Charles Jencks, the critic who helped bring postmodernism into existence, died this week. With populism on the rise, the pluralism of the movement is needed now more than ever, argues Owen Hopkins.

"Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite."
Quotations don't get more famous than this ? at least when it comes to books about architecture. Appearing early on in Charles Jencks' seminal work, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, these lines even have their own mythology. Jencks subsequently admitted to having made up the precise time for the sake of rhetorical flourish and impact. As a writer, critic and theorist, Jencks' great talent was to be able to put his finger on something ? an event, a trend a movement ? and to identify and articulate its significance. Postmodernism in architecture existed before Charles Jencks decided to call it that ? yet, it was still a latent force, disparate and disconnected. In his work, postmodernism took centre stage and was polemicised as a set of values to which all architecture should subscribe, and which remain hugely important today.
Jencks achieved that rare thing as a critic: his polemic helped bring the movement into existence
The funny thing, though, was that when Jencks wrote the first edition of The Language of Post-modern Architecture in 1977, ...