Table Of ContentSir Terry Farrell and Adam Nathaniel Furman
REVISITING
POSTMODERNISM
© Sir Terry Farrell and Adam Nathaniel Furman
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CONTENTS
SIR TERRY FARRELL
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV
ABOUT THE AUTHORS V
PREFACE VII
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1
POSTMODERNISM IN ITS HISTORICAL PLACE 5
CHAPTER 2
THE ‘HIGH STYLE’ PERIOD OF POSTMODERNISM 19
CHAPTER 3
WE ARE ALL POSTMODERNISTS NOW 59
– IMAGE GALLERY –
ADAM NATHANIEL FURMAN
CHAPTER 4
MODERNIST ORTHODOXY CHALLENGED 123
CHAPTER 5
THE POSTMODERN SPIRIT TAKES HOLD 137
CHAPTER 6
BACKLASH AND RESURGENCE 177
REFERENCES 194
IMAGE CREDITS 196
INDEX 197
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is always a pleasure to be invited to write about a subject close to my heart and being asked by
RIBA Publishing to write this book has given me the opportunity to revisit my experience of
Postmodernism, and the chance to highlight people and projects that I think exemplify all that
makes Postmodernism great. This was further enhanced by being able to co‑author with Adam
Nathaniel Furman, a young designer whose enthusiasm for the subject has brought an extra
dimension to the book.
My assistant, Emma Davies, has been invaluable in organising research, text and images. My
heartfelt gratitude also goes to Abigail Grater, who edited the text. I would also like to thank
Ginny Mills and Richard Blackburn at RIBA Publishing, whose help and advice was much
appreciated.
As with all books, so many people are involved in varying degrees but I would like to take this
opportunity to thank all the architects and photographers who have contributed.
Sir Terry Farrell, London 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sir Terry Farrell obtained a first class honours degree from Newcastle University (his home town)
and then a masters from the University of Pennsylvania, on a Harkness Fellowship where he
studied under Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott‑Brown. In 1965 he set up in partnership
with Nicholas Grimshaw and then in his own right in 1980 to the present time where he now has
offices in London and Hong Kong. He has won many architecture and planning awards, including
the RTPI Gold Medal (2017) and a knighthood (2001) for services to architecture and urban
design. From a long career his built achievements include MI6, Embankment Place, and
headquarters for the Home Office in London and in China, Beijing South and Guangzhou stations,
KK100, with The Peak and British Consulate in Hong Kong. He has written and published
extensively, including Shaping London and The City As A Tangled Bank: Urban Design versus
Urban evolution. At the request of the UK government he led the recent ‘Farrell Review of
Architecture and the Built Environment’, described by the culture minister as ‘the most thorough
and wide‑ranging exercise that has taken place in this sector for generations.’
Adam Nathaniel Furman is a London‑based designer whose practice ranges from architecture and
interiors to sculpture, installation, writing and product design. He pursues research through his
teaching role at Central St Martins, and the research group ‘Saturated Space’, which he co‑runs at
the Architectural Association, exploring colour in architecture and urbanism through events,
lectures and publications. He was Designer in Residence at the Design Museum in London for
2013–14, received the Blueprint Award for Design Innovation in 2014, was awarded the UK Rome
Prize for Architecture 2014–15, was one of the Architecture Foundation’s ‘New Architects’ in
2016, and was described by Rowan Moore, architecture critic for the Observer, as one of the four
‘rising stars’ of 2017. He has worked at OMA Rotterdam, Ron Arad Architects, Farrells and Ash
Sakula, and has written for Abitare, the RIBA Journal, Icon, the Architectural Review, Apollo
Magazine, Architecture Today, amongst others. He is the founder of the Postmodern Society, has
actively advocated and lobbied to increase awareness of architecture from the period, and led the
successful campaign to list the UK’s first Postmodern building, Comyn Ching Triangle.
PREFACE
In this book Adam Nathaniel Furman and I will concentrate on re‑visiting perceptions of
Postmodernism in architecture (rather than widening our remit to include planning, theory or
philosophy, although these are touched upon), with the aim of sharing a deep appreciation of the
buildings, architects and ideas that made the era such fertile ground for architectural invention.
Both of our sections are broadly divided into three eras: the influential early stages of what grew
to be known as Postmodernism, the high period when the approach came to dominate architecture
around the world, and its apparent decline and incorporation into more recent generations of
practice.
We present two different but complementary perspectives of the same periods. My personal
experience and thoughts about the Postmodern movement as a participant in these times will delve
into the movement from the viewpoint of a participant. I revisit the period and its buildings as a
lived experience, with explanations of the forces and influences that helped me to understand
and frame what was occurring in the world generally at the time, and how it was transforming my
own and others’ approach to architecture. My writing concentrates mainly on the movement in the
UK, although I do touch on international projects that influenced me and colleagues in the UK at
the time.
Whereas I am remembering and recalling, Adam looks back with the perspective of someone for
whom the era is entirely historical, a period he did not experience, but whose content and
international spread he finds inspiring and relevant. With a broad overview and with new eyes
that see the period through the lens of the twenty‑first century, his writing covers the development
of Postmodern architecture internationally, with particular focus on Italy and the United States.
This book aims to return to the buildings of this period, sharing their richness, diversity and
brilliance, with an emphasis on what was interesting, beautiful and unique about the architecture
which emerged from this unusually fertile moment in history. We hope that this book will act as a
starting point for those to whom this architectural period is new, encouraging appreciation,
interest, further reading, and hopefully the individual rediscovery of those aspects and architects
that are found to be of particular interest.
There is a vast amount of theory and philosophy on the subject, as well as countless more brilliant
architects and buildings which we would very much like to have cited here, however in order that
we be able to tell a broad introductory story within the limits of this book, we decided to include
only those that directly aided the texts’ narrative arc, and to focus mostly on buildings and
architecture, at the expense of theory and discourse. We hope that the book will encourage those
with such inclination to explore these theories and other architectures.
Sir Terry Farrell, 2017
IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN
It is generally accepted that the second half of the twentieth century was
characterised by ‘postmodernity’. But in the world of design and
architecture the term ‘Postmodern’ usually refers to a specific style, and
even to a quite limited and specific period – actually just over a decade
– from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Whilst in the worlds of literature,
music, film, theatre and even philosophy, the term normally reflects a
broad and open sweep of a long‑lasting cultural epoch, in design and
architecture it is seen as a narrow, odd, even aberrant and short‑lived
passing phase of a ‘style’.
‘Postmodern’ as a term wasn’t born in the 1970s. Indeed it was first used much
earlier and in many fields: in painting in the late nineteenth century; in
philosophy just before the First World War; in art, literature and music in the
1920s and 1930s. Postmodernity was consummated officially and as a broad
cultural entity for all disciplines by none other than the eminent historian
Arnold Toynbee in 1939, when he referred to ‘our own Post-Modern Age’.1
‘Modernism’ was identified primarily by design and architecture as the
enduring thrust of the Bauhaus – and it was in these fields that the Bauhaus
revolution was seen as not only championing designers and architecture
but firmly placing these disciplines within the ‘Avant Garde’. They assumed
a leadership role in this exceptionally creative movement which, in my
view, was a close identification that they tenaciously held on to whilst the
rest of the world moved on. It became an enduring issue of belonging,
particularly for architects. But, as this book will argue, Modernism was
itself partly and importantly – though not of course exclusively – a style,
and lasted for a relatively brief period in our cultural history. The broader
culture of Postmodernism dominated the second half of the twentieth
century such as that, in effect, we are all Postmodernists now. The stylistic
phenomenon that was briefly perceived in design and architecture in the
1980s, generally called ‘PoMo’, was a tangential blip; by no means could
it be said to be the formal expression of, nor encapsulating the totality of,
Postmodernism.
I was reminded of the natural tendency to bias in writing history during a
conversation with a senior curator, in relation to our work remodelling
Edinburgh’s Dean Gallery (now Modern Two) in 1996–1999, when the
concept of the ‘other story’ of the twentieth century in art was discussed.
Facing Modern Two across the road is Modern One (then the Scottish
National Gallery of Modern Art), which contains the official and accepted
story of Abstraction and the new world of art that changed everything
forever; meanwhile Modern Two was to tell the ‘other story’ of the
twentieth century, of Surrealism, Dada and mavericks – a much more
complex and diverse narrative. What fascinated me was that, as a culture
of grand or meta‑narratives, Modernism itself was seen by those committed
to it as a ‘movement’, a collective mind‑set to tell one single story of the
Pumping station on the Isle of Dogs. John Outram, 1988
