What is post-modernism?
The stuff that came after Modernism?
In architecture, the Modernist movement was characterized (by its critics) as boring, faceless, featureless, characterless, and de-humanizing as represented by all the big, shiny, featureless skyscrapers that overwhelmed so many cities from the 1950s throught the 1990s (and continues to some extent, today).
Postmodernism does not have a single theme (making it hard to define) except that Modernism was bad. Postmodern architecture includes both retro-looking buildings built to appear as though they were designed before the 1950s and really weird-looking things that rely on new materials and construction techniques to construct buildings that look like they are the victims of earthquakes, with rippling walls and strange shapes in the roofs.
Postmodern can be anything from the basket company that had a multiple story picnic basket built as their corporate headquarters to the building in NYC that looks like an old-fashioned dresser, complete with a scroll-top facade.
Try this site to see one perspective on Postmodern Architecture and, from the same web site, this page for a view of the Modernism against which it reacted.
(You may need ShockWave to make the links work; I’m not sure.)
Postmodernism is a tomato. Oh, sorry, that was Dadaism. Dada is a tomato.
There is no clear consensus on what defines PoMo, it encompasses a wide variety of philosophies. And by now, we are already entering the post-PoMo era, which is even less well defined.
You might try reading the alt.postmodernism FAQ, which is almost incomprehensible:
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/postmodern-faq/
Here’s another introductory essay, which I think is fundamentally WRONG in most respects.
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
I could probably do much better myself, but I’m not in the mood at the moment, my poor little cat just died and I must go deal with it.
tomndeb, what you’ve described is Deconstructionism. That is only a small part of PoMo.