Editing Postmodern Architecture (section)

== Origins and Theory ==

Postmodern architecture developed from dissatisfaction with modernism's limitations: its rejection of history, its hostility to ornament, its failure to create humane urban environments, and its claim to universal validity regardless of context. Critics argued that modernist buildings ignored their surroundings, alienated users, and impoverished architecture by excluding most of its traditional resources. Postmodernism proposed alternatives: buildings that acknowledged history, communicated meaning through recognizable symbols, responded to context, and embraced decoration as legitimate architectural element.<ref name="jencks">{{cite book |last=Jencks |first=Charles |title=The Language of Post-Modern Architecture |year=1977 |publisher=Rizzoli |location=New York}}</ref>

Robert Venturi's ''Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture'' (1966) provided postmodernism's foundational text, arguing for architecture that embraced ambiguity, contradiction, and historical layering rather than modernism's clarity and simplicity. ''Learning from Las Vegas'' (1972), written with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, extended the argument to popular culture, finding value in commercial strips and decorated sheds that modernist critics dismissed. These texts, emerging from Philadelphia practice and teaching, established theoretical framework that architects worldwide would apply.<ref name="venturi"/>