Urban theory in postmodern cities: Amnesiac spaces and ephemeral aesthetics

Resumen

The study of Postmodern architecture demands freedom from any pre-conceived rule or traditional stylistic analysis. Because of this dogma, urban transformations have been brought to postmodern cities in recent decades. Some of these are chaotic and are not related to the urban experience of the individual. Thus, the modification of space and time in a city generates a brandnew architecture – a reflection of a renewed society, freed from the philosophical, aesthetic and social concerns of the central decades of the twentieth century. A formerly attempt to establish a quaint and recognisable typology of “local architecture” is now discarded, then refusing the sense of unique identity of the city and which in the past, promoted the urban memory of the inhabitants. Urban spaces are created far from historical centres, built deprived of both history and memory. The individual, therefore, is unable to find a relationship between these “anti-cities”, familiarity and daily life. The citizen appears nowadays as seemingly detached from these new and disproportionate constructions, spaces that show no architectural personality. Urban models are presented as the assimilation or systematic copying favors of interaction with the individual. This new city model is based on the copy, in the simulacrum of reality itself.