Postmodern Midtown: The Architecture of Late Capitalism

In the late 1960s and 1970s, architects challenged the functionalism and utopian design of modernism, embracing historicity, irony, pop culture, and decoration under the broad umbrella of postmodernism. In the 1980s, postmodernism arrived in a more concrete (and granite, marble, and chrome) way in Midtown. We’ll visit PoMo landmarks and their modernist precursors while discussing the political, cultural, and economic implications of postmodernism.