Mississauga City Hall, Postmodernist Architecture

Postmodernisms rejection of the serious attitude of modernism can be linked to the end of World War 2 and the culture shift that took place in the following decades. The end of the war saw the rapid expansion of the middle class, thanks to the momentum of the economy and the rise of new buildings to accommodate them. However the modernist approach of one size fits all to urban design meant that when times got worse, they degenerated into slums and had to be torn down in some cases.

While modernist architecture was serious and monolithic, postmodern architects took a more playful outlook, and revived some of the more decorative design choices that had been minimized or even rejected by modernist, such as using columns and decorative facades purely for their beauty. They still used the materials that modernists had celebrated, steel and glass, but used them in such a way as to make buildings more aesthetically pleasing to the everyday man.

Ian Muttoo, 2007

Some building almost seem to poke fun at the seriousness, such as Mississauga City Hall in Ontario, Canada. This melding of European urban civic design and the rural styles of farmhouses stands tall and is a physical manifestation of the postmodernists rejoicing in diversity.

Reference

Muttoo (2007) Mississauga City Hall. Flickr [Online]. Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imuttoo/2229840972/ (Accessed 12 May 2013)