Inventing Postmodern Architecture Critical Texts (1960-1990)

Dr. Daniela Ortiz dos Santos

This seminar focuses on pivotal decades in which architecture was not only constructed as a subject matter, but also, and mostly defined as theoretical framework in architectural history. We draw attention then to the historiography of postwar architecture. Our aim is to examine books and authors – from Europe and the Americas (North and South)- who critically looked at this ‘new architecture’ built in the second half of the twentieth century in the Western world. Mapping an intellectual cartography of these intellectuals and their discourse allows for the articulation of new modes of interpreting and intersecting aesthetic concerns, intellectual choices and theoretical approaches in which the history of modern architecture has been presented and represented.