Save, renovate or demolish: Postmodernism's midlife crisis

Heading into their fourth and fifth decades, deep into midlife architectural crises, needing face-lifts, they’re now vulnerable and back again in the public eye, eliciting concern and attracting a second look — and sympathy — even from people who never liked them. But will these loved-hated structures be saved, and should they?

Joseph Giovannini writes about the historic vulnerability buildings entering their fourth or fifth decade encounter and how the public distaste may, potentially, turn into a sudden nostalgia for certain veterans of a not-so-distant architectural era. 

Citing recent controversial efforts to demolish or renovate PoMo landmarks, like Johnson & Burgee's AT&T Building, Graves’s Portland Building, or Venturi Scott Brown's Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Giovannini writes: "The irony of purposely ironic buildings that joked with history is that they are themselves verging on history, and history more than beauty is proving their strongest defense."

Alexander Walter via Archinect - News http://bit.ly/2Vdy91b