Charles Jencks: Symbolic architecture

Presented as part of Revisiting Postmodernism, a digital archive of talks held at The Architectural League by leading theorists and practitioners of 1980s postmodernism.

Organized in 1985 in conjunction with the publication of Jencks’ Towards a Symbolic Architecture (Rizzoli, 1985), the lecture makes the case that “some of the formal and linguistic problems of architecture” have been met and that architects must now move into the next stage of postmodernism: symbolic architecture. Features an extensive discussion of the design of the Thematic House, Jencks’ London townhouse, which he designed with Terry Farrell.

The League’s Digital Archive Project is made possible by contributions from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.