'They will never be for the purists': The relentless, referential and upbeat joy of postmodern buildings

In the vicinity of the Bank of England, No 1 Poultry, clad in alternating bands of pink and cream sandstone, offers a jaunty point of difference to the prevailing air of grey formality. At the junction of two roads, with its corner tower by turns reminiscent of a ship’s prow or a telecommunications mast, the building has divided opinion since its completion in 1998. While some have hailed it as the posthumous masterpiece of its architect James Stirling, The King is alleged to have said it looked ‘like an old 1930s wireless’. Owen Hatherley, author of the compellingly opinionated Modern Buildings In Britain, calls it 'smug and bumptious'.

Others may never forgive it for standing on a site once occupied by several hitherto listed buildings, most famously the neo-Gothic Mappin & Webb building, the demolition of which the Victorian Society campaigned long and hard against. Today, however, No1 Poultry itself is under threat from a major refurbishment. Philip Palumbo, son of Peter Palumbo, the property developer who financed the construction, has said the plans 'meddle to the point of mutilation' with the original structure.

Yet the general lack of interest on the issue beyond architectural circles is telling. No 1 Poultry, in its location, its brash inappropriateness and in its interlocking of the present with the past (a terracotta frieze depicting the processions of the British monarchs that have passed through this part of the City was salvaged from Hawes the Shirtmakers, one of the demolished shops, is incorporated into an exterior elevations, and the clock from the Mappin & Webb building is mounted on the tower) is one of the trophy buildings of the postmodernism.

Despite its late completion, it seems to embody the cocky 1980s — the decade of conspicuous consumption — the high point of postmodernism, a style in which architects borrowed from the past that Modernist architects had so determinedly rejected — columns and capitals, pediments and gables, often exaggerating their proportions, and using vibrant colours that suggested the influence of Pop Art.

Never hugely loved — No 1 Poultry was once voted by Time Out readers as the fifth-worst building in London — today postmodern buildings draw the same yawn-stifling, oh-no-not-you-again disdain dished out to once-zeigeisty pop stars on the way out.

Unlike music careers, however, buildings once lost can never be revived or reassessed. Several of the better postmodern examples are currently in jeopardy. Terry Farrell’s hulking Embankment Place, above Charing Cross Station, is facing a substantial overhaul. The Twentieth Century Society describes new plans for Minster Court, which rises up on a City corner on Mincing Lane like something out of a Gothic fantasy, (sometimes nicknamed 'Munster Court', it served as the headquarters of Cruella de Vil in the film 101 Dalmations) as 'architectural lobotomy'. The proposed 'reimagining' of James Toomey’s St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre in Dublin — part 19th-century shopping arcade, part Paxtonian glasshouse — has provoked a vigorous preservation campaign by locals, including a scathingly lively Instagram page.

It is not all bad news. John Outram’s Egyptian-inspired Sphinx Hill house in Moulsford, Oxfordshire, was listed at Grade II* two summers ago after fears about the risk of unsympathetic changes when it went into new ownership. Built at the tail end of the last century — thus one of the last postmodern designs — it became the 'youngest' building in the country to be granted statutory protection. Canons House, Bristol, built as the regional headquarters of Lloyds Bank in the late 1980s, with giant columns and a general acknowledgement of the city’s Georgian and neo-Classical built heritage, is getting a major retrofit which has largely received the thumbs up from conservationists.

There is no doubt, however, that as many enter their fourth decade, this is a pivotal moment for postmodern buildings. Oli Marshall of the Twentieth Century Society says that around the age of 30 is when most buildings, irrespective of style, require major maintenance and upgrading of their structures. 'It’s also the point at which they generally become eligible for listing — an inherent friction,' he says. 'It makes them particularly vulnerable to demolition, given it is at these times when buildings are often at the nadir of their fashionability and may be seen as out of date. You can see exactly the same cycle with Brutalist, mid-century modern, Victorian and even Georgian buildings before them. Reviled and swept away, only later are they widely valued.'

He also suggests, however, that postmodern buildings were always a relative rarity, the style flourishing in areas such as London and the affluent south-east more than elsewhere. One of the style’s most persuasive advocates Charles Jencks wrote that postmodern 'was conceived as a minority approach, an oppositional movement, not a ruling style,' losing its way once it became adopted by the corporate mainstream. Its association with the Big Bang and the speculative property boom is probably another reason why the style stirs so little love.

Yet just as not everything about the 1980s merits a curse today, there are plenty of postmodern buildings that continue to add to the richness of the streetscape. You have to be pretty po-faced not to smile at CZWG’s rather zany Cascades apartment building — aka Yuppie Towers — on the Isle of Dogs, or their unashamedly poppy China Wharf, near Tower Bridge. Even Owen Hatherley concedes the 'naff grandeur' of John Outram’s audacious Judge Institute in Cambridge.

Two of Marshall’s postmodern favourites are the Doncaster Dome — 'an Italian palazzo leisure centre' — and Tollcross Fire Station, Edinburgh — 'a homage to Charles Rennie Mackintosh'.

The relentlessly upbeat and referential nature of postmodern buildings means they will never be for the purists. That does not make them any less valuable. Enjoy them while they are still with us.