Title: What Is Postmodern Architecture?
Headings: What Is Postmodern Architecture?
What Is Postmodern Architecture?
History of Postmodern Architecture
Key Characteristics of Postmodern Architecture
Notable Examples of Postmodern Architecture

Content: Using a pastiche of disparate styles, postmodern buildings can be challenging for the uninitiated, veering toward kitsch and camp. Postmodernism flourished during the economic boom of the 1980s and continued into the 1990s, leaving any number of loud, proud, genre-defying architectural monuments in its wake, first in the United States, and then around the world in places like Europe, Japan, and Australia where its influence spread. Postmodernism influences contemporary architecture to the present day. VictorHuang / Getty Images
Key Characteristics of Postmodern Architecture
Mishmash of architectural styles and periods
Sculptural forms
Frequent embrace of bright color, sometimes in the form of ceramic tiles or colored glass
Liberal use of classical ornamental details taken from past architectural movements, often mixed and matched in unconventional ways
Use of abstraction
Characterized by playfulness, whimsy, humor, irony
Use of trompe l'oeil
Idiosyncratic rule-breaking forms that defied the dogmatic codes of Modernism
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Notable Examples of Postmodern Architecture
The Portland Building, designed by the late architect Michael Graves, is a municipal office building in Portland, Oregon that made waves for its unconventional use of color, surface materials, and decorative flourishes when it opened in 1982, challenging the definition of what an office building was supposed to look like. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. The Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia was completed in 1964 by architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Built for Venturi's mother, with its unconventional scale and broken gable roof, it was one of the first acknowledged works of postmodern architecture. “ I like elements which are hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clear, distorted rather than straightforward,” the architect wrote. The Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany opened in 1984 after five years of construction. It was designed by James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates and houses a collection of 20th-century modern art.