Intertextual Reading of Postmodern Architecture (Based on Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction)

Postmodernism is a very ambiguous term. It attracted many researchers from different fields of knowledge in the late 1960s. This article explains intertextuality as a critical means to derive its concepts and components in order to understand the hidden layers of meaning in postmodern pluralist ideology. Variable thoughts of postmodern architecture have been divided into two categories—Historicist and Deconstruction—to be able to detect and classify the inner layers of meaning in postmodern architecture. The authors seek to answer these questions: 1. How can we achieve the intertextual relationship between Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction? 2. How can we define Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction into the diachronic and synchronic axes? The results show that Historicist postmodernism uses objective signifiers and moves only along the diachronic axis. This group only imitates the past and its elements have humor and irony in the works. Due to the lack of attention to the synchronic axis, some parts of intertextuality are missing. These include the uncertainty of meaning and multilayered texts, which are principles of intertextuality. Deconstruction moves in both the diachronic and synchronic axes and, unlike Historicist ones, multi-meaning, multi-valued, and multi-layered features are seen in the works. They use both previous and contemporary texts. The method of data analysis is based on causal comparison and the rational analysis of authors. This article is a logical reasoning research that uses reasoning to explain relationships and understand the components of a subjective system after gathering information and understanding the theory of intertextuality.