Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale

摘要

Few historical investigations have accomplished the dual task of writing the history of a significant postmodern architectural moment while simultaneously unpacking its defining theoretical concepts. Maybe that historical period is still too close to our own. Or perhaps documenting an our-oboric movement such as postmodernism, one that centered on history and the revival of architectural styles, is itself the problem. Among the first books to confront the history of postmodern architecture were Reinhold Martin's Utopia's Ghost, Michael Hays's Architecture‘s Desire, and Emmanuel Petit's Irony; or, The Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture. These, however, were more concerned with revisiting themes of postmodern theory than with filling significant historical gaps. In Architecture's Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern, jorge Otero-Pailos accomplishes the goal of filling such gaps by tackling the postmodern approach toward history and the injection of phenomenology into the discipline of architecture, although his book is unusual in this regard.