It is now nearly a quarter of a century since Postmodern architecture — which proposed to make historical references respectable once again — was declared officially dead by none other than its most capricious establishment advocate, Philip Johnson. His exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture (co-curated in 1988 with Mark Wigley) at New York’s Museum of Modern Art brought an abrupt end to a trend that had lasted just over two decades.
In hindsight, Postmodernism at its worst can seem like a bad dream, or a bad joke. Yet during its brief heyday, PoMo possessed such potent commercial allure that even the mighty Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, high priests of Modernism, precipitously recanted the long-held faith and converted to beliefs once deemed heretical.
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