1970s–1990s · United States, Worldwide
Postmodern Architecture
Also known as PoMo
A playful rebellion against modernist austerity — color, ornament, historical quotation, and wit brought back into architecture.
Photo: Flickr.com user 'philosophygeek', CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portland_psb2.jpg
Across disciplines
- Graphic Design: Postmodern Graphic Design
- Graphic Design: Memphis Graphic Style
- Industrial Design: Memphis Design
- Industrial Design: Postmodern Product Design
- Industrial Design: Italian Radical Design
- Interior Design: Postmodern Interior
About the style
Postmodernism rejected the idea that less is more, answering the stripped modernist box with color, ornament, and references to historical styles, often used ironically. Robert Venturi's 'less is a bore' captured its spirit. Buildings quote classical pediments, columns, and arches at exaggerated scale, mixing high and low, serious and playful. It restored symbolism and context that strict modernism had banished.
Notable examples
- ▸550 Madison Avenue / former AT&T Building (New York City)
- ▸Portland Building (Portland, Oregon)
- ▸Piazza d'Italia (New Orleans)
Anatomy of Postmodern Architecture
The numbered markers call out the design elements that define this style. Hover or tap a marker to see its breakdown.
Photo: Flickr.com user 'philosophygeek', CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portland_psb2.jpg
Cream walls are inlaid with terracotta and teal blocks — bold, flat colour brought back to a façade after decades of grey modernism.
Enormous stylised pilasters and a keystone-like motif quote classical ornament at cartoonish scale — Graves's witty answer to Mies.
Deliberately small, repetitive square windows reject the modernist glass wall, reasserting the building as a solid, figured mass.
A coloured base anchors the tower like a classical plinth, part of the building's three-part body-and-base composition.
How Postmodern Architecture connects
Styles form a network, not a tree. Explore the direct neighbours below — click any to travel the map one hop at a time.
- Reaction against
- Evolved from
- Parallel / cross-current
- Influenced by
Reaction against International Style — rebelled against austere modernism; reintroduced ornament, color, and historical quotation
Reaction against Brutalism — rejected its severity and monochrome heaviness
Deconstructivism evolved from Postmodern Architecture — shares the anti-modernist stance but fragments form rather than quoting history
New Classical Architecture parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — overlaps with postmodernism's return to historical form, but tends toward earnest archaeological fidelity rather than ironic collage
Minimalist Architecture reaction against Postmodern Architecture — rejects postmodernism's ornament, colour and ironic quotation in favour of silence and restraint
Postmodern Graphic Design parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — the graphic wing of the broader postmodern revolt against modernist purity
Memphis Graphic Style parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — the 1980s postmodern delight in colour, pattern, and historical pastiche, in print
Memphis Design parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — part of the wider postmodern revolt against modernist 'good design'
Postmodern Product Design influenced by Postmodern Architecture — carried postmodern architecture's narrative and historical-quotation impulse to the household object
Italian Radical Design parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — shared its conceptual, critical project with the postmodern turn
Postmodern Interior parallel / cross-current Postmodern Architecture — the domestic face of postmodern architectural historicism
Describe it like this
Prompt-ready vocabulary for describing or re-creating the Postmodern Architecture look.