It’s well understood that a sense of place is an essential value for people, architecture, and cities. Everyone from designers to planners to city governments speak breathlessly of the power of places to transform cities for the better - but it’s not clear what placemaking really means.

It's no secret that post-modernism has, in recent years, experienced something of a revival. The much-maligned movement's exhuberant and joyful take on architecture is perhaps a solace in difficult moments. Or, for the more jaded among us, perhaps it simply lends itself to Instagram. 

That said, it's not quite the postmodernism that took off in the 60s. Post postmodernism is also concerned with history and context, but with contemporary spins made possible by new technologies. Installations and other temporary typologies also bring with them a fresh perspective, preserved forever on the internet for our vicarious enjoyment. But perhaps most crucially, it is no longer so wholly a reaction against the hegemony of modernism; something that the original postmodernists were fixated with. Today's postmodernism can be at once joyful and reserved, vernacular and high-tech. 

+ 65

#donotsettle is an online video project created by Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost about architecture and the way it is perceived by users. They visit buildings, make videos and write extended stories in their exclusive column on ArchDaily, #donotsettle Extra.

Yes, that library. The images of the Tianjin Binhai Library have appeared everywhere, from architecture blogs and news broadcasts to going completely viral on social media. We had to go see it and show you what the space is really like. So, we teamed up with MVRDV who sent us to Tianjin to see it up close.

Tianjin Binhai Library, designed by MVRDV, is part of the bigger master plan for the new Binhai Cultural Center (masterplanned by Germany’s GMP). The building has seen phenomenal success on social media reaching all corners of the world. Since the opening, the number of visitors has been constantly increasing, with many of them coming from way beyond Tianjin. It is a library as destination point, redefined.

+ 3

Postmodernism is back, it seems, and the architectural establishment has mixed feelings about it. This revival has been brewing for a while. In 2014, Metropolis Magazine created a “watchlist” of the best postmodernist buildings in New York that had been overlooked by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and were therefore at risk of being altered or destroyed. Last year, the listing of James Stirling’s One Poultry in the City of London kicked off a discussion about the value of Britain’s postmodernist buildings from the 1980s, as they reach an age when they are eligible for listing for preservation by Historic England. More recently Sean Griffiths, co-founder of the former architectural practice FAT, warned against a postmodernist revival, arguing that a style that thrived on irony could be dangerous in an era of Donald Trump, when satire seems to no longer be an effective political tool. The debate looks set to continue as, next year, London’s John Soane museum is planning an exhibition devoted to postmodernism.

+ 7