POSTMODERNISM AND CONSUMER SOCIETY

POSTMODERNISM AND CONSUMER SOCIETY
By Fredric Jameson

If modernism was a reactionary movement in architecture in search of a personal private style and then post modernism is a reflection of the current global multinational and decentered consumer capitalist culture, is one more valid than the other and is there no truth in the idea that ones own personal view of the world should be valued. Postmodernism seems to imply that the individual does not matter and that our relationship to a space is not as important as reflecting the state of our current culture. Does “this latest mutation of space – postmodern hyperspace,” hold more value than ones own individual relationship to the space itself, does the need for elevators and escalators of prescribed conduct and movement through the space outweigh the value of a place that resonates with and connects with the body and the people that inhabit a space?

In Los Angeles we were exposed to two buildings one postmodern, Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall and the modern Schindler House and in truth they were very different in terms of how I felt towards them. I felt much more of a connection to the Schindler House than the Disney Music Hall. After reading this article I recognize in Gehry’s building this disconnect between the individual and the space with its large lobby that is full of shapes that may be structure and yet may not, and the balconies of the different levels rising above that were connected by escalators and as I read, “while a constant busyness gives the feeling that emptiness is here absolutely packed, that it is an element with in which you yourself are immersed” which seemed to reflect my feelings towards the space. I was immersed and lost, and subsequently, it lost me. With the Schindler House the journey from the street allowed for the house to be hidden and it is revealed only once you have entered and then only parts are revealed, a few at a time, layers upon layers of the house seem to unfold in front of you and disappear and hide again behind you. There is a busyness to this house but a busyness that comes out of itself and its simplicity, out of the plan and the repetition of spaces and form that connect you to the space and at the same connecting the space to the outside and back to the inside. Is my reaction ideological and rooted in a nostalgic appreciation for the modernist ideal or is the connection something that shows a value in the ideas present in the design?