The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Post-Modernism [Anglais] [Broché]

Jencks is the principal author on postmodernism in architecture, chiefly through his The Language of Postmodernism, which has gone through six editions and many translations since its first publication in 1977. This book has been standard issue in most schools of architecture for over 20 years; Jencks himself taught architecture at UCLA for many years. The book at hand is a complete rewrite of the original editions, with two new chapters. It updates Jencks's survey of world architecture to include the last ten years of stylistic evolution, climaxing with such galactic masterpieces as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany. Jencks, a transplanted Englishman, is a breezy writer. He glosses over differences in design, preferring to inscribe all schools and styles since the 1960s within the orbits of "multiple coding," "complexity," "heterogeneity," and "pluralism." He is such a readable writer that almost any library collection would benefit from this book. Peter McKee Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New Paradigm in Architecture tells the story of a movement that has changed the face of architecture over the last forty years.

The book begins by surveying the counter culture of the 1960s, when Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi called for a more complex urbanism and architecture. It concludes by showing how such demands began to be realized by the 1990s in a new architecture that is aided by computer design-more convivial, sensuous, and articulate than the Modern architecture it challenges. Promoted by such architects as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Peter Eisenman, it has also been adopted by many schools and offices around the world. Charles Jencks traces the history of computer design which is, at its heart, built on the desire for an architecture that communicates with its users, one based on the heterogeneity of cities and global culture.

This book, the first to explore the broad issue of Postmodernism, has fostered its growth in other fields such as philosophy and the arts. First written at the start of an architectural movement in the mid-1970s, it has been translated into eleven languages and has gone through six editions. Now completely rewritten and with two new chapters, this edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative and the turn to a new complexity in architecture.

Charles Jencks is a designer and the author of numerous books on the theory and history of architecture. He was formerly visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.