Ideologierna och samhällsplaneringen - från modernism till postmodernism och dekonstruktivism

Abstract

Nordic physical planning is in crisis, a vacuum left now that modernism no longer works as a comprehensive ideological force. Other ideologies and beliefs struggle to fill the vacuum left by modernism. The most important of these is postmodernism, which wants to replace all the norms and values of modernism. Deconstruction may also be seen as a philosophy that actively questions modernism, despite the fact that it does not claim to be a new doctrine.

The struggle to be recognised as the comprehensive doctrine of physical planning has not yet been settled. Various groups are fighting to rescue the remains of the modernist project. However, there is a great risk that the struggle will be nostalgic and retrospective if it is not combined with some measure of self-criticism.

My aim is to analyse the philosophies of postmodernism and deconstruction, their cultures, architecture and physical planning, in order to promote critical self-reflection. Although postmodernism and deconstruction do not offer immediately acceptable alternatives to the modernist world view, greater sensitivity to the questions being formulated may contribute to more subtlety in and development of modem self-comprehension.