POSTMODERN STYLE MOULDING PROFILES & GALLERY
WHAT IS POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURAL STYLE?
The Postmodern style is a response to modern architecture. Postmodernism departs from modernism in opposition to the modernists’ rigid ideals that dictate simplicity, abstraction, and simple shapes. Unlike modernism, Postmodernism encouraged creativity in asymmetry, fragmentation, complexity, humor, color, playfulness, classical motifs, and various materials and shapes.
Modernism rejects any historical reverence and celebrates the future as a cosmopolitan, eclectic mishmash involving all artistic eras and trends.
CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE
Historic Postmodern style homes went against traditional, classical styles by embracing experimentation with an “anything goes” attitude. They feature combinations of traditional styles such as Neoclassical, Arts and Crafts,and Art Deco, but have much more distinguishable features.
Common elements of Postmodern style:
- Eclectic, playful, and colorful designs
- Usually asymmetric
- Oversized shapes
- Curved forms
POSTMODERN STYLE MOULDINGS
Postmodernist mouldings can include any of the traditional shapes, but they tend to be limited to usually oversized, basic shapes.
Rather than mitering corners, Postmodernist usage often cuts the moulding profiles off perpendicular, allowing the profile to be seen on edge. The half-round moulding is especially common in Postmodern designs.
HISTORY OF POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE
Architect Robert Venturi is widely regarded as a founding father of Postmodernism. He helped establish its intellectual foundation through his influential book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), challenging the restraint and austerity that had come to characterize much of twentieth-century Modernism. Venturi famously countered the Modernist maxim “less is more” with his own declaration that “less is a bore.” Rather than rejecting architectural history, Postmodernism welcomed its return, drawing upon classical forms, ornament, symbolism, and historical references while often interpreting them in unexpected ways. Venturi described his approach as a “gentle manifesto for a non-straightforward architecture,” advocating for complexity and contradiction rather than the rigid pursuit of simplicity.
One of the earliest and most influential examples of Postmodern architecture is the Vanna Venturi House, designed by Venturi for his mother and completed in 1964. Although modest in scale, the house deliberately challenges many conventions of Modern architecture. Its prominent gabled façade, oversized chimney, decorative arch, and seemingly symmetrical composition recall the familiar image of a traditional house, yet Venturi manipulated these elements through exaggerated scale and unexpected relationships. This willingness to reinterpret the architectural past became central to Postmodernism. By the 1970s and 1980s, the movement had expanded internationally as architects increasingly reintroduced color, ornament, historical allusion, and visual wit into contemporary design, creating buildings that sought to communicate with their surroundings and the people who experienced them.