Postmodernism

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 4 min read

Postmodernism is the movement that, between the late 1960s and the 1980s, challenged the rules of the Modern Movement. For decades architects and designers had followed the idea that form should arise from function, without decoration and without references to the past. The postmodernists replied that a building or an object is also a language: it can quote history, use colour, tell a story and even make people smile.

From "less is more" to "less is a bore"

The first attack came from the American architect Robert Venturi. In his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) he turned Mies van der Rohe's motto "less is more" into "less is a bore". With Learning from Las Vegas (1972), written with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, he invited people to look with interest at the signs and sheds of the commercial strip, which refined taste considered vulgar. The movement's name was popularised by the critic Charles Jencks with The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977), while the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, with The Postmodern Condition (1979), brought it into the cultural debate.

In 1980 the first International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Paolo Portoghesi under the title The Presence of the Past, presented the Strada Novissima: a street of façades designed by twenty architects, including Venturi, Hans Hollein, Frank Gehry and Ricardo Bofill. The landmark buildings followed: Michael Graves's Portland Building (1982) and Philip Johnson's AT&T skyscraper in New York (1984), crowned with a broken pediment like a Chippendale cabinet.

Milan: Alchimia and Memphis

In design, Postmodernism had its centre in Milan, where it took up the legacy of Radical design. Studio Alchimia, founded in 1976 by Alessandro Guerriero, created one-off pieces that played with kitsch and popular culture, such as Alessandro Mendini's Proust armchair (1978), a Baroque armchair repainted in brushstrokes like a painting by Signac.

In December 1980 Ettore Sottsass gathered a group of young designers at his home, among them Michele De Lucchi, Martine Bedin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, George Sowden, Matteo Thun and Aldo Cibic. While a Bob Dylan record was playing, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, the group chose its name: Memphis. The first exhibition, in September 1981 in Milan, caused a scandal and drew crowds of visitors. Pieces such as Sottsass's Carlton bookcase, a totem of coloured plastic laminate, mixed geometric shapes, graphic patterns and "humble" materials from bars and kitchens, used as if they were precious. Sottsass left the group in 1985 and Memphis disbanded in 1987, but its collectors would include Karl Lagerfeld and David Bowie.

Architects in the kitchen

Postmodernism also entered homes through everyday objects. In 1983 Alessi presented Tea & Coffee Piazza, curated by Mendini: eleven architects, including Graves, Hollein, Aldo Rossi, Venturi and Charles Jencks, designed a silver tea and coffee service as if it were a small piece of architecture. This led to hugely successful objects, such as Aldo Rossi's La Conica coffee maker (1984) and Michael Graves's 9093 kettle (1985), with its bird-shaped whistle.

Legacy

In the 1990s taste changed: the simplicity of minimalism returned and Postmodernism was dismissed as an excessive fashion. But it left an idea that design has never abandoned: an object does not only have to work, it can also communicate, move and amuse. Since the 2010s Memphis-style colours, shapes and laminates have come back into fashion, and the original pieces are now in the world's leading museums.