The exhibition The Other Tradition—Architecture in Munich from 1800 up to today’
offers an opportunity to consider the meaning of a preposition. This preposition has
inconspicuously become part of the dispute on Post- or late-Modern Architecture. With
the prefix post, the protagonists wish to dismiss the past, unable as yet to give the present
a new name. To the recognizable problems of the future, they, that is to say, we, do not
yet have the answer.
At first the expression ‘postmodern’ had only been used to denote novel variations
within the broad spectrum of the ‘late-modern’, when it was used during the 1950s and
1960s in the United States for literary trends that intended to set themselves apart from
earlier modern writings. Postmodernism only became an emotionally loaded, outright
political war cry in the 1970s, when two contrasting camps seized the expression. On the
one hand the ‘neo-conservatives’, who wanted to rid themselves of the supposedly
subversive contents of a ‘hostile culture’, in favour of reawakened traditions; on the other
hand, certain critics of economic growth, for whom the New Building (Neues Bauen) had
become the symbol of the destruction brought on by modernization. Thus for the first
time architectural movements which had still shared the theoretical position of the
Modern Architecture—and which have rightfully been described by Charles Jencks as
Late-Modern—happened to have been dragged into the ‘conservative’ wake of the 1970s,
paving the way for an intellectually playful yet provocative repudiation of the moral
principles of Modern Architecture.
It is not easy to disentangle the frontiers for all parties agree in the critique of the
soulless ‘container’ architecture, of the absence of a relationship with the environment
and the solitary arrogance of the unarticulated office block, of the monstrous department
stores, monumental universities and congress centres, of the lack of urbanity and the
misanthropy of the satellite towns, of the heaps of speculative buildings, the brutal
successor to the ‘bunker architecture’—the mass production of pitch-roofed dog houses,
the destruction of cities in the name of the automobile, and so forth... So many slogans
with no disagreement whatsoever!
Indeed what one side calls immanent criticism, the other side considers to be
opposition to the ‘modern’. The same reasons that encourage the one side to a critical
continuation of an irreplaceable tradition are sufficient for the other side to proclaim a
postmodern era. Furthermore these opponents draw contrasting conclusions according to
whether they confront the evil in terms of cosmetics or in terms of criticism of the
system.
Those of a conservative disposition satisfy themselves with a stylistic coverup of that
which nonetheless exists, either like the traditionalist von Branca or like the pop-artist
Venturi today, who transforms the spirit of the Modern Movement into a quotation and
mixes it ironically with other quotations, like dazzling radiant neon light texts. The
radical anti-modernists, on the other hand, tackle the problem at a more fundamental
level, seeking to undermine the economic and administrative constraints of industrial
constructions. Their aim is a de-differentiation of the architectural culture. What the one
side considers as problems of style, the other perceives as problems of the decolonization
of lost human habitats. Thus those who wish to continue the incompleted project of the
shaken Modern Movement see themselves confronted by various opponents who agree
only in as much as they are determined to break away from modern architecture. Modern
architecture which has even left its mark on everyday life, after all, is still the first and
Jorgen Habermas 215