ABSTRACT
Postmodern architecture finds itself condemned to undertake a series of minor modifications in a space inherited from modernity, condemned to abandon a global reconstruction of the space of human habitation. According to Portoghesi, the rupture of postmodernism consists in an abrogation of the hegemony of Euclidean geometry. The disappearance of the Idea that rationality and freedom are progressing would explain a tone, style, or mode specific to postmodern architecture. This idea of a linear chronology is itself perfectly modern. In the new architecture, the quotation of motifs taken from earlier architectures relies on a procedure analogous to the way dream work uses diurnal residues left over from life past, as outlined by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams. This destiny of repetition and quotation whether it is taken up ironically, cynically, or naively is in any event obvious if one think of the tendencies that at present dominate painting, under the names of transavantgardism, neo-expressionism, and so forth.
