Jencks achieved that rare thing as a critic: his polemic helped bring the movement into existence In his work, postmodernism took centre stage and was polemicised as a set of values to which all architecture should subscribe, and which remain hugely important today. Postmodernism in architecture existed before Charles Jencks decided to call it that – yet, it was still a latent force, disparate and disconnected. Jencks subsequently admitted to having made up the precise time for the sake of rhetorical flourish and impact.Īs a writer, critic and theorist, Jencks' great talent was to be able to put his finger on something – an event, a trend a movement – and to identify and articulate its significance. Appearing early on in Charles Jencks' seminal work, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, these lines even have their own mythology. Quotations don't get more famous than this – at least when it comes to books about architecture. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite."
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