On the Borderline of Postmodern and Global: Forms, Images, Metaphors in Architecture

Abstract

Modernist understanding of architecture established a certain language relating the physical form with the function, technologies and materials, whereas postmodernism brought engagement with more complex factors. Continuing development of architectonics, design tools and methods enabled the production of more complex architecture. Multidisciplinary thinking approaches, social theory integration influenced architecture to enhance its representational value, to be perceived with multiple meanings, images and symbols. Economic, political, environmental issues accompanied. Globalization, through transnational processes, transmitting symbols, transplanting forms from one part of the world to another, had an impact on design and the built environment. As modernism has been superseded or come to an end, a new phase has started. How and when the transformation occurred and even the title ‘postmodernism’ is subject to be questioned according to theorists. One of the many definitions of ‘borderline’ refers to a debatable condition, an indeterminate state between two different phases that is hardly classifiable. The text focuses on the Modern-Postmodern transitional phase in architecture—‘borderline architecture’—where the time frame, as well as defined paradigms, is quite vague and in need of clarification. A reading is aimed here by exploring forms, images and metaphors utilized in randomly selected examples considered to represent the period. © 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.