Off-Modern Architecture

In Off-Modern Architecture, where Svetlana Boym discusses the intellectual history of modernity in an alternative way, she considers the Monument to the Third International, one of the icons of the Russian avant-garde, namely the mythical Tatlin Tower, as a cornerstone. She follows the architectural and philosophical metamorphosis of the tower, a manifesto for an architectural revolution. Boym calls this path, which delves into the backstreets of the critical modernity project, the architecture of adventure (Simmel); the winding move of the knight in chess (Shklovsky); "passionate thinking" distinct from "professional thinking" (Arendt); the architecture of freedom that opens up space for inconclusiveness and experimentation, paper architecture, models, and installations, "off-modern":

"Not postmodern, but off-modern, off-modern, I call this path: [...] I am tired of the post-, neo-, avant-garde, and meta- suffixes of the seductive post-critique that desperately tries to be 'in' and stay relevant. There is another option: not to be 'out' in the sense of being out of fashion or excluded, but to be 'off' in the sense of being beside, slightly away: as in off-stage, off-key, off-beat, and sometimes even off-color. This will be more helpful to me as I explore alternative approaches to form and function, different understandings of the relationships between art technique and technology, politics and aesthetic practice in the public sphere, ruinophilia and freedom."