Modernism and Post modernism

[nadsy]

HI,

I have to write an essay about modernism and post modernism. Can some one explain to me briefly about the two movements and characteristics? i read many books but it is bit hard for me to understand what exactly those two means.
Pls Pls Help me.
Thank you so much.

[teamjdc]

No.

[Adrian Lombardo]

Modernism is a lame movement that almost destroyed all precious we had in our modern built environment. It started with mad architects like Adolf Loos, Mies van der Rhoe and Le Corbusier. They had an extremely simplistic view of human nature, hated ornament, rethought everything in architecture and cleverly took over the world. If it was entirely up to them, Paris would be a bunch of inhuman identical skyscrapers without human scale. There are some modernists, such as Frank Lloyd Wright who did some good stuff, and the modernists got their inspiration from great architects like Louis Sullivan, although he ha plenty of ornament. He was the first to say that form ever follows function. The modernist disaster was popular because of easy-to-grasp pesudophilosophy and limited budgets, sold as "progressive" and "scientific". Although we no longer are in the "modernist" period it has influenced us a lot. Their slogans were "Less is More" and "Ornament is a Crime". Terrible consequences of modernism is minimalism, which seeks to deprive the humans from their natural need of a rich environment, such as nature, and International style, which seeks to utterly destroy places with special identity all over the world and replace them with London and New York. Humans were seen as robots rather than social creatures with plenty of senses, hard-wired needs and tradition.

The postmodernists were, if not worse, just as bad. They rejected "Less is more" and replaced it with "Less is a bore". Now they made stupid-looking buildings with parts that had no function, nihilistic forms only for fun, and most characteristically, mixed all different styles. For example, they could have a glass façade behind huge Doric columns that did not carry any weight. Waste of materials is quite common. The worse impact of postmodernism is not in art or architecture, but way of thinking. Because of it, "all truth" are now "equally true". Islam and Christianity are equally true, so is atheism and presumably Norse mythology. Darwinian evolution is no more true than any creation story. All styles are equally valid, and criticism and critical thinking is a thing of the past, thanks to the postmodern academia. The scientists have largely ignored this, but are often taken less seriously because of it.

Deconstructivism is the popular contemporary version of postmodernism. It is mostly a visual style, with very little roots in science of even pseudophilosophy. They for example try to justify the chaotic designs with modern mathematical notions of Chaos Theory, which is a very different thing from visual chaos. A lack of good justification for designs is replaced with poetic words and rethoric. There are admittedly some good buildings in this period, but the most popular ones tend to demand a lot of resources, be very unsustainable and might bring down our civilisation in a decade or two.

Some sensible modern reaction to all this is some times referred to as "critical regionalism" or "regionalism", apparently not the exact same thing, although authors often uses these words about the same thing. Here you are intended to make site-specific buildings, include references to local tradition, use local materials, adjust your buildings to the climate instead of the other way around, study the topography and think critically. Some modernist and deconstructivist buildings could fit into this category. I guess a famous example is Renzo Piano's massive project in New Caledonia, a green huge thing made by locals from local materials with reference to local culture. Glass-and-steel structures hardly ever falls into this category. These guys like to use natural materials.

Good thing I got to reply before anyone with any kind of bias did

[nadsy]

hay,
Thank you so much for replying with information. but i have to write about modernism and post modernism in general. as in about the the two movements. but this will be helpful later because then i have to talk about architecture and fashion design as well.

thank you so much once again.

[lekizz]

That is a very vague and general topic for an essay. Are you sure your instructions aren't more specific?!

To be honest, if you put either of the terms into Google you'll find several fairly concise articles to read.

[Adrian Lombardo]

Just a tiny fraction of modernism, like the way they treated light or maltreated humans, are enough for a 6000 word dissertation. You really should keep it down if possible. As for your essay about modernism and postmodernism, that exactly what i replied to. (except from extending it a little to regionalism)

[innova+e]

did you read books about modernism and post modernism then? It should say on the cover. Actually, while biased, Adriano's fiery review is filled with all the goods you need to set out and do your own work, imagine. I like the idea of the fashion design metaphor as well, go with that. I think Wright even said, along those lines, that seeing the likes of modern buildings was like "wearing your entrails on your head".

[nadsy]

hay, thank you so much for all your replies. Appreciate it a lot.
Yes i read loads of books it's clear now. Actually i wrote about Modernism and Postmodernism only for the introduction and mainly because my tutor wanted to see whether i understand well.. To be more specific, i am writing about the similarities and differences between architecture and fashion in Modernism and how it changed during Postmodernism. Just taking 2 examples from each subject as the case study.

[qwerty23]

strange that people want an explenation for their projects. did you really read books about it?

[nadsy]

Yes i did.. I can do it on my own. I didn't ask any body to do it for me, just asked their opinions. That doesn't mean i'm going to write what they say because i might agree with it or might disagree. Isn't this community there to help each other??