An Architecture of the Metamodern

<p><strong>Today’s cultural landscape in the digital age is profoundly different from the Postmodern period. Digital technologies have redefined human engagement, identity, and routine, shifting cultural production and participation into the hands of the many rather than the elite few. This transformation calls for a new framework to understand contemporary conditions, which is increasingly explored through the discourse of Metamodernism. Defined by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker as an oscillation between the optimism of Modernism and the detachment of Postmodernism (2010), Metamodernism encapsulates a renewed cultural sensibility, between irony and sincerity, characterised by an informed naivety and pragmatic idealism.</strong></p><p>While Metamodernism has been widely explored in art and literature, its implications for architecture remain largely underexamined. This research addresses this gap by asking: what is architecture in response to multiplicities in the Metamodern condition? This thesis interrogates this question through a creative practice research methodology, with the questioning refined through creative experiments that successively increase in scale, and architectural complexity. These develop strategies to entangle digital culture, Metamodernism and architecture, to pursue An Architecture of the Metamodern. Three interrelated, iterative projects explore rhizomic territories in the Metamodern: Recommended for You, an interactive installation, Arena of Disjunction, a conceptual performance arena, and Into the Heart: A Civic Gateway, in central Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. In these projects, architectural conventions are engaged with, and subverted, to spatialise digital culture and the Metamodern sensibility, creating spatial experiences that embody the dynamic interplay of cultural plurality, participatory engagement, and adaptive oscillations that define contemporary society.</p><p>A context review traces the Metamodern condition from its historical context, of art and cultural movements, through to its contemporary evolution and articulation in digital culture. Case studies give a visual context to ideas surrounding the Metamodern and their analysis draws out key notions that are expanded upon in three projects. The Recommended for You installation project explores the Metamodern as a spatialised digital condition. The Arena of Disjunction interphase project extends ideas from the installation into the civic realm, creating a multimedia performance space in Christchurch, New Zealand. Finally, the Into the Heart: A Civic Gateway metaphase project takes this further, in the design of a speculative, large-scale architectural intervention on the same site. The Christchurch site provides historical, cultural, environmental and social material to the research. Across the three phases, multiple modes of representation are employed, including physical and digital modelling, hybrid visualisations, and a range of digital tools. The three phases prompt reflections on architecture’s response to the Metamodern condition, presenting new approaches to user engagement, cultural identities, and the dynamic interplay between digital and physical realms in architecture. This unique work explores a synthesis of digital culture and civic space, offering an adaptive and responsive architectural framework attuned to the complexities of contemporary society.</p>