Postmodern Architecture vs Postmodern Product Design
Postmodern Product Design was influenced by Postmodern Architecture — carried postmodern architecture's narrative and historical-quotation impulse to the household object.
Postmodern Architecture
A playful rebellion against modernist austerity — color, ornament, historical quotation, and wit brought back into architecture.
- Historical references and ornament used freely, often ironically
- Bold color and varied materials
- Exaggerated or fragmented classical elements (pediments, columns)
- Eclectic mixing of styles and scales
- Wit, symbolism, and contextual gestures
Postmodern Product Design
Witty, symbolic household objects that abandoned modernist purity for metaphor, color, and historical quotation — kettles that whistle like birds and juicers shaped like spaceships.
- Metaphor and storytelling embedded in everyday objects
- Historical and classical quotation used playfully
- Sculptural, anthropomorphic, or theatrical forms
- Function subordinated to expression and personality
- Bright color and rehabilitated ornament
At a glance
| Postmodern Architecture | Postmodern Product Design | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1970s–1990s | 1980s–1990s |
| Discipline | Architecture | Industrial Design |
| Region | United States, Worldwide | Italy, United States, France |
| Family | Postmodernism | Postmodernism |
| Formal traits | eclectic, ornamental, colorful, ironic | sculptural, ironic, anthropomorphic, colorful |
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