Peter Leithart writes:

Christopher Jencks lamented in his Language of Postmodern Architecture that the term had been used in ways opposite to his own usage: “When I first wrote the book in 1975 and 1976 the word and concept of Post-Modernism had only been used with any frequency in literary criticism. Most perturbing, as I later realized it had been used to mean ‘Ultra-Modern,’ referring to the extremist novels of William Burroughs and a philosophy of nihilism and anti-convention. While I was aware of these writings of Ihab Hassan and others, I used the term to mean the opposite of all this: the end of avant-garde extremism, the partial return to tradition and the central role of communicating with the public – and architecture is the public art.”

This does not surprise me at all. Though I have been woefully slow in reading it, Glenn Ward’s book on P-M begins with architecture. He stresses not so much the nihilism but the insistent utilitarianism in which all offices must be stipped to nothing more than “machines for working,” and all homes to “machines for living.” The only aesthetic was design and all traditional architectures were usless and therefore to be rejected. Post-Modernism, if I understand Ward, said Leave us alone and let us live in archaic styles if we want to. People are allowed to create an environment according to values that do not reduce to rational planning.