The exhibition Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths presents many ignored and inconvenient contingencies of postmodernist architectural practice. Traces of these external forces are often left in forgotten documents, the salvage of ordinary processes, and assembling them together disturbs the smooth maintenance of the myths of architectural autonomy. Looking beyond North America, the series Meanwhile, in… considers the role of changed contexts in shaping postmodernisms elsewhere, by assembling case studies from other countries, with other cultural concerns and other contingencies.

Terry Farrell’s TV-am Studios building opened in London in 1983 when television networks were growing in the United Kingdom and neoliberalism was establishing itself as the dominant paradigm. Farrell’s renovation embraced pop references, multiple narratives, and formal plays and innovations to create an icon that could not only produce television, but be televised while shaping the identity of the new breakfast television channel and the idea of popular architecture.

Léa-Catherine Szacka is an architect, historian, and critic, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester, and member of the Manchester Architecture Research Group. She received a PhD in Architecture History and Theory from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London in 2011.