Rise of postmodern architecture

Postmodern architecture was a movement that emerged in the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s and 1980s as a reaction against the austerity of modernism. Its leading voices included Robert Venturi, whose book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture appeared in 1966, and who later wrote Learning from Las Vegas with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. The critic Charles Jencks helped define the movement. Its buildings embraced ornament, color, historical references and irony, in contrast to the plain glass boxes of high modernism. Well-known examples include Michael Graves's Portland Building and Philip Johnson's AT&T Building in New York, and its influence faded in the 1990s.

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