (Cambridge, Mass.: ABT
Pevsner, the latter two for Giedion). an acceptance of relativism. For a
and Alicia Kennedy. Books, 1980), 288-89; and Robert
In the second generation, historians discussion of historicism in archi-
Stern, "The Doubles of Post-
1. Daniel Bell's criticisms of post- Modern," Harvard Architecture such as Reyner Banham and Wil- tecture, see Alan Colquhoun,
modernism predate most archi- liam Jordy place greater stress on "Three Kinds of Historicism,"
Review 1 (1980): 87. Hilton Kra-
tectural developments and the symbolic dimensions and aca- Oppositions 26 (Spring 1984):
mer's attacks on postmodern archi-
consequently focus on literary and demic heritage of the modern 29-39.
tecture can be found throughout
philosophical trends, which are movement, which undoubtedly
the pages of the New Criterion. 6. See Robert Gutman, Architec-
often at odds in their rejection of more strongly emphasizes its artistic
tural Practice: A Critical View
representation, history, and human- 2. "Beyond the Modern Move- interpretation. Neither group, how-
(Princeton: Princeton Architectural
ism with those in architecture. ment," Harvard Architecture Review ever, presents a teleology of form
that stresses architecture's isolation Press, 1988), esp. 3-12, 21-22.
Robert Stern has, in fact, cited 1 (1980): 4. For a more extended
Bell's cultural criticism as justifica- discussion of the role of "meaning" as a discipline. Colin Rowe perhaps 7. The growing public presence of
in postmodern architecture, see comes closest to the formalism of architecture is itself an indication of
tion for his own postmodern posi-
tion. But Bell's attack on the Mary McLeod, "Architecture," in some art critics of the postwar a broader dissolution of the bound-

populism of Herbert Cans and his The Postmodern Moment: A Hand- period, but the social and symbolic aries between culture, economics,
general disapproval of hedonism book of Contemporary Innovation in aspirations of the modern move- and politics brought on by com-

55

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 assemblage 8

modity capitalism. This dissolution ever, raises other political issues, to were radically different. Third, ies, which are among the most bru-
(underscored in very concrete terms be discussed later in the essay. there was little modern architecture tal, degrading, and corrupt that
by the transformation of a movie in the United States of the 1920s consumer society has ever cre-
12. Le Corbusier, Vers une archi-
star into a president) can be seen as and 1930s against which to com- ated. . . . Las Vegas is not a crea-
tecture (Paris: Editions Cres, 1923);
having made power more diffuse, pare the later works. tion by the people, but for the
Towards a New Architecture, trans.
but also as having made issues of people. It is the final product ...
Frederick Etchells (New York: Prae- 17. See Rowe, Addendum, 1973,
control in everyday life more criti- of more than half a century of
ger, 1960), 211. to "The Architecture of Utopia,"
cal from a political perspective. masked manipulatory violence .
213-17, and Colin Rowe and Fred
13. Claude Schnaidt, Hannes (Tomais Maldonado, Design,
8. See Alan Colquhoun, "Post- Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge,
Meyer: Bauten, Projekte und Schrif- Nature and Revolution: Toward a
modernism and Structuralism: A Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). Rowe's
ten: Buildings, Projects and Writ- Critical Ecology, trans. Mario
Retrospective Glance," Assemblage language of "fragment" and "col-
ings (Teufen: Verlag Arthur Niggli, Domandi [New York: Harper and
5 (1988): 7. lage" in many respects presages
1965), 25. Row, 1972], 60, 65).
contemporary poststructuralist
9. See Walter Benjamin, "The
14. There are, of course, excep- discourse.
Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- 20. Denise Scott Brown, "Pop Off:
tions to this, notably the De Stijl
ical Reproduction," Illuminations, 18. Robert Venturi and Denise Reply to Kenneth Frampton," in A
group and some of the Russian
ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Scott Brown, "'Leading from the View from the Campidoglio, 34-37.
constructivists of the early 1920s.
Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, Rear': Reply to Martin Pawley," Scott Brown argues that Frampton
Paradoxically, we might see modern
1969), 239-40. Architectural Design 40 (July 1970): is caught between two contradictory
architecture's challenge to existing
320, 370; reprinted in A View from positions, an endorsement of Mar-
10. What may appear oppressive social patterns (particularly outside
the Campidoglio: Selected Essays cuse's social critique and a rejection
and totalitarian in one situation Germany) as more successful on a
1953-84, ed. Peter Arnell, Ted of Gropius's social architecture, and
for instance, the stripped classicism formal rather than an economic
Bickford, and Catherine Bergart that he does not acknowledge their
of Nazi Germany - may appear level. The new forms and composi-
(New York: Harper and Row, shared rejection of populist culture.
progressive and democratic in tional strategies raised questions
about traditional hierarchies that 1984), 24.
another - for instance, the similar 21. Also of importance were Her-
forms of Roosevelt's New Deal elevated the monumental over the
19. Kenneth Frampton, "America bert Gans's two other books The
America. Within different contexts, everyday, the public over the pri-
1960-1970: Notes on Urban Images Urban Villagers: Group and Class
the same forms might serve as pro- vate, the formal over the informal, and Theory," Casabella 35, nos. in the Life of Italo-Americans (New
paganda, criticism, or tacit affirma- the male over the female.
359-360 (December 1971): 25-37. York: The Free Press, 1962) and
tion of values. 15. For a discussion of this divi- In this essay Frampton's solution is Popular Culture and High Culture:
sion, see George Baird, "La Dimen- a far cry from the "critical regional- An Analysis and Evaluation of
11. Here I intentionally do not
sion Amoureuse in Architecture," in ism" that he professes a decade Taste (New York: Basic Books,
invoke Walter Benjamin's aspiration
Meaning in Architecture, ed. later. Here he questions how much 1974). Another sociologist fre-
to a complete integration of tech-
Charles Jencks and George Baird legitimate populism remains in quently mentioned during this
nique and content, expressed in his
(New York: Braziller, 1969), 79-99; American culture and proposes the period was Melvin Webber. See,
essay "The Author as Producer," in "semi-indeterminate" infrastructures
and McLeod, "Architecture," 27- especially, Melvin M. Webber,
Reflections, ed. Peter Demetz (New 28. "The Urban Place and the Non-
of Shadrach Woods as urban design
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
models that simultaneously accom- place Urban Realm," in Explora-
1979), 220-38. Benjamin's objec- 16. Several historical reasons exist
modate technology and the specific- tions into Urban Structure
tive is not unrelated to that of some for the failure of the first post-
ities of place. (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
modern architects, especially modern critics to distinguish
between the modernism of the
sylvania Press, 1964). Scott Brown
Hannes Meyer, Ernst May, and Tom~is Maldonado's critique of
and Venturi often cited Gans and
Mart Stam, but the interface 1950s and that of the 1920s and Scott Brown and Venturi's position
Webber in their early writings.
between art and politics has rarely 1930s. First, the continuing pres- is similar to Frampton's. In a chap-
been so clean. Often what is a pro- ence of Gropius and Mies gave to ter entitled "Las Vegas and the 22. Shopping centers have provided
gressive tendency in terms of tech- most Americans an impression of Semiological Abuse," he writes: one of the most important sites for
nique may not be such in terms of modernism's continuity. Second, "There is also a kind of cultural
the dissemination of postmodern
content, and vice versa; and many American practitioners of the nihilism which, consciously or architecture outside of major metro-
depending on the context, one 1950s (in contrast to those in Italy, unconsciously, exalts the status quo. politan areas.
dimension may take on more politi- for instance) did not themselves dis- We find an example of it among
cal importance than another. The tinguish their work from that of the those who are singing paeans to the 23. See Richard L. Berke,
total separation of the two, how- prewar period, even if the forms 'landscape' of certain American cit- "Dukakis Says He Would Commit

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 McLeod

$3 Billion to Build New Housing,"29. Robert Venturi, "The RIBA has brought a proliferation of to architects of Learning from Las
New York Times, 29 June 1988. Annual Discourse," Transactions 1 "Charleston Place," whether the Vegas, perhaps in a desire to make
(1981-82); reprinted in A View context is a Westchester suburb or a connections to their own disci-
24. Many (including Michael
from the Campidoglio, 109. Florida resort community. plines. Complexity and Contradic-
Graves, Thomas Gordon Smith, tion in Architecture had a much
and Steven Peterson), of course, 30. Quoted in Paolo Portoghesi, 35. Ando does not appear in the
greater impact on architects, and
have not. One of the strongest Postmodem: The Architecture of the original essay, but is often cited in
the vast majority of its examples are
Postindustrial Society (New York:
defenses of postmodern architecture Frampton's lectures.
from high culture. It was really
coming from the Left is Linda Rizzoli, 1983), 33. Johnson wrote
36. These qualities could, of only at the Yale University School
Hutcheon's article, "The Politicsthis
of letter after having read Jiirgen
course, be regional, if techniques of Architecture that Scott Brown
Postmodernism: Parody and His-Joedicke's History of Modem and materials were particular to a and Venturi's interest in pop cul-
Architecture.
tory," Cultural Critique 5 (Winter region. But that hardly seems to be ture stimulated a major response. It
1986-87): 179-207. Hutcheon the case with the materials, such as
31. The word "postmodern" should is probably fair to say that most fig-
claims here that postmodern works concrete block and metal paneling,
be qualified in reference to Ven- urative imagery in postmodernism
are "resolutely historical and in- used by Ando and Botta. derives from historical architectural
turi's work. Certainly, his mother's
escapably political precisely because
house predates any public acknowl- 37. Marc Treib, "Regionalism and styles rather than popular culture.
they are parodistic" and that they
edgment of the movement, South Florida Architecture," con- 40. The document states: "The
expose "the contradictions of
although it probably influenced the ference paper, The Architectural
modernism in an explicitly political architect is neither the omnipotent
subsequent development of post- Club of Miami, 1986. In Florida,
light." The ease with which parody master nor the slave of spacio-
modernism in the United States
loses its critical edge will be for example, compare the regionally cultural models, universal or local.
more than any other design. Ven-
addressed later. responsive designs of Paul Rudolph, His proposed role is to interpret
turi himself has been extremely
Rufus Nim, and Robert Brown of them within the framework of the
25. Charles Jencks, The Language
critical of most postmodern archi- the 1950s and the early 1960s to continuity of civilization. Reducing
tecture for its "simplistic, esoteric"
of Post-Modem Architecture, 3d ed. the conventional wall surfaces and architecture to its utilitarian func-
(New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 37. use of historicist forms and for its
roof details of most contemporary tion is to remove its role as a means
dependence on a high-art heritage. postmodern architecture. Of course, of social communication. From the
26. Robert Venturi, Complexity
and Contradiction in Architecture See, especially, Venturi, "The some modern architects did experi- moment the language of models
RIBA Annual Discourse," and, ment with air conditioning as one
(New York: Museum of Modern was replaced with the newspeak of
idem, "Diversity, Relevance and response to climatic conditions, and
Art, 1966), 44. towers, bars and grands ensembles,
Representation in Historicism, or in the case of Le Corbusier's Salva- the town has become monotonous,
27. For a more extended discussion
Plus Ca Change ... plus a Plea for tion Army Pavilion the results were illegible and dead for its inhabit-
of some of these issues, see Pattern all over Architecture with a disastrous. ants. A town must be built on the
McLeod, "Architecture," 31-42. Postscript on my Mother's House,"
basis of elemental housing models,
Paradoxically, for Walter Benjamin Architectural Record (June 1982): 38. The quote continues: "I like
roads and squares." Quoted in Por-
the distracted mode of architecture's 114-19; reprinted in A View from that, but am growing impatient
toghesi, Postmodern, 46.
reception is paradigmatic of the new the Campidoglio, 104-18. with fifty-year swings, and wonder
whether a more suitable model for 41. See Andreas Huyssen's more
media - film, photography,
32. Jencks, The Language of Post-
journalism - on which he places us might be Goldilocks, of Three general, and extremely insightful,
Modem Architecture, 37.
so much political hope. But in con- Bears fame, who found some things comments about the trajectory of
trast to the postmodernists who 33. Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civi- (Papa Bear's) too hot or too hard or postmodernism, "Mapping the Post-
stress architecture's reception as art, lization and National Cultures" too big, and other things (Mama modern," in After the Great Divide:
Benjamin seeks transformation (1961), in History and Truth, trans. Bear's) too cold, too soft, or too Modernism, Mass Culture, Post-
through a gradual, almost uncon- C. A. Kelbey (Evanston: North- small, but still other things (Baby modernism (Bloomington and Indi-
scious, change of habit and expec- western University Press, 1965), Bear's) just right, inhabitable, as we anapolis: Indiana University Press,
tation; in other words, a reception 277; quoted in Kenneth Frampton, architects would say" (Charles 1986), esp. 188.
of distraction rather than of atten- "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Moore: Buildings and Projects
42. Venturi, for instance, writes:
tion is now to architecture's politi- Six Points for an Architecture of 1949-1986, ed. Eugene J. Johnson
"Industry promotes expensive indus-
cal advantage. See Benjamin, "The Resistance," in The Anti-Aesthetic: [New York: Rizzoli, 1986]). trial and electronic research but not
Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. architectural experiments, and the
39. Critics coming from other dis-
ical Reproduction," 239-40. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Wash.: Federal government diverts subsi-
ciplines, such as Fredric Jameson
Bay Press, 1983), 16-17. and Andreas Huyssen, seem, how- dies toward air transportation, com-
28. Stern, "The Doubles of Post-
Modern," 87. 34. For instance, the last decade ever, to exaggerate the importance munication, and the vast enterprises

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 assemblage 8

of war or, as they call it, national lematic is the inclusion of Gehry in work differs from that of the other 54. That efforts to construct an
security, rather than toward the this group, as his use of the diago- designers in the MoMA exhibition architectural model of "logo-
forces for the direct enhancement of nal stems more from perceptual and from most student work that centrism" exclude more of architec-

life. The practicing architect must concerns in contemporary sculpture embraces a neoconstructivist tural history than they include
admit this" (Complexity and Con- than from a revivalism of construc- aesthetic. raises doubts about whether any-
tradiction, 44). tivist imagery. Influenced by the thing other than the latest architec-
48. Peter Eisenman, "The End of
work of this group, however, a the Classical: The End of the tural style is being "deconstructed"
43. In choosing to discuss post-
trend toward formal fragmentation Beginning, the End of the End," or disturbed at all. For instance, in
modernism and deconstructivism,
can be observed among younger the exhibition catalogue for the
which have both been placed by Perspecta 21 (1984): 166.
architects and students: the post- MoMA show Mark Wigley writes,
critics under a broader rubric of
modern historicist forms of the late 49. Tschumi, Cinegramme Folie, "Buildings are constructed by taking
postmodernism, I do not mean to 8.
1970s and early 1980s have virtually simple geometric forms - cubes,
suggest that I am addressing the
disappeared from student drafting 50. See especially the critiques of cylinders, spheres, cones, pyramids,
entire contemporary field. In the
boards. Huyssen, "Mapping the Post- and so on - and combining them
United States numerous architec-
modern," 206-11, and Edward W. into stable ensembles, following
tural firms, in fact, still practice a 46. In fact, at various moments
Said, "The Problem of Textuality: compositional rules which prevent
form of "late modernism," whose both Tschumi and Eisenman have
Two Exemplary Positions," in Aes- any one form from conflicting with
vocabulary of stripped-down forms called for a broader conception of
thetics Today, ed. Morris Philipson another. No form is permitted to
is highly indebted to the Inter- the term "postmodernism," one that
and Paul J. Gudel, rev. ed. (New distort another; all potential conflict
national Style. As well, among would embrace all contemporary
York: New American Library, is resolved." Mannerist, baroque,
other currents, numerous practi- movements that reject the rational
1980), 113-29. One of the most picturesque, and German expres-
tioners are exploring an abstract instrumentality of modernism and sionist architecture - not to men-
cogent political critiques of decon-
architectural vocabulary, which its concomitant claims of universal-
struction is Barbara Foley, "The tion many areas of non-Western
cannot readily be classified as either ity. See especially Peter Eisenman,
Politics of Deconstruction," in architecture - are ignored in this
deconstructivist or modernist. "The Futility of Objects: Decompo- Rhetoric and Form: Deconstruction reductive and ahistorical account.
sition and the Processes of Differ-
44. Libeskind's philosophical stance at Yale, ed. Robert Con Davis and See Mark Wigley, "Deconstructivist
ence," Harvard Architecture Review
derives from phenomenology, and Ronald Schleifer (Norman, Okla: Architecture," in Deconstructivist
Koolhaas's eclectic position seems 3 (1984): 66, 81; and Bernard
University of Oklahoma Press, Architecture, ed. Philip Johnson
more indebted to surrealism and the Tschumi, Cinegramme Folie: Le
1985), 113-34. and Mark Wigley (New York:
hedonism of the 1960s than to Parc de la Villette (Princeton:
Museum of Modern Art, 1988).
Princeton Architectural Press, 51. Here, the deconstructivist
poststructuralist theories. Both
1987), 7. Among the critics who model of "no meaning/endless 55. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's
Hadid and Gehry are loath to give
have attempted to link these two meaning" risks being as deceptive as term "strategic essentialism" seems
philosophical labels to their work.
tendencies is Hal Foster. See espe- the postmodern assumption of especially appropriate in this con-
The differences between Eisenman
cially his essay "(Post)Modern "transparent communication. " text. See In Other Worlds: Essays
and Libeskind's position are articu-
Polemics," Perspecta 21 (1984); in Cultural Politics (New York:
lated clearly in Libeskind's essay 52. Eisenman specifically precludes
reprinted in Recodings: Art, Spec- Methuen, 1987).
"Peter Eisenman and the Myth of the creation of place as an objec-
Futility," Harvard Architecture tacle, Cultural Politics (Port Town- 56. See Michel Foucault, "What Is
tive. In an unpublished manuscript
Review 3 (1984): 61-63. send, Wash.: Bay Press, 1987), of 1987, he states that "if architec- an Author?" in Language, Counter-
121-36. Like Stern's essay "The ture traditionally has been about Memory, Practice: Selected Essays
45. Certainly, Koolhaas's and Doubles of Post-Modern," Foster's
'topos,' that is, an idea of place, and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bou-
Eisenman's architecture has been
"(Post)Modern Polemics" outlines then to be 'between,' is to search chard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard
largely orthogonal, and any diago- two kinds of postmodernism: neo-
for 'atopos,' the atopia within topos" and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell
nals that appear (one suspects conservative (eclectic historicism)
MoMA must have been hard (Eisenman, "The Blueline Text," University Press, 1977), 113-38;
and poststructuralist (decentering of 5). I am grateful to Sharon Haar for and Roland Barthes, "The Death of
pressed to find the "right" Koolhaas
the object), with Eisenman's work, the Author," in Image, Music,
project) are within standard modern alerting me to this text.
again, serving as the only example Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath
formal practice. But Eisenman's of architecture in the latter 53. Jean-FranCois Lyotard, The
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1977),
combination of orthogonal forms category. Postmodern Condition: A Report on
142-48.
and diagonal "events" is more remi- Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington
niscent of Le Corbusier and early 47. Both Tschumi and Koolhaas and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: 57. Huyssen argues that the rejec-
Stirling than of some of his decon- have focused on program in their University of Minnesota Press, tion of authorship in poststructural-
structivist peers. Perhaps most prob-urban projects; in this respect their 1984). ist theory "merely duplicates on the

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 McLeod

and Mass Culture," in Modernism

level of aesthetics and theory what Figure Credits
capitalism as a system of exchangeand Modernity, The Vancouver 7, 13, 18, 19, 24, 27, 28, 30.
relations produces tendentially inConference Papers, ed. Benjamin Courtesy of the architects.
H. D. Buchloh, Serge Guilbaut,
everyday life: the denial of subjec-
8. Photograph by Rollin R.
and David Solkin (Halifax, Nova
tivity in the very process of its con-
Lafrance.
struction. Poststructuralism thus Scotia: Press of the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design, 1983),
attacks the appearance of capitalist 9. Photograph by Peter Aaron,
culture - individualism writ large
253. The following argument draws ESTO.
- but misses its essence." (Huys-
on Crow's analysis. 12. Photograph by the author.
sen, "Mapping the Postmodern,"
62. The same, of course, can be 14. Photograph by Paschall/Taylor.
213).
said of the critic, and in writing this
58. Ibid. The feminist Sandra Gil- article, I have often wondered 16. Photograph by Ed Stocklein.
bert has labeled such "subjectless" whether I am only fueling the 17. Photograph by Cymie Payne.
theory "father speech," because it fashionability of deconstructivism by
20. Photograph by Wiliam Taylor.
once more refuses women a public giving it so much attention. But for
basis for speech and solidarity. See the critic, as for the architect, the 25. Forum 30, no. 2 (1985-86):
Gerald Graff, "Feminist Criticism 82.
only means to counter this cycle is
in the University: An Interview with continual scrutiny and questioning. 26, 29, 31. Deconstructivist Archi-
Sandra M. Gilbert," in Criticism in This may not prevent cooptation, tecture (New York: Museum of
the University, ed. Gerald Graff but it may slow its processes and Modern Art, 1988).
and Reginald Gibbons (Evanston: raise new possibilities for cultural
All other illustrations from publica-
Northwestern University Press, and political exploration.
1985), 119; see also Bruce Robbins, tions as noted in captions.
"The Politics of Theory," Social
Text 18 (Winter 1987-88), 11.
Although many feminist and
minority critics have found aspects
of poststructuralist theory liberating
as far as it dismantles unspoken
assumptions of patriarchal discourse
- older, oppressive categories such
as "race," "women," "the people"
- many of these same individuals
also fear that poststructuralist theory
subverts the categories of resistance
itself.

59. For an insightful analysis of

recent deconstructionist rhetoric in
architectural discourse, see Joan
Ockman, "Some Rhetorical Ques-
tions/In Response to Mark Rakatan-
sky," Conference on Architectural
Theory, SOM Foundation, Chi-
cago, 9-11 September 1988. (The
proceedings of this conference are
to be published in the coming
year.)

60. Stern, "The Doubles of Post-

Modern," 82-83.

61. Thomas Crow, "Modernism

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