Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London © Nicholas Kane

Twenty-five years ago, language, communication, and iconography began to emerge as programmatic interests in the abundant terminology of postmodern architecture. Along with them came the rediscovery of the facade as a privileged locus of architectural form and, inevitably, a growing critical indifference toward floor plans as transmitters of meaning. That controversial "shelter with decoration on top," with which Venturi defined architecture, may have fostered this idea – not to mention his earlier pop definition of architecture as a "decorated shed"...