THE WESTERN WORLD: The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin:

occidens "sunset,
West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context. There are many accepted
definitions about what they all have in common.

The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, and the advent of Christianity.

In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the following:

 The traditions of the Renaissance

 Protestant Reformation
 Age of Enlightenment
 Expansive colonialism of the 15th-20th centuries

Before the Cold War era [ A state of political hostility that existed from 1945 until 1990 between countries led by the
Soviet Union and countries led by the United States] the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with
the Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) countries and culture. Its political usage was temporarily changed by the antagonism
during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1947–1991).

The term originally had a literal geographic meaning.

It contrasted Europe with the linked cultures and civilizations of the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the
remote Far East, which early-modern Europeans saw as the East.

Today this has little geographic relevance since the concept of the West has been expanded to include the former European colonies
in the Americas, Russian Northern Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the phrase "Western world" includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial
origin with substantial European ancestral populations in the Americas and Oceania

TEAM X:
Team 10, just as often referred to as "Team X", was a group of architects and other invited participants who assembled starting in July
1953 at the 9th Congress of C.I.A.M. and created a Schism [Division of a group into opposing factions] within CIAM[The Congrès
internationaux d'architecture moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in
1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent
architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern Movement focusing in all the main domains of
architecture (such as landscape, urbanism, industrial design, and many others).] by challenging its doctrinaire approach to urbanism.
They referred to themselves as "a small family group of architects who have sought each other out because each has found the help
of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own individual work." Team 10's theoretical framework,
disseminated primarily through teaching and publications, had a profound influence on the development of architectural thought in
the second half of the 20th century, primarily in Europe

BRUTALISM:
Brutalist architecture is a movement in architecture that flourished from the 1950s to
the mid-1970s, descending from the modernist architectural movement of the early
20th century. The term originates from the French word for "raw" in the term used by
Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material béton brut (raw concrete).

Picture : Trellick Tower, London designed by Ernő Goldfinger 1966-1972

SMITHSONS:
English architects Alison Smithson (22 June 1928 – 14 August 1993) and Peter Smithson
(18 September 1923 – 3 March 2003) together formed an architectural partnership, and
are often associated with the New Brutalism (especially in architectural and urban
theory). Peter was born in in north-east England, and Alison was born in Sheffield, South
Yorkshire.
They met while studying architecture at Durham University and married in 1949. Together, they joined the architecture department
of the London County Council before establishing their own partnership in 1950.

Brutalist architecture is a movement in architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, descending from the modernist
architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French word for "raw" in the term used by Le
Corbusier to describe his choice of material béton brut (raw concrete).

British architectural critic Reyner Banham adapted the term into "brutalism" (originally "New Brutalism") to identify the emerging
style.

Brutalism became popular with governmental and institutional clients, with numerous examples in Britain, France, Germany, Japan,
the United States, Canada, Brazil, the Philippines, Israel and Australia.

Examples are typically massive in character (even when not large), fortress-like, with a predominance of exposed concrete
construction, or in the case of the "brick brutalists," ruggedly combine detailed brickwork and concrete.

There is often an emphasis on graphically expressing in the external elevations and in the whole-site architectural plan the main
functions and people-flows of the buildings.

Brutalism became popular for educational buildings (especially university buildings), but was relatively rare for corporate projects.
Brutalism became favored for many government projects, high-rise housing, and shopping centers.

In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the
lightness, optimism, and frivolity of some 1930s and 1940s architecture.

In one critical appraisal by Banham, Brutalism was posited not as a style but as the expression of an atmosphere among architects of
moral seriousness.

"Brutalism" as an architectural critical term was not always consistently used by critics; architects themselves usually avoided using it
altogether.

More recently, "brutalism" has become used in popular discourse to refer to buildings of the late twentieth century that are large or
unpopular – as a synonym for "brutal.

ALDO VAN EYCK:

Aldo van Eyck (16 March 1918 – 14 January 1999) was an architect from the Netherlands. He was one of the most influential
protagonists of the architectural movement Structuralism. As a member of CIAM and then in 1954 a co-founder of "Team 10", Van
Eyck lectured throughout Europe and northern America propounding the need to reject Functionalism and attacking the lack of
originality in most post-war Modernism. Van Eyck's position as co-editor of the Dutch magazine Forum helped publicize the "Team
10" call for a return to humanism within architectural design.

Van Eyck received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1990.

JANE JACOBS:

Jane Jacobs OC was born was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist best known for her influence on urban studies.
Her influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of most
city-dwellers.

The book also introduced sociology concepts such as "eyes on the street" and "social capital".

Jacobs was well known for organizing grassroots efforts to protect existing neighborhoods from "slum clearance" – and particularly
for her opposition to Robert Moses in his plans to overhaul her neighborhood, Greenwich Village.

She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through
SoHo and Little Italy, and was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on the project. After moving to Canada in 1968,
she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toronto planned and under
construction.

As a mother and a female writer who criticized experts in the male-dominated field of urban planning, Jacobs endured scorn from
established figures, who called her a "housewife" and a "crazy dame." She did not have a college degree, or any formal training in
urban planning, and was criticized for being unscholarly and imprecise. She was also accused of inattention to racial inequality, and
her concept of "unslumming" has been compared with gentrification.

ROBERT VENTURI:
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. (born June 25, 1925) is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and
Associates, and one of the major architectural figures in the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott
Brown, he helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the American
built environment. Their buildings, planning, theoretical writings, and teaching have also contributed to the expansion of discourse
about architecture. Venturi is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore", a postmodern antidote to Mies van der Rohe's
famous modernist dictum "Less is more".

CHRISTOPHER WOLFGANG ALEXANDER: Christopher Wolfgang Alexander (born 4 October 1936 in Vienna,
Austria) is an architect noted for his theories about design as well as over 200 building projects around the world. Reasoning that
users know more about the buildings they need than any architect could, he produced and validated (in collaboration with Sarah
Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein) a "pattern language" to empower anyone to design and build at any scale. He moved from England
to the United States in 1958, living and teaching in Berkeley, California from 1963. Currently an emeritus professor at the University
of California, Berkeley, Alexander lives in Arundel, England.

Alexander is often overlooked by texts in the history and theory of architecture because his work intentionally disregards
contemporary architectural discourse. However, Alexander's polyvalent [clarification needed] approach to the discipline of
architecture has had enormous ramifications through his vast corpus of essays and books. He is regarded as the father of the Pattern
Language movement, and various contemporary architectural practices such as the New Urbanist movement have resulted from
Alexander's ideas, which seek to help normal people reclaim control over their built environments.

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?

Postmodernism was a movement in architecture that rejected the modernist, avant-garde, passion for the new. Modernism is here
understood in art and architecture as the project of rejecting tradition in favor of going "where no man has gone before" or better: to
create forms for no other purpose than novelty.

Modernism was an exploration of possibilities and a perpetual search for uniqueness and its cognate--individuality. Modernism's
valorization of the new was rejected by architectural postmodernism in the 50's and 60's for conservative reasons. They wanted to
maintain elements of modern utility while returning to the reassuring classical forms of the past.

The result of this was an ironic brick-a-brack or collage approach to construction that combines several traditional styles into one
structure. As collage, meaning is found in combinations of already created patterns.

Following this, the modern romantic image of the lone creative artist was abandoned for the playful technician (perhaps computer
hacker) who could retrieve and recombine creations from the past--data alone becomes necessary.
This synthetic approach has been taken up, in a politically radical way, by the visual, musical and literary arts where collage is used to
startle viewers into reflection upon the meaning of reproduction. Here, pop-art reflects culture (American). Let me give you the
example of Californian culture where the person--though ethnically European, African, Asian, or Hispanic--searches for authentic or
"rooted" religious experience by dabbling in a variety of religious traditions. The foundation of authenticity has been overturned as
the relativism of collage has set in.

We see a pattern in the arts and everyday spiritual life away from universal standards into an atmosphere of multi-dimensionality
and complexity, and most importantly--the dissolving of distinctions. In sum, we could simplistically outline this movement in
historical terms:

1. PREMODERNISM: Original meaning is possessed by authority (for example, the Catholic Church). The individual is dominated by
tradition.

2. MODERNISM: The enlightenment-humanist rejection of tradition and authority in favor of reason and natural science. This is
founded upon the assumption of the autonomous individual as the sole source of meaning and truth--the Cartesian cogito. Progress
and novelty are valorized within a linear conception of history--a history of a "real" world that becomes increasingly real or
objectified. One could view this as a Protestant mode of consciousness.

3. POSTMODERNISM: A rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective, anonymous
experience. Collage, diversity, the mystically unpresentable, Dionysian passion are the foci of attention. Most importantly we see the
dissolution of distinctions, the merging of subject and object, self and other. This is a sarcastic playful parody of western modernity
and the "John Wayne" individual and a radical, anarchist rejection of all attempts to define, reify or re-present the human subject.

POSTMODERNITY: Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or
condition of western society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late
20th century—in the 1980s or early 1990s—and that it was replaced by postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to
cover the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended after World War II. The idea of the
post-modern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state
as opposed to the progressive mind state of Modernism.

Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the
state of being that is associated with a postmodern society as well an historical epoch. In most contexts it should be distinguished
from postmodernism, the adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in art, literature, culture and society. In fact, today, historical
perspectives on the developments of postmodern art (postmodernism) and postmodern society (postmodernity) can be best
described as two umbrella terms for processes engaged in an ongoing dialectical [dialectical - any formal system of reasoning that
arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments] relationship, the result of which is the evolving world in which we now
live.
CONDITIONS OF POST MODERNITY:
Book Review: The Condition of Postmodernity, David Harvey - By Steve Best

David Harvey is well-known in social theory circles for books like Social Justice and the City (1973), The Limits to Capital (1982), The
Urbanization of Capital (1985), and Consciousness and The Urban Experience (1985) -- all seminal attempts to chart the relatively
new and unexplored interface between political economy and urban geography.

The Condition of Postmodernity is a significant new work by Harvey that situates postmodern theory within a broad social context.
Harvey's main argument is that, beginning around 1972, there has been a "sea-change" in political, economic, and cultural practices,
involving the emergence of a new postmodern sensibility in numerous fields and disciplines.

Harvey relates postmodern developments to shifts in the organization of capitalism and new forms of time-space experience.
Working from Marxist premises, his argument is similar to Fredric Jameon's claim that postmodernism is "the cultural logic of late-
capitalism," with the difference that Harvey provides considerably more empirical support for this view.

To understand postmodernism and postmodernity, one first has to understand modernism and modernity, and Harvey provides good
accounts of the major sources of modern ideas and the key structural features of modernity. Harvey's basic approach to
postmodernism is sound. Rather than rejecting postmodern developments as superficial and merely transitory, he believes they
represent a new paradigm of thought and cultural practice that requires serious attention.

At the same time, he avoids exaggerating the novelty of postmodern developments and sees both continuities and discontinuies with
modern practices. Postmodernism represents not a complete rupture from modernism, but a new "cultural dominant" where
elements that could be found in modernism appear in postmodernism with added emphasis and intensity.

As he puts it, where a modernist like Baudelaire tried to combine in a modern aesthetic both the eternal and the transitory, the
whole and the fragmentary, postmodernism rejects all attempts to represent the immutable or ordered patterns and totalities, in
order to revel in flux, fragments, difference, and chaos.

Harvey is neither overly uncritical nor celebratory toward postmodernism. He criticizes postmodernism for being too nihilistic and for
embracing aesthetics over ethics. Postmodernism avoids the realities of political economy and global capitalism and precludes the
possibility of a positive politics informed by normative principles. Moreover, Harvey finds that postmodernists provide a caricatured
account of modern cultural and theoretical practices.

Harvey objects to the assimilation of a wide variety of modern architectural forms to the debacle of housing projects such as Pruitt-
Igoe, and he claims modernists found ways to contain explosive and anarchic forms of capitalist development. Also, he believes that
the "meta-narratives that the post-modernists decry (Marx, Freud, and even later figures like Althusser) were much more open,
nuanced, and sophisticated than the critics admit".

Yet, unlike most other Marxist readings of postmodernism, Harvey also sees positive aspects to postmodernism, such as its concern
for complexity, difference, otherness, and plurality which are neglected in many modern practices.

The most interesting and important aspect of Harvey's book is his attempt to situate postmodernism within the logic of advanced
capitalism. Unlike Baudrillard and other radical postmodernists, Harvey does not see postmodernism as some radically new
postindustrial or even post capitalist development. Rather, postmodernism results from new organization and technological forms
developed by capitalism in the second half of this century.

Specifically, Harvey directly relates postmodern developments to the shift from Fordism to a "more flexible mode of accumulation"
(he deliberately avoids the term "post-Fordism" to avoid suggesting there are not some fundamental continuities in the two modes
of capitalist organization).

Fordism emerged with the attempts by Henry Ford to provide workers with sufficient income and leisure time to consume the
products they produce. "Fordism" refers to a process of coordinating production with consumption in order to attain a more
complete assimilation of the working class to capitalism, relying on psychological management techniques.

As Harvey sees it, Fordism, and the Keynesian economics it was bound up with, was too rigid as a mode of organization and
accumulation. Governing the post-war boom years, this regime crumbled with the 1973 recession and gave way to a far more
complex and supple economic structure with respect to such things as the labor process, the labor market, products, and
consumption patterns.

One of the key aspects of this regime is that it greatly increases rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation. For
Harvey, the speed-up of capital turnover and the pace of life itself has direct implications at the level of cultural practices.

"The relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all the ferment, instability, and fleeting qualities of a
postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of cultural forms"
Postmodern developments are therefore directly related to "the more flexible motion of capital [which] emphasizes the new, the
fleeting, the ephemeral, the fugitive, and the contingent in modern life, rather than the more solid values implanted under Fordism" .
An important part of Harvey's book is devoted to analysis of historically changing forms of space-time experience. He holds that
"neither time nor space can be assigned objective meanings independently of material processes" and that "conceptions of time and
space are necessarily created through material practices which serve to reproduce social life”.

It follows that the recently created "more flexible mode of accumulation" would produce a different form of time-space experience.
Harvey characterizes this in terms of an ever greater "time-space compression" where long durations of time required for travel and
communication are reduced to almost nothing and the vast, disparate spaces of the planet are absorbed into a homogenized, global
village. Harvey believes this time-space compression that begins with capitalism has greatly intensified in the last two decades, and
that postmodernism emerges as a cultural response to its disorienting and disruptive effects.

There is considerably more detail and nuance in Harvey's book than I can present here. Harvey's chapters on the social construction
of space-time and urban postmodernism, for example, are interesting and important theoretical contributions. He also provides
clear, detailed analyses of postmodern urban forms.

For Harvey, urban postmodernism rejects modernist emphases on rational planning, large-scale development, social utility, and
purity of form for a locally grounded, fragmented and eclectic aesthetic that combines various aesthetic styles (often in a purposely
discontinuous manner) and sees space strictly as an aesthetic category.

A key merit of Harvey's book is its wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scope. To illuminate postmodern developments, Harvey usefully
draws from numerous fields, including art, architecture, urban planning, philosophy, social theory, and political economy. Overall, he
is better on art and architecture than philosophy and social theory.

His analysis of Foucault, for instance, is mistaken insofar as he un-qualifiedly labels Foucault a postmodernist, oblivious to the fact
that Foucault adopts substantive aspects of modern and ancient thought in his later works. For the neophyte, Harvey's book provides
a useful discussion of the main issues of postmodern theory; for those well-acquainted with postmodern ideas and texts, it will too
often appear as unoriginal summarizing.

There are two curious omissions in Harvey's book: ecology and politics. Having developed a fruitful analysis of the modernist goal of
a rational conquest of nature and social space, it is unfortunate that Harvey does not explore the ecological implications of
modernism and the Enlightenment.

Nor does he consider the relation of postmodern theoretical and cultural practices to the environment: do they replicate repressive
modernist assumptions or encourage a non-exploitative relation to nature? Although Harvey remains silent on this issue,
postmodern critiques of totalizing and dualistic outlooks seem to hold some promise for developing an entirely new epistemological
and ontological relation to nature (as I argue in my recent article "Chaos and Entropy: Metaphors in Postmodern Science and Social
Theory," Science as Culture, #11, 1991).

The failure to address such questions is symptomatic of Harvey's more general failure to discuss political strategies for our supposed
postmodern condition. Unlike Lefebvre, the Situationists, and Jameson, Harvey does not extend his analysis of space into a distinctly
spatial politics that helps us to reclaim our urban environment and to contruct new coordinates of the global class system and our
place within it.

In fact, although he calls for a reconstructed version of Marxism and Enlightenment values, Harvey is quintessentially postmodern in
his superficial, fragmented, and rhetorical remarks on politics (see the last chapter of the book).

While he observes "cracks in the mirrors" of a postmodern culture based on imagery, hype, and simulation, he does not speculate on
how to smash these mirrors and the capitalist mode of production that creates them. With the vaguest sense of political change and
opportunity, Harvey's "politics" never go deeper this: "it becomes possible to launch a counter-attack of narrative against the image,
of ethics against aesthetics, of a project of Becoming rather than Being, and to search for unity within difference, albeit in a context
where the power of the image and of aesthetics, the problems of time-space compression, and the significance of geopolitics and
otherness are clearly understood" .

Ultimately, Harvey's analysis of postmodernism is reductionistic and requires better theorization of the mediations between
economic and cultural practices.

The links between capitalism and postmodernism, in order words, are too simple and crude, and more perspectives are needed to
illuminate the multiple sources of influence on postmodern discourse. For example, Harvey doesn't consider key political influences
on postmodernism, such as the political failures of the 1960s which had a nihilistic fallout.

Moreover, there are important intellectual influences on postmodernism (the emphases on discontinuity, complexity, chaos,
perspectivism, anti-realism, etc), which were already present in modernism and were very important in scientific theories such as
quantum mechanics, as well as in the thought of Nietzsche and pragmatism. Obviously, these major postmodern emphases came
well before the "sea-change" of 1972.

Harvey might easily grant such influences (he at least sees some continuities between modernism and postmodernism), but he needs
an account of "cultural dominant" that explains how a diversity of pre-existing factors, as well as new ones, coalesce into a
postmodern sensibility.

While no one should doubt that capitalism plays a major role in shaping contemporary values, ideas, practices, and experience, the
intellectual influences on postmodernism are far more autonomous from the vicissitudes of capitalism than Harvey allows. In the
future, better attempts at contextualizing postmodernism will need to be undertaken.

But with Jameson's partial account of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late-capitalism, and Harvey's initial attempt to flesh this
claim out empirically, we have two good contributions to a materialist analysis of postmodernism.

CANONIZATION: Canonization or Canonisation is the act by which the Church [Orthodox, Oriental Orthodoxy, Roman Catholic,
or Anglican Church] declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or
list, of recognized saints

Canonization is a Decree [a legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge)]
announcing a person has qualified for sanctification [A religious ceremony in which something is made holy]. The decree publically
declares the nominee is holy and in heaven with God. Canonization binds the universal church to honor the saint.

CANONIZATION OF POST MODERNISM

WORKS OF MICHAEL GREAVES: Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an American architect. Identified as
one of The New York Five, as well as Memphis Group, Graves was known first for his contemporary building designs and some
prominent public commissions that became iconic examples of postmodern architecture, such as the Portland Building and the
Denver Public Library. His recognition grew through designing domestic products sold by premium Italian housewares maker Alessi,
and later low-cost new designs at stores such as Target and J. C. Penney in the United States. He was a representative of New
Urbanism and New Classical Architecture and formerly designed postmodern buildings, and was recognized as a major influence in
all three movements.

From 1964 until the end of his life, Graves was an architect in public practice in Princeton, New Jersey. He directed the firm Michael
Graves & Associates, which has offices in Princeton and in New York City.

Early in his career, Graves was, along with Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier, considered as one of
the "New York Five", a group of New York City architects who followed a pure form of modernism. In contrast to his later career,
Graves spent much of the 1970s designing modernist residences, such as the Snyderman House in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

For most of his career, however, Graves shifted away from modernism toward postmodernism and new urbanism. One of his most
famous works, the Portland Building, which opened in 1982 in Portland, Oregon, is regarded as the first major built example of
postmodern architecture. The celebrated but controversial building, composed of municipal offices, is subject to an ongoing
preservation debate. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

Graves subsequently received a number of major commissions. Some of his most notable completed buildings include the Humana
Building (a skyscraper in Louisville, Kentucky), the Denver Public Library, and the renovation of the Detroit Institute of Arts. He built
many buildings for the Walt Disney Company, including the company headquarters in Burbank, California, Disney's Hotel New York at
Disneyland Paris, and the Swan and Dolphin resorts at Walt Disney World. In the 1980s, he also designed an expansion for the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, but the highly contested design went unbuilt due to local opposition.

Though Graves' prominence as an architect may have reached its highest point during the 1980s and into the early 1990s, he
continued to practice as an architect throughout his life, completing various works such as the O'Reilly Theater, the NCAA Hall of
Champions, 425 Fifth Avenue, and the Louwman Museum.

Graves also received recognition for his multi-year renovation of his personal residence in Princeton, nicknamed "The Warehouse".

WORKS OF ROBERT VENTURI: