Supermannerism and supergraphics

Supermannerism. American style of interior decoration dating from the 1960s employing odd optical tricks, synthetic materials that were either shiny and mirror-like, or transparent, and over-sized elements, so it was referred to as ‘mega-decoration’, and owed more to images in ‘Superman’ comics than to Mannerism. The term was applied in the 1970s to some large buildings falling into the category of Post-Modernism.

Supergraphics - as the name hints - are graphics on a big scale. Which is fitting since they were also a big - even revolutionary - concept, cooked up by some of the most radical post-modern architects of the 1960s. The idea? To apply paint and graphics to both the interior and exterior of buildings in a defiant act that would 'remove solidity, gravity, even history' - and certainly cause some alarm to those more reverential modernists. According to architect Robert Venturi: 'One does not paint on Mies.' The only thing small about the architectural movement was its time frame; supergraphics abided by the decade's mantra to 'live fast, die young'.

But, although the term - coined by writer C Ray Smith - first applied to the postmodern architects he called the Supermannerists, their ideology has survived and today supergraphics have been resurrected in the realm of special effects. Building facades can now magically shift and change with embedded LEDs, while those sacrosanct modernist glass walls are the perfect backdrop for computing and projection systems.