DAMPA_75_years_of_quiet_design_ENG - Flipbook - Page 152
A new era
of design
The 1980s Swedish-owned jumbo ferries and the American
cruise ships were prime representatives of a new direction
for architecture and design, which in the decade’s first half
veered suddenly and sharply away from the Modern Movement, embracing instead postmodernism. In place of objective, rationalist and functionalist solutions, architects and
designers now began to follow theories advocating visual
diversity and – as the influential American architect, architectural educator and critic Robert Venturi expressed it,
‘complexity and contradiction.’
Venturi and his followers argued for the extending of the
definition of ‘function’ to include decorative symbolism, as
found in the thematic interiors of the casino resorts of Las
Vegas. Although postmodern theory initially responded to
contemporary American cultural conditions, involving mass
consumerism and pop culture, by the 1980s it had also
become a design style in architecture, quoting elements of
pre-modernist styles, usually over-scaled, simplified and
rendered in bright colours to give a toy-like quality.
Without special effort, anybody building with LEGO bricks
could achieve a postmodern architectural aesthetic in miniature. Achieving comparable effects using Dæmpa ceilings
involved using them in new and different ways – perhaps by
installing them at skewed angles, rather than perpendicularly to a building’s structure, or arranging them in layers with
cornicing between, or specifying the period’s fashionable
bright or pastel colour shades. As postmodern aesthetics
emphasised the ironic use of factory-made componentry
when referencing aesthetics from the ancient past, Dæmpa’s designs were quite readily absorbed into its stylistic
language.
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