Supermodernism

Ibelings has termed the formal vocabulary of these architecturally interesting airports and of other similar large-scale works "supermodernism." Instead of taking an interest in the contextual and historical factors of architecture (as in the 70s and 80s), supermodernism is characterized by a susceptibility to categories like the neutral, the indistinct, or the implicit.

As Hans lbelings describes in his provocatively titled study Supermodernism, among a small but influential group of contemporary architects what almost amounts to a new form of 'international style' has found renewed validation in the commercial nation of the global brand.

Marc Augé and Hans Ibelings are the influential emergent critics of what has come to be called "supermodernism"; see, respectively, Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Verso, 1995), and Ibelings, Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (NAI, 1998).

Existing modernism appeared to erode, then, in the face of this supermodernism, and at precisely the moment when art was taken most seriously―or at least, deemed too important to be left to the artist.

Characterized by an excess of time, space and ego, all of which supervene on the present study in ways that distinguish its utilization of philosophy of religion from postmodern obsessions with social and literary philosophy, supermodernism can be introduced in the following manner […]

Articulating this insight in every way possible seemed to define fin-de-millennium social theory in relation to the network society, the global city, the information bomb, sociology against society, supermodernism, and so on.