Post Modern Design

Pop modern design is possibly one of the most scandalous and notorious movements in design. Architects and designers argued that modern architecture was basically meaningless. Post modernists were bored with all the inspiration from science and universal truths from the modernists. Modernists believed that less was more but for the post modernists less was a bore. Post modernists believed that we needed as many references as possible to find out individual subjective conclusions. They believed in collage, anarchy, repetition these were extremely interesting. The post modernist designers wanted to challenge the audiences and force them to ask questions. Buildings now became fancier and more interesting also nice to look at such as the buildings in Vegas which have different styles, cultures and playful collages.

Critics disapproved unnecessary ornamentation and obsessive tendency to recycle the past to make something new and regularly plain silliness. Mass media helped post modernism grow, the world related together like never before. Post modernism was liberating, designers did what they wanted and what felt right for them and didn’t go for ‘rules’ like other movements had. Their designs were often funny, sometimes confrontational and occasionally absurd. They had bright colour, theatricality and exaggeration: everything was a style statement. Whether surfaces were glossy, faked or purposely distressed, they showed the desire to combine rebellious statements with money making appeal. Designs didn't have much functionality other than decoration.

Roland Barthes believed that if objects and buildings were full of symbolism viewers and consumers will relate to them more. Music and magazines were the most important delivery system for this new period.

Post modernism divided the line between day wear and evening wear, formal and casual fusing them in a single style it even merged fine arts and mass culture too. Architect Michael Graves and others presented a new artistic, appealing visual in architecture by the mid-1970s.

Michaels building is known for its small square windows, exaggerated historical motifs, playful, different materials, tacky loud colors, and, of course it’s the larger-than-life statue over the building’s front door.

It was like you were grabbing a functional object and just adding decorations on it to make it look different, ‘prettier’ and nice, link in the pictures below.

Michael Graves Tea and Coffee Piazzo for Alessi

Proust, Alessandro Mendini

Anna g corkscrew, Alessi and Alessandro Mendini

a/n blog. 2014. MICHAEL GRAVES’ PORTLAND BUILDING COULD BE IN JEOPARDY. [ONLINE] Available at: http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/77982#more-77982. [Accessed 06 January 14].

v&a. 2012. postmodernism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/postmodernism/. [Accessed 06 January 14].

youtube. (2013). Postmodernism: Design in a Nutshell (6/6). [Online Video]. 08 May. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKomOqYU4Mw. [Accessed: 06 February 2014].