Bright Colors Beneath a White Shroud: Scandinavian Postmodernism and the Conservative Imaginary

Both academia and popular culture have neglected the movement of Scandinavian Postmodern architecture (ca. 1975-1990), a tradition eclipsed by Modernism as the prevailing aesthetic and social project in Scandinavia. In light of the last decade of Postmodernism’s resurgence in the architectural academy globally, and recent uses of Postmodern architectural principles by right-wing movements in Europe, it is a crucial time to revisit this obscured regional Postmodernism. The movement of Scandinavian Postmodern architecture coincided with political shifts in the region which were supported by both the right and left of the political spectrum causing a shared space of conflict and imagination. The political dimensions of Scandinavian Postmodernism will be explored primarily through a close reading of Danish Postmodern Architect and Writer Ernst Lohse’s 1986 manifesto “Our Construction Should be Based in the Irrational” (translated into English for the first time for this paper), where, despite Lohse’s own sympathy for the environmental movement, he adopts familiar conservative rhetoric, bemoaning the loss of Western culture and the limitations of the welfare state. This paper will reconstruct the obscured history of Scandinavian Postmodernism, using the case of Ernst Lohse to locate discourse that reveals the movement as a site of contention and overlap between diverging political groups and its particular appeal to the conservative imagination.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.108.72

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ISBN
978-1-944214-26-5