Milstein Hall does exactly that. At the end of two decades of iconicity it revokes the early debates around Post-Modernism. It reintroduces a forward-looking, intelligent architecture into anaesthetised campus design. It adds new layers of complexity to a discourse that has gone silent. Koolhaas's act appears remarkably timely. This fall, the V&A in London is hosting a comprehensive retrospective titled Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990, Jencks has just published The Story of Post-Modernism, and Terence Riley, this year's curator of the Shenzhen–Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale, is doing a rerun of Portoghesi's Street, albeit with new names. Seemingly tame, Milstein Hall could be Pandora's box. Its agenda is so ambitious that to be realised it could never be openly stated. Is it a prelude or a coda?
Florian Idenburg