2008-09-11 - 8:48 a.m.
It is not yet Now. It is also no longer Then. �Postmodernity� is post-Then. At least three things have to happen to get to Now. Two of them you probably have no control over, but the most important part you do. I�ll start talking about the first part now, the second starting Veterans Day (hint, hint), and the third early next year.
That book I liked so much repeats architect Charles Jencks� assertion that postmodernity began with the 1972 implosion of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, MO. Certainly Pruitt-Igoe was a top example of modernity run amok, but there are a couple of problems with saying this was the start of postmodernity.
First of all, nothing replaced Pruitt-Igoe, postmodern or otherwise. It�s a bare patch to this day (actually a few years ago it was upgraded from dirt to a park). More importantly few outside St. Louis (and even people who�ve moved there in the last few decades) had any idea it happened. However, something happened in 1972 that everyone knew about: the Vietnam War ended.
Furthermore, something that was designed by the same architect as Pruitt-Igoe was destroyed that the whole world saw. The World Trade Center was also designed by Minoru Yamasaki and was oddly never a well-constructed building. It was never a well-loved part of the New York skyline, the way say the Chrysler Building or Empire State were.
Also it was too small. You might not think it for such a huge structure, but the floorplans weren�t big enough for contemporary offices and tenants had to rent multiple floors. Not quite the social failure of Modernism that Pruitt-Igoe was, but the buildings still didn�t quite work.
And now in uber-inaccessible New York, the World Trade Center is being replaced by the postmodern Freedom Tower. There�s a supposed time table for this (I think it�s supposed to be done by 2012). I�m dubious of schedules myself, but I�m quite sure it�ll get done eventually. I�ll talk about this over the next few entries. But rebuilding the WTC is the first step in getting to Now.
� 2008 Geoff Gladstone
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