Summary: Man v/s Modern Man The unsatisfactory effect of the modern movement on the users had led to a shift of architectural discourse to making man the subject of architecture and not modern man. Theories thus wrote on an understanding of man’s life processes, complexity and the way he experienced the world for its meanings. Architectural practice was presumed to move towards embodying multiple meanings and an enriching experience which could provide a character, meaning and identity to the building for users to relate to. Thus the underlying theme subjectivity of experience and meaning was put forth as a reason for the shift. Eventual ideals and directions that practice had taken were presented about a decade later in the writings of critiques like Jencks, Stern, Alan Coloquohuon and others. These would then be used as setting stones for further directions in the architectural discourse. Charles Jencks presented the movement to have many branches like historicism, vernacularism, straight revivalism, metaphorism and anthropomorphism. Meaning in architecture in these cases were recommended to come from past associations that people had with architectural forms and cultural practices resulting in explicit use of symbols, colours, meanings, materials etc in architectural forms. All of these were proposing a use of symbols of history, vernacular, functions, context and body for meaning in architecture. Jencks recommends ‘radical eclecticism’ as a ‘true and proper style’ to bring back meaning and experience of these meanings in architecture. Radical Eclecticism was described as an expression which used symbols, and multiple styles with respect to context, function and tastes and preferences of users. Correlation of the theme subjectivity of experience and meaning to the postmodern movement transpired by critiques puts forth a hypothesis, stating that place character, meaning and identity in architecture can be achieved by using explicit forms, and multiple styles of the past as well as aspects of context and function familiar to users. But is this a true interpretation of the theme? Are these interpretations a descendant of the theme subjectivity of experience and meaning as described by early theorists and critiques or has the intent shifted? We will investigate this further through the layers of theory and practice which prevailed between the time original theories were formed and the time when results of the architectural discourse were conferred by critiques of the postmodern movement.
21