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This week the Architectural League New York - one of the premier forums for new work and ideas in architecture and urbanism for more than 125 years – launches a new podcast series of original audio recordings from the early and mid-1980s:

Revisiting Postmodernism
a multi-part digital archive series featuring lectures and presentations by leading theorists and practitioners of 1980s postmodernism, curated from the League’s historic audio/video archive of lectures and panel discussions dating back more than thirty years.

Through the Digital Archive Project, selections from the League’s archive of more than six hundred audio/video recordings are being digitized and made available for online audiences.

The series includes presentations by leading theorists and practitioners of postmodernism, including John Burgee, Michael Graves, Charles Jencks, Charles Moore, James Stirling, and others.  New presentations will be available once a week over the next several weeks.

Today the series starts with Charles Jencks: Postmodern Classicism, recorded on November 17, 1980, c. 1:30h. (Download here).

Charles Jencks’ first lecture at the Architectural League on postmodernism is a strong and witty argument for what he calls “the consensus of postmodern classicism.” Jencks builds his argument through a comprehensive series of case studies ranging from the classcial to the (then) contemporary. He begins his lecture with an extended analogy, equating Modernism in architecture with the Christian Reformation.

Upcoming Episodes are:

Charles Moore: Work in Progress (Recorded on November 4, 1980)
From Bauhaus to Our House: A Panel Discussion (Recorded on December 1, 1981)
Charles Jencks: Freestyle Classicism: The New Rules (Recorded on April 5, 1982)
Michael Graves: The Portland Building* (Recorded on November 30, 1982)
John Burgee: Is this Postmodern? (Recorded on April 4, 1983)
James Stirling: Monument Informal (Recorded on May 16, 1985)
Charles Jencks: Symbolic Architecture (Recorded on October 22, 1985)

More information here.

PS: The Digital Archive Project offers more interesting audio feeds – just browse the named website a little more!