Has there ever been a more polarising movement across architecture and design than Postmodernism?

Colourful, experimental, even fun: for some it represented a return to meaning, a quest for the beauty modernism had framed as superfluous. For others, it was simply vulgar and populist.

Postmodernism was conceived in the US in the mid-twentieth century as a response to the perceived failings of residential modernity and, by the 1980s, extravagantly ornate public and commercial PoMo buildings could be found in cities across the world. It soon fell out of favour, but now, some 30 years later, contemporary practices such as MVRDV and Ordinary Architecture are stimulating something of a revival.

Here we present some of the best original PoMo homes currently on the market, and a contemporary work from one of the movement’s greatest proponents.