Post-Modern Buildings in Britain

"This book is panoramic. The authors have traveled all around the country and chosen really classic examples of postmodern architecture. That’s one thing that makes this book so great. Their focus is on buildings with many different uses, residential or commercial or whatever. And they’ve also focused on some of the really big-name architects that are associated with the style, James Sti rling for example, who produced a lot of the doctrine or ideology of this style. It’s a beautifully illustrated book, too, like a massive energy rush of this stuff! Although in Britain Postmodern architecture feels like quite a small sample, and as you say, it set the stage for all sorts of millennial construction, nonetheless it was really in its prime from the beginning of the eighties until the early nineties. It waned, and there were later postmodern revivalists. Because it came in waves, and without any true consistency, it’s quite easy to dismiss. Bringing all these elements together, you realise there is actually a critical mass architecturally, enough of a movement here to talk about as a trend with significance, with both really good buildings as well as many really terrible buildings knocking around, as well as much construction that was really half-hearted. Geraint Franklin and Elain Harwood are the very opposite of being half-hearted. They showcase the full-blooded, most exciting end of post-modern architecture in Britain, the really extravagant, colourful, fun, outrageous, beautiful, and even cinematic examples of this style. One of the things this book communicates so clearly is that this architecture is more like film sets than what we typically associate with buildings. Postmodernism is more like a Hollywood studio. Architects who championed this style of course were drawing on many different elements of architectural history, whether it was Art Deco, a comeback from Classicism, or whatever. They’re pulling these references through, ultimately in a rather silly pneumatic way, so it’s very glamorous. To take a contrasting style that is perhaps better known in Britain or regarded as British in architectural circles, we can compare it with Brutalism. With Brutalism, there’s an enjoyment of the rough, the sturdy, and the monumental. Whereas with the archetypal postmodern building, it’s a celebration of decoration, of surfaces, and of delight. After a sustained and often very public backlash against modernist architects, the profession actually wanted to do stuff that people liked. You might even say that there’s a slight neediness among some of the buildings featured here. This book is terrific because demonstrates what a broad spectrum this represents, and nonetheless connections that you can draw between the many varied elements in this variety. It was a moment in architecture that could encompass Stirling, for example, one of the architects who did everything in that period that it was possible to do. But also someone like Terry Farrell , whose career really took off in that postmodern era, and whose work is all about the everyday, a love of the 1930s, radio design, that sort of thing. Once again, Hollywood Studios springs to mind. The excitement and delight of all of that is captured so well in this book, in a way that, as a style in Britain, it’s been largely ignored, not unlike the faux Georgian. We maybe haven’t realised quite how much of this landmark architecture there is all over Britain, and how much of it is actually really good. This book is a brilliant catalogue that way, it’s exciting and really fun."