Before architectural postmodernism was named as such, the process of postmodernizing architecture had already begun implicating architectural work in the increasingly information-driven logic of the late twentieth century. Though radical, the effects of this process have long been excluded from the predominant histories of postmodernism, which continue to rely on notions of individual and creative genius, architectural autonomy, and stylistic genealogies.

Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernization Effects places material devices, such as Pantone chips, research grant applications, questionnaires, Xerography, and travel photography, at the forefront of a counter-narrative that recasts these informatic procedures as fundamentally architectural and as the primary of catalysts of the loose agglomeration of styles that was once called postmodernism.

Author: Sylvia Lavin
With contributions from Camila Reyes Alé, Giulia Amoresano, Phillip R. Denny, Oliver Elser, Sebastiano Fabbrini, Kim Förster, Margo Handwerker, Martin Hartung, Sarah Hearne, Maura Lucking, Ivan L. Munuera, Bart-Jan Polman, Anna Renken, Vajdon Sohaili, and Laurent Stalder and Samuel Korn
Staged object photography: Elise Windsor
Graphic design: Studio Anna Haas

Co-published with Spector Books
Softcover, 316 pages

This publication was made possible in part thanks to the support of the Barr Ferree Publication Fund, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.