Postmodernism

Postmodern buildings reuse elements of classical and other historical architecture, often simplified, enlarged or made of unexpected materials. Common features are columns, arches, keystones (the wedge-shaped top stone of an arch) and pediments (the triangular gable over a classical temple front), applied as flat or cut-out shapes. Facades use bright colors, mixed facing materials and asymmetrical compositions, and many refer to their surroundings or to roadside commercial buildings and signs.

Michael Graves's Portland Building in Portland, Oregon (1982), has small square windows, a facade of painted concrete and colored tile, and the hammered-copper statue Portlandia (1985) above its entrance. Philip Johnson and John Burgee's AT&T Building in New York (1984), now 550 Madison Avenue, is clad in pink granite and topped by a broken pediment with a circular opening, which critics compared to Chippendale furniture. Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans (1978) uses classical columns in stainless steel and neon. James Stirling's Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1984) is a European example.

Robert Venturi set out the movement's arguments in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), where he answered Mies van der Rohe's 'less is more' with 'less is a bore.' His Vanna Venturi House in Philadelphia (1964), built for his mother, has a split gable front and an arch applied to the facade. In Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour argued that architects should study commercial strips and their signs. Charles Jencks's 1977 book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture made the term widely known.

The style reached its peak in the 1980s. The Portland Building (1982) was the first major postmodern tall office building, followed by the AT&T Building, which opened in 1983. Johnson and Burgee also designed PPG Place in Pittsburgh (1984). The style spread to Europe through architects such as James Stirling and Aldo Rossi and to Japan through Arata Isozaki. By the late 1990s most architects had moved on to deconstructivism, neo-futurism and new classicism.