Word: postmodernist
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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...astonishing acrobatic stance of a new room cantilevered from the roof of a bungalow in Birmingham. These transformations are a spontaneous expression of the "complexity and contradiction in architecture" that Robert Venturi, in his famed book of that title, asked postmodern architects to design into their buildings. But no postmodernist would dare produce the assaults on aesthetics that some of these homeowners do. Their houses wear curlers to the block party and are unself-conscious about it. As one Vergara subject cheerfully replied when asked about the style of her renovated house, "Early American Salvation Army...
Later architects, from Robert Venturi to Michael Graves, may seem to be coming out in favor of vernacular, complexity, decoration, memory and whatnot-the whole postmodernist bag of tricks, from Cape Cod shingles to Roman arches-but are all pointy-headed clones of the Compound, still seeking to exalt the Word (theory and manifestos) over the Act (workable buildings). Real populist architecture has no chance. Within the taste centers, Wolfe says, "there was no way for an architect to gain prestige through an architecture that was wholly unique or specifically American in spirit." What was this spirit, this ignored Zeitgeist...