Presents an extensive historical, analytical and descriptive survey of the major Post-modern designers and their works. Features a wide range of designer objects including furniture, ceramics, metalware, lighting, jewelry, fabrics and carpets with illustrations of the best and most representative examples.

A curated collection of Postmodern architecture in all its glorious array of vivid non-conformity This unprecedented book takes its subtitle from Postmodernist icon Robert Venturi's spirited response to Mies van der Rohe's dictum that 'less is more'. One of the 20th century's most controversial styles, Postmodernism began in the 1970s, reached a fever pitch of eclectic non-conformity in the 1980s and 90s, and after nearly 40 years is now enjoying a newfound popularity. Postmodern Architecture showcases examples of the movement in a rainbow of hues and forms from around the globe.

With the international take-up of new technology in the 1990s, designers and typographers reassessed their roles and jettisoned existing rules in an explosion of creativity in graphic design. This book tells that story in detail, defining and illustrating key developments and themes from 1980-2000.

A comprehensive and authoritative publication on one of the most popular periods of international design, including architecture, furniture, ceramics, applied arts, graphics, and textiles Originating as a rebellious movement in philosophy and literature, Postmodernism proclaimed the death of modernism and promoted a new, nonlinear way of approaching architecture and design, spearheaded by Michael Graves, Robert Venturi, Ettore Sottsass, and Alessandro Mendini. It became a style in itself and the defining look of the 1980s. Postmodern Design Complete is the comprehensive reference to this period of vibrant design, as it profiles key creators including Graves, Mendini, Sottsass, Venturi, Charles Jencks, and Denise Scott Brown and covers the fields of architecture, furniture, graphic design, textiles, and product and industrial design. A section on Living with Postmodernism presents fifteen seminal homes and their furnishings; and a final section titled Postmodernism Continues is a comprehensive overview of contemporary makers. Highly informed and accessible texts are illustrated by more than 1,000 images that bring together classics and little-seen rarities, unusual objets d’art, and mass-produced items. This definitive volume also includes a foreword by Charles Jencks and an afterword by Denise Scott Brown, followed by a substantial reference section.

Political Postmodernisms shows how sites outside of Western Europe and North America undermine an established narrative of architecture theory and history. It focuses specifically on postmodern architecture, which is traditionally understood as embodying the flippant and apolitical aesthetics of capitalist affluence. By investigating postmodern architecture’s manifestations in the unlikely settings of Chile during the neoliberal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and Poland during the late socialist Polish People’s Republic, the book argues for a new account that incorporates the political roles it plays when seen in a global perspective. Political Postmodernisms has three goals. First, it challenges the familiar narrative regarding postmodern architecture as following the “cultural logic of late capitalism” (Fredric Jameson) or as a socially conservative project (Jürgen Habermas). Second, it fills in portions of Chilean and Polish architectural history that have been neglected by Chilean and Polish architectural historians themselves. Third, Political Postmodernisms shows how architecture can work as a political form – serving propagandistic purposes and functioning as part of oppositional projects. The book is projected to be of use to students and scholars in global modern and contemporary architecture history, history of urban planning, East European Studies, and Latin American Studies.

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography.