Charles Jencks | EPFL Graph Search

Charles Jencks, né le à Baltimore et mort le à Londres, est un architecte et historien américain de l'architecture. Avec la parution en 1977 de The Language of Postmodern Architecture, il est un des promoteurs du postmodernisme qui s'est développé dans le sillage de l'essai fondateur de Robert Venturi Complexity and contradiction in architecture (1966). Une partie importante de son œuvre porte également sur l'architecture paysagère dont une grande partie a été réalisée en Écosse près de Glasgow. Biographie vignette|Landform au Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Né à Baltimore (Maryland) le 21 juin 1939, Charles Alexander Jencks était le fils du compositeur Gardner Platt Jencks et de Ruth DeWitt Pearl. Jencks fréquente la Brooks School à North Andover, dans le Massachusetts, où il obtient un baccalauréat en littérature anglaise de l'Université Harvard en 1961 et une maîtrise en architecture de la Graduate School of Design de Harvard en 1965. En 1965, Jencks déménag

Londres, capitale du post-modernisme?

Nicolas Bruno Jacquet

The advantage of the dynamism of the London architectural scene seems rather ignored by historians and theorists. Not only is London absent from the grand narrative of modernity, but it is also denied the status of avant-garde, although since the 1960s, the British capital has been one of the main testing grounds of the renewal of forms and architectural ideas. The emergence of the of notion âpost-modernismâ at the turn of 1970s, initiated within the London specialized publishing, confirms this central role. This theoretical notion was created by the historian Charles Jencks (whose professor was Reyner Banham, initiator of the New Brutalism with Alison and Peter Smithson) as an alternative to modernism. It has transformed the architectural scene by establishing the return of historicism, the great moral taboo of a modernity based essentially on functionalism. This theoretical revolution, however, did not occur without causing grotesque postures, fueling a debate exacerbated and soon disrupted by the controversial speech of Prince Charles, who became the spokesman of the traditionalists. The impact in the media of this âpost-modern affairâ has led to believe in the manifestation of a crisis of legitimacy and of reception for the work of architects, in the context of heated debates concerning the cancellations of three major architectural and urban planning competitions for the capital city â the extension of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, the No.1 Poultry programme in the City, the redesigning of Paternoster Square near St Paulâs Cathedral. Yet, this intense sequence of the reappraisal of modernism has not curbed the development of an innovative and a radical architecture. On the contrary, it has led to the deregulation of the modern discourse by problematizing the architectâs responsibility in the creation of the built environment and by forcing to reconsider the challenges of integrating radicalism in a located environment. In this, âpost-modernismâ questions the foundations and the revival of a specifically British culturalist approach, as an alternative to the progressive model that has guided the idea and the act of modernity.

EPFL2016

Londres, capitale du post-modernisme?

Nicolas Bruno Jacquet

EPFL2016