The Textbook of Architecture

The Cabinet of Models

The postmodern tower

After the AT&T Building (Johnson and Burgee, 1978–84): a stone skyscraper with a giant arched base and a broken pediment on top.

The postmodern tower Open in Models ↗

Illustrates: Postmodernism

The rules it illustrates

Less is a bore. Prefer richness of meaning to clarity of meaning: accept the complex and contradictory demands of program, structure and context, and resolve them in a “difficult whole” rather than excluding them for the sake of simplicity.

Double coding. Speak two languages at once: the technical language of modern construction for the profession, and a language of familiar, historical or popular signs for everyone else.

Where it appears in the book

In the styles Postmodernism.

In the chapters The Contemporary.

The terms it shows

Broken pediment