Architectural historian Charles Jenks praises the radical eclecticism of the new movement although he takes a more measured view of the purpose of architecture, suggesting that taste and function often do have a role in many postmodern constructions.

The composite, collage, 'anything goes' approach of postmodernism has caused some critics to deny that it is a style at all, merely a broad statement applied to architecture since the 1970s, continuing through today. How can postmodernism be a style if it is no style at all? Because it arose during the historic preservation movement and embraces the old, not the new, it merely seems to feed off of the old rather than make a new contribution to the architectural cannon (Paradis, 2003). However, even postmodernism's critics admit that it would be difficult to mistake a postmodern structure for a historic structure of another era. Rather than showing one period, or reviving...
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