What Is Neomodern Architecture & How It Differs From Post-modern Architecture

Figure 1: Simple Illustration of modern, post-modern, & neomodern architecture

If the Modernism architectural movement died on July 15, 1972, there’s no specific date could be set for the death of Post-Modernism. When Post-Modernism reached its golden period (1980s), a new trend of Deconstructionism emerged to another form of post-modernism which was also followed by the waning of post-modernism in most major cities.

In contrast to Post-Modernism, which attempts to use architectural meaning through the use of linguistic analogies (metaphors, syntax, semantics). Neo-Modernism was initiated by moving the deconstruction. The term “deconstruction” itself actually was used for the first time by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book “De La Grammatologie” (1967). Deconstruction attempts to dismantle Western metaphysics, which is based on fixed and unsurpassable convictions. To do that, Derrida doubted every conviction of the Western philosophical tradition.

Deconstruction in architecture try to ‘revolting’ against modernisms and carried out by using the ambiguity of poststructuralism to create ambiguous and scandalous works. Such as the acontextualisms (removed the building from its context) and removes the building from itself.

How The Language of Architecture In Post-modern & Neomodern Is Distinguished

Figure 2: Reading Post-modern’s double-coded meaning

Saussure (2002), a sign is the unification of a sound image, the signifier, with a concept, the signified. The meaning of the word, the referent, is an arbitrary link between the signifier and the signified.

When reading the meaning in post-modern architecture, the designer embeds a signifier that refers to a meaning which will then become a double-coded signified (may have several interpretations) for architectural readers to understand.

Figure 3: Reading Neo-modern’s hermetic-coded meaning

Whereas in Neo-modern, the signifier does not really refer to a meaning but rather the essence of itself to be deconstructed later. According to Deconstruction attempts to dismantle the concept of sign and to refute the pair signifier/signified that is rooted in the Western metaphysical tradition. The concept that presumes the presence of a relation between the signifier and the significant ceases to exist. In contrast, the sign is deconstructed. Moreover, its elements (the signifier and the signified) participate in a continuous free play that allows iteration, which creates new signs in a text through writing

Deconstruction and Presentness

Figure 4: Guardiola House — Peter Eisenman’s Deconstruction of Presentness, 1988

Eisenman is considered the main contributor of translating deconstruction to architecture. His architectural works are a manifestation of the deconstruction current in philosophy, and he was never ashamed of this idea (Sultani, 2000). Eisenman has concentrated most on the metaphysics of presence.

His deconstruction tries to separate the signifier from the signified and from its presence (signified) as a condition.

For example, if there is an opening in a plane or a vertical element, it should be separated not only from the signifier such as the window or the column but also from the condition of its existence as the sign of providing light and air and the structure. This separation should occur without causing the room to become dark or the building to collapse (Eisenman, 1990).

Dismantling presence can only be performed through the breaking of the strong bond between form and function; Eisenman’s “presentness” is “neither absence nor presence, form nor function, neither the particular use of a sign nor the crude existence of reality, but rather an excessive condition between sign and the Heideggerian notion of being” (Eisenman, 1990).

Eisenman does not deny the functional role of architecture, but he suggests that architecture serves this role without symbolizing it. In the “Gaurdiola House” (Figure 4), the windows were built on the floors, and the floors were unleveled. The walls were sometimes used for compositional aim rather than to separate useful space.

Further Readings

· Elie Haddad (2009) Charles Jencks and the historiography of Post-Modernism, The Journal of Architecture, 14:4, 493–510, DOI: 10.1080/13602360902867434

· Zeng H. (2012) Postmodern Signification and the Semiotics of Exile. In: Semiotics of Exile in Contemporary Chinese Film. Semiotics and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031631_3

· Hoteit, A. (2015). Deconstructivism: Translation From Philosophy to Architecture. Canadian Social Science, 11 (7), 1–13. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/7240 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/7240