I recently had a chat with a friend when canvassing topics for an essay on postmodernism in design. My thoughts led me to Jerde, and so for my own benifit, and anyone who cares to hear it... I thought I would post my thoughts here for all to absorb or critique or both.
To get to postmodernism I thought that I had to first address it's context as it followed from a Romantic period and then Modernism. The decision to use Jerde as an icon of postmodernism is based upon his dominance of the retail architecture market in the US. In this fashion, both the art movements during and preceeding postmodernism can be clarified against the political and economic developments (evident in trade and commerce) which occured during the same period of time. This will lead to a comprehensive insight into the context and character of the postmodernism of Jerde, and assist in the identification of postmodern characteristics in the creative outputs of others.
You can track romanticism and modernism through consumer culture and cultural imperialism over the last 200 years. Romaniticism and the ethnographic diversification of commodities occured significantly in the 19 and 20th centuries (refer the British Empire in India and China) due to imperial expansion.
As two World Wars ravaged the globe, the old Imperial Nationalist sentiments began to fade, grow guilty, and they began to relinquish their protectorates and colonies back to the people.
Modernism came with the adjustments needed to accomodate homogenity of political correctness removed from the once burgeoning reliance on ethnographic cultural commodies. It also accomodated the slow down of the industrial revolution and the developments of the technlogical age of new homogenous products of international (and politically/ethnically neutral) standard.
Modernism itself had to split into various tertiary camps to cope with the melee of dichotomy it found itself wading through; once that the vanguard of Imperial Nationalism and assosciated decrees of 'superior creative endeavour' were removed. The world was suddenly a smaller place with no sense of proprietary or 'standard'.
Then... after a few decades of modernism striving to find a new, ethically and politically neutral pure standard which could save the world from it's differences and woes (refer internationalism and the veiled internationalism farce that was old regionalism), Postmodernism poked it;s head into the mix and decided to cause some havoc.
Enter Jerde.
Jerde's postmodern retail architecture is almost a bridge between modernism and the romanticism of forgotten imperialist ethnic commodification. Jerde is (in my opinion) unafraid to recourse to the commodofied ethnographic pallette of the cultural imperialist romanticism era, whilst preaching the ethical and artistic purity (or corporate compliance) of modernism, embodying the conflict for us all to see.
Sometimes the juxtaposition between ethnic romaticism and modernism is delineated by the interior/architectural boundary (by allowing by each tenant through interior design to ethnically romaticise their shop for the sake of marketing their product [for example, Batavia coffee next to Sushi train next to the IMAX on Grey Street]. This is all in the structure and coprporate compliance of an essentially compliant and 'pure' architectural statement.
[add photoes *Grey Street*Paxton's Crystal Palace*Jerde's MOA]
Sometimes this postmodern juxtaposition occurs within the architecture itself by the mashing together of conflicting architectural 'elements'... a roman column here, a curtain wall with sexy stainless steel door furniture there, a spraycrete rendered neolithic cave entrance here, a fibreglass pirate ship mast there... et alia...
[add photoes of Jerde's Horton Plaza*Dreamworld*etc etc etc...]
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