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The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism
The New Paradigm in Architecture tells the story of a movement that has changed the face of architecture over the last forty years.
The book begins by surveying the counter culture of the 1960s, when Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi called for a more complex urbanism and architecture. It concludes by showing how such demands began to be realized by the 1990s in a new architecture that is aided by computer design—more convivial, sensuous, and articulate than the Modern architecture it challenges. Promoted by such architects as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Peter Eisenman, it has also been adopted by many schools and offices around the world. Charles Jencks traces the history of computer design which is, at its heart, built on the desire for an architecture that communicates with its users, one based on the heterogeneity of cities and global culture.
This book, the first to explore the broad issue of Postmodernism, has fostered its growth in other fields such as philosophy and the arts. First written at the start of an architectural movement in the mid-1970s, it has been translated into eleven languages and has gone through six editions. Now completely rewritten and with two new chapters, this edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative and the turn to a new complexity in architecture.
The book begins by surveying the counter culture of the 1960s, when Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi called for a more complex urbanism and architecture. It concludes by showing how such demands began to be realized by the 1990s in a new architecture that is aided by computer design—more convivial, sensuous, and articulate than the Modern architecture it challenges. Promoted by such architects as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Peter Eisenman, it has also been adopted by many schools and offices around the world. Charles Jencks traces the history of computer design which is, at its heart, built on the desire for an architecture that communicates with its users, one based on the heterogeneity of cities and global culture.
This book, the first to explore the broad issue of Postmodernism, has fostered its growth in other fields such as philosophy and the arts. First written at the start of an architectural movement in the mid-1970s, it has been translated into eleven languages and has gone through six editions. Now completely rewritten and with two new chapters, this edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative and the turn to a new complexity in architecture.
- GenresArchitecture
288 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2011
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About the author
Charles Jencks
92 books60 followersCharles Alexander Jencks (born 21 June 1939) is an American architecture theorist and critic, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of modernism and postmodernism are widely read in architectural circles. He studied under the influential architectural historians Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. Jencks now lives in Scotland where he designs landscape sculpture.
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January 13, 2008Recommended by Tom Turner - author of 'Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC - 2000 AD' - as one of forty books which - he suggests - every landscape student should have seen. Thanks to the Landscape Information Hub UK. http://www.lih.gre.ac.uk/histhe/books...
August 1, 2008
Though I disagree with much of Jencks' writing, and don't particularly like his style, this book definitely helped me get a better understanding of post modernism in all its manifestations.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews