Pop Postmodern

Postmodern inspired by pop art

Urban, irreverent, playful, ironic
 • Anti-authoritarian by nature,
postmodernism refused to
recognise the authority of any
single style or definition of what
art should be.
• It collapsed the distinction
between high culture and mass or
popular culture, between art and
everyday life.
• The term was first used around
1970. As an art movement
postmodernism to some extent
defies definition – as there is no
one postmodern style or theory on
which it is hinged. It embraces
many different approaches to art
Postmodernism, Pop making, it began with pop art in
the 1960s.

Culture and everyday life • Tate Gallery

 • Because postmodernism
broke the established rules
about style, it introduced a
new era of freedom and a
sense that ‘anything goes’.
• It can be confrontational and
controversial, challenging the
boundaries of taste; but most
crucially, it reflects a self-
Ironic and awareness of style itself.
• Often mixing different artistic
playful and popular styles and
media, postmodernist art can
also consciously and self-
consciously borrow from or
ironically comment on a
range of styles from the past.
• In the image: Piazza d’Italia,(1978) by
Charles W. Moore. Detail of one
fountain with Moore’s face duplicated
.
 • Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s in
America and Britain, drawing inspiration from sources in popular and commercial
culture. In fact pop both took art into new areas of subject matter and developed
Pop Art new ways of presenting it in art and can be seen as one of the first manifestations
of postmodernism.
• In The image, Roy Lichtenstein Whaam! 1963. Tate Gallery
 Pop Art
• Began as a revolt against the dominant
approaches to art and culture and
traditional views on what art should be.
• Young artists felt that what they were
taught at art school and what they saw in
museums did not have anything to do with
their lives or the things they saw around
them every day. Instead they turned to
sources such as Hollywood movies,
advertising, product packaging, pop music
and comic books for their imagery.
• In the United States, pop style was a return
to representational art (art that depicted
the visual world in a recognisable way) and
the use of hard edges and distinct forms,
using impersonal, mundane imagery.
• In the image: Roy Lichtenstein, The crack
 Post modernism and
Popular Culture
• Postmodernism has a relation with the
development of popular culture in the late
twentieth century in the advanced capitalist
democracies of the West.
Whether postmodernism is seen as a new
historical moment, a new sensibility or a new
cultural style, popular culture is cited as a terrain
on which these changes can be found.
• The postmodern ‘new sensibility’ rejected the
cultural elitism of modernism. The response of
the postmodern ‘new sensibility’ to
modernism’s canonization was a re-evaluation
of popular culture.
• The area of contact was mass produced urban
culture: movies, advertising, science fiction, pop
music.
• Nashrullah Mambrol, 2018
Pop Postmodern
architecture

• As with many cultural movements,

some of postmodernism's most
pronounced and visible ideas can
be seen in architecture.
The functional and formalized
shapes and spaces of
the modernist movement are
replaced by unapologetically
diverse aesthetics: styles collide,
form is adopted for its own sake,
and new ways of viewing familiar
styles and space abound. It is
eclectic rather than monolithic,
ironic rather than idealistic,
ornamental rather than functional.
• Image: Swan and Dolphin Hotels, 1990, Michael
Graves.
• In 1968, Venturi, his partner Denise
Scott Brown and architect Steve Learning from Las Vegas(1972)
Izenour took their class of Yale
architecture students to Las Vegas,
claiming the commercial strip was
America’s equivalent to a Roman
piazza or square—and therefore
worthy of study. The research was
later published as Learning from Las
Vegas, which coined the terms
“duck” and “decorated shed” to
describe the architecture of the day.
• The book highlights that ornamental
and decorative elements
“accommodate existing needs for
variety and communication”. Here
Venturi stresses the importance of
the building communicating a
meaning to the public (which
necessitates non-functional
elements of the building). The
Postmodernists in general strive to
achieve this communication
through their buildings.
• A prime example of inspiration for Learning from Las Vegas(1972)
postmodern architecture lies along
the Las Vegas Strip, which was
studied by Robert Venturi in his
book celebrating the strip's ordinary
and common architecture.
• Learning from Las Vegas (1972),
deconstructed the signs and symbols
of the Las Vegas strip and divided
buildings into ‘ducks’, the sculptural
buildings that embodied their
message within the structure, and
the ‘decorated shed’, which used
signs to communicate its message.
• In practice, it meant the rediscovery
of the various meanings contained
within the mainly classical
architecture of the past and applying
them to modern structures. The
result was an architecture that
embodied historical allusion and
dashes of whimsy.
 Main
Features
✓ Result of postmodern lifestyle.
✓ Plastic and architectonic
reference to pop urban
culture.
✓ Facade as a medium between
the building and its
surroundings.
✓ Fashion, techonoly, capitalism
and consumism are reflected
in an irreverent way.
✓ Ironic, irreverent, playful.
✓ Objects conceived as
products.

Seattle ArtMuseum. VSBA 1991

 Pop Postmodern
features

Building as a As a mean Direct Facade as a

product of allusion to médium
communicat pop culture
ion
The facades are Wether it is the Duck concept
the wrapping function of the Decorated shed between the
for the inside building or the concept building and its
product product inside surroundings.

Team Disney building Burbank, California, Michael Graves

1986
 • "The Walt Disney Company coined the phrase 'entertainment architecture' to
Team Disney describe what we had created."
• At Disney, storytelling is key in everything that the company does; every
Buildings By Michael project must be grounded in a spectacular story in order to work and create
something meaningful. Similarly, storytelling is at the heart of great
Graves architecture. Good architecture not only serves a purpose, it rises to the level
of art and challenges people to think and or evoke emotion. Mitchell Stein.
 • For the Disney project, Graves and his team
Michael Graves looked to the local landscape and climate, in
order to design buildings that would be
Dolphin Hotel unique to the Orlando location.
• Creating an exuberance that complemented
in Disney Disney's properties and their location in
Florida, the facades of the two hotels are
Orlando decorated with large-scale patterns. Banana
leaves cover the Dolphin.
Michael Graves
Swan Hotel
• The pair of vast hotel buildings,
totalling two million square feet, sit
opposite each other on either side
of a lake, but are connected by a
causeway across the waterside.
• The smaller Swan repeats its sister
venue's gently arching backbone
but has only two wings. Abstract
waves can be found across
thefacade of Swan, borrowing from
Florida's wet tropical landscape.
Denver Public
Library, Michael
Graves, 1995.
Building conceived as a • This McDonald’s was built in the
1990s by Robert Venturi and Denise

product. Scott Brown in Buena Vista, Florida.

• Venturi and Scott Brown describe
their design as “a classic example of
American commercial architecture
defined by signage and symbolism
within a roadside context whose
conventional order we tweaked, in
cooperation with McDonald’s.”
• Like the architect of the very first
McDonald’s, Venturi and Scott
Brown weren’t designing a building
with a sign, but a building that was a
sign. This McDonald’s, unmissable
from a passing car, is what Venturi
and Scott Brown would call an
“architecture of communication,”
• Jimmy Stamp. Smithsonian.
 Mc Donald’s
Building original design
Mérida, Yucatan
conceived as a
product.
✓ The facades are the wrapping
for the inside product.
✓ Glass walls rememoring plastic
wraps. The “toy” is inside.
✓ The “happy meal box”.
✓ Strong, pop colors and
contrasts.
✓ Direct allusion to objects of pop
culture.
Rainforest Café,
Palisade.DaroffDesign.
• This Rainforest Café project
initiated our 18 location
international roll-out of the
Rainforest brand.
• each location was a unique
design and required local health
agency and building code
compliance. At the peak of this
international roll-out, 25 of our
talented DDI architects, interior
designers and project managers
were working full time on these
18 Rainforest Café projects.
• Daroff Design
Walt Disney
Emergency Service
VSBA(1994)
• The central fire rescue headquarters
will be the first back-ofhouse
support facility visible to park
visitors at this complex of family-
oriented theme parks near Orlando,
Florida.
• The image of the building has been
carefully designed to represent a
traditional imagery of the American
firehouse: patterns and colors of red
bricks and Dalmatian dogs
exaggerated in scale adorn the
exterior front in porcelain enamel
panels.
Frank Wells
Building, BSVA
• The Frank G. Wells Building is a five-
story office building adjacent to the
Main Alameda gate on Disney’s
Burbank Studio lot. It is a large building
designed to be sympathetic with both
the low-key Kem Weber buildings that
make up the fabric of the campus and
the grand Team Disney Building that it
faces. It is laid out as a loft building
with standard leasable office depths
surrounding an interior courtyard. The
modest materials of the base building
are replaced by more precious
materials at the entry. The 2-D
porcelain enamel film reels spin off a
3-D film strip, which becomes the
entrance sign.
 • It is dedicated to transforming
1992 communities through innovative,
child-centered learning with a vision to
Children's spark a passion for lifelong learning in
all children. Founded in 1980 and
Museum of housed in a whimsical building
designed by VSBA, it offers a multitude
Houston VSBA of innovative exhibits and bilingual
learning programs for kids
Austrian Travel • "With these kinds of
projects Hollein seemed to channel a
Agency, Vienna, Viennese culture that merged Freud's
unconscious with Loo's mystery and
Austria, Hans polemic. What these projects seemed
Hollein1979 to say was that architecture was far
more than building – or as he put it so
succinctly 'alles ist architecture'."
Joyería Schulin
Hans Hollein 1974
Retti Candle
shop, Vienna
1966
Hans Hollein
Piazza D’Italia Charles Willard
Moore(1978)
• the Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans, designed by Charles Moore,
is one of the few icons of Postmodern architecture that isn't a
building.
• Both a memorial and a public space, the piazza is a
manifestation of Moore's ideas of an "inclusive" architecture,
which can speak to and be enjoyed by anyone.
• Completed in 1978, the piazza was conceived as an urban
redevelopment project and a memorial to the city's Italian
citizens – past and present. It was a monument to the
achievements of Italians, so it references Italian culture
directly – the country's architecture, urbanism, and geography
are all represented.
• “A seminal Postmodern landscape". Charles Birnbaum,
• Moore took a highly pictorial
approach to designing his urban
plaza. Colonnades, arches and a
bell tower are arranged in a
curving formation around a
fountain. The layers of
structures are brightly coloured,
trimmed in neon and metallics,
and ornamented with various
classical orders.
 • The paved surface of the plaza
is equally embellished and
textured. Light and shadows
Piazza D’Italia play across the surface of the
plaza, and views through the
Charles Willard various openings create a
complex spatial experience for
Moore(1978) visitors moving through the
colonnades. Uplighting and
neon accents animate the space
at night.
Pop Postmodern in • Building as a display of the product. Most of the Pop Postmodern
examples that ares still in our cities have an advertising purpose. Tese
Yucatán? are both “Ducks”. Can you identify two buildings in your city?