A style guide to Twentieth Century Architecture: Post-Modernism

Understanding architecture since 1914 involves understanding the meaning of labels and their underlying meaning. While these are widely used, they represent a mixture of forgotten intentions, opportunistic adoptions, post-rationalisations and misapplications.

Six speakers will unpack the identity of six styles that have dominated the period and clear away some of the fog. This week Post-Modernism with Tim Brittain-Catlin.

In reaction against Modernist rigidity, the architecture of the ‘Me Decade’ of the 1980s was Post-Modernism. It borrowed playfully from history but its best practitioners took seriously the obligation to fit into existing streetscapes and to restore human scale and identity of place.

The Twentieth Century Society is currently engaged in reassessing Post-Modernism as many of its leading examples come increasingly under threat.