The Style of Choice
The Style of Choice
Abstract
“The style of choice”, Rem Koolhaas writes in Generic City, “is postmodern, and will always remain so. Postmodernism is the only movement that has succeeded in connecting the practice of architecture with the practice of panic. Postmodernism is not a doctrine based on a highly civilized reading of architectural history but a method, a mutation in professional architecture that produces results fast enough to keep pace with the Generic City’s development. Instead of consciousness, as its original inventors may have hoped, it creates a new unconscious. It is modernization’s little helper. Anyone can do it – a skyscraper based on the Chinese pagoda and/or a Tuscan hill town.” Koolhaas continues: “All resistance to postmodernism is anti-democratic. It creates a ‘stealth’ wrapping around architecture that makes it irresistible, like a Christmas present from a charity.”(Koolhaas 1995). In other words: Postmodernism has become the global vernacular in architecture an urbanism, our new folklore. How did this happen and how should we deal with it? Acceptance of the situation is only the first step in any therapy.
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Keywords:
Postmodernismarchitectureurbanism