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Unified
Theory, Chapter 13
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30

MAY

2015

by Nikos Salingaros
News Articles
Unified Architectural Theory
Christopher Alexander
Peter Eisenman
Harvard University Graduate
School of Design
Deconstructivism Postmodernism

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The City of Culture / Eisenman Architects. "Eisenman explains how he creates forms that
make him feel high in his own mind, instead of considering the mundane needs of the user.
Thus it comes as no surprise that he wants to express a stressed conception of life through
his buildings twisted and unbalanced forms". Image Duccio Malagamba

We will be publishing Nikos Salingaros book, Unified Architectural Theory, in a series of

installments, making it digitally, freely available for students and architects around the world.
In Chapter 13, Salingaros begins to conclude his argument by discussing its counterpart,
explaining how post-modern theorists such as Peter Eisenman came to eclipse the ideas of
Christopher Alexander and why Eisenmans theoretical hegemony is not based upon
sound architectural thinking. If you missed them, make sure to read the previous
installments here.

Natural and Unnatural Form Languages

The concept of living structure, and the support for the theory offered by both direct
experience and science, offers a basis for designing and understanding architecture. This
platform is a sensible way of approaching design and building, because it is beholden

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neither to ideology, nor to individual agendas. Moreover, it should be contrasted to the

Famous Landmarks
Reimagined with Paper
Cutouts

irrationality of other schemes that currently appear in and seem to drive architectural
discourse.

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If we seek meaning in the built environment, then we cannot continue to use interpretative
schemata that lack intellectual coherence. Something as important as architecture cannot
be founded upon arbitrary bases. Well, it could, and in my opinion actually has been for
several decades, but the result is, unsurprisingly, unsatisfactory. We would prefer an

House in Toyonaka / Tato

Architects

architecture that is consistent with human feeling, and in which design decisions are based

Selected Projects

on observation and empirical verification. The bottom line is that buildings have to provide
good, healthy environments for human beings, and to inflict the least possible damage to
the Earths ecology.

ARCA / Atelier Marko

Brajovic

This book presented a body of work that provides a universal basis for judging whether

Selected Projects

architecture is sound or not. The criteria used to justify inclusion of a structure in the class of
good buildings are divorced here from opinion, changing fashions, or power interests.
They appeal to the human population as a whole, which is interested in a healthy
environment. Indeed, the strength of the tools we studied lies in that they are felt to be
useful by people from different cultures and backgrounds.

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Unified Architectural Theory, Chapter 13 | ArchDaily

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Facade panel linea

EQUITONE
Fiber Cements / Cements

Metal 2.0
Apavisa
Porcelain Stoneware

TerraClad Ceramic
Sunshade System
Boston Valley Terra Cotta
Ceramics
Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground / Future Systems. "Some architects have found
innovation by contrasting with nature, which seems to have been a formula for design
innovation ever since early modernism, and those architects have become quite successful
commercially in doing so". Image Flickr CC user Ben Sutherland

The strongest proof of the validity of the model we covered comes from its intimate relation

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to the physical world. Such a link is not commonly discussed among architects, who tend to
live in an artificial universe of their own making: a world of images divorced from reality.
Some architects have found innovation by contrasting with nature, which seems to have
been a formula for design innovation ever since early modernism, and those architects have
become quite successful commercially in doing so. Nevertheless, humanity in the past has

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never done well to deny or to go against nature, because eventually that practice leads to
collapse in one way or another.

Our model also provides a much-needed working link to the great artistic and architectural
achievements of the past. Such concerns are explicitly forbidden in a discipline driven only
by incessant innovation. One rule in that game is to never look back. Students are made to
study architecture as history, but are not allowed to learn practical tools from it nor apply the
lessons to their design projects; see and admire, but dont think of re-using anything! It is
astonishing that people are ready and eager to jettison their cultural heritage in order to
follow the latest fashion.

Coming to the end of this book, we can now judge those structures that are allied with our
own life, and distinguish them from those that either ignore or violate biological processes.
We can choose to erect buildings by giving them any qualities we wish them to embody. But
at least now we have a basis for judgment that is accessible to analysis. Both Christopher
Alexander and I believe in building things that enhance living structure, but we cannot
influence others they must decide for themselves what properties to incorporate into their
designs.

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"Students are made to study architecture as history, but are not allowed to learn practical
tools from it nor apply the lessons to their design projects." Conversely, it is thought that in
his design for The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was inspired by
drawings of Rome's Pantheon - which were in turn drawn by Andrea Palladio in the 16th
century. Image Flickr CC user Brian Jeffery Beggerly

To showcase how different our concept of architecture is from other practitioners, we have
the famous 1982 debate between Alexander and Peter Eisenman. This was a historically
crucial moment for architecture, because it marked the first public presentation of
Alexanders The Nature of Order, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. It was also

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the turning point that was to bring postmodernist and deconstructivist architecture to
international prominence. Postmodernism was taking off at precisely this time, and
deconstructivism followed, becoming famous with the Museum of Modern Art exhibit in 1988
(Salingaros, 2004).

This debate is as relevant today as when it took place, since the issues it raised continue to
dominate contemporary architecture and architectural discourse. Among several surprises,
what is astonishing is how Eisenman initially tries to convince Alexander that they are
talking about the same thing, when in fact, their thoughts about design are diametrically
opposed. Alexander is right to be suspicious, despite the similar vocabularies being used.

The debate reveals many things for those readers ready to draw conclusions from
subsequent events. First, Eisenman and several other architects had embraced a method of
design based on images, using the shock of the new and a disregard for the science that
Alexander used for his own design method. Second, its clear that the architects who went
on to become stars in the period following this debate, Eisenman among them,
appropriated anything that sounded good in order to justify their often dysfunctional designs.

Third, the debate also reveals the weak points of Alexander: he trusted science and
objective truth to overcome deliberate confusion and marketing hype. But the world does
not work that way. As we know from the advertising industry, what sells best is not
necessarily whats best for you. Eisenman, on the other hand, perfectly understood the
system and was already using the French deconstructivist philosophers to boost
acceptance of his own designs. He was building up his momentum for a rise to the top in a
system that works like consumer marketing rather than science (Salingaros, 2004).

After several probing verbal exchanges, Alexander eventually uncovers the fundamental
disagreement he has with Eisenman, and which he suspected from the very beginning.
When this is revealed, it comes as quite a shock. Alexander is genuinely alarmed, as if he
never imagined any architect (especially someone already famous like Eisenman) to hold
such deliberately alienating views. And as a reaction to discovering this purposeful
transgression of form and order, Alexander gets very angry.

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Rafael Moneos Town Hall at Logroo, Spain. "Moneo, Eisenman agrees, wants to produce
disharmony and incongruity, which Alexander finds appalling". Image Flickr CC user jynus

Incidentally, the building that sets off the dispute is Rafael Moneos Town Hall at Logroo,
Spain. Moneo, Eisenman agrees, wants to produce disharmony and incongruity, which
Alexander finds appalling. Yet Eisenman defends this approach to architecture as being
perfectly valid. Which viewpoint won? Subsequent events tell us. Eisenman became an

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established star of architecture, teaching at Yale University and winning major commissions
worldwide. Moneo himself went on to head the Harvard Graduate School of Design (where
this debate was taking place) during 1985 to 1990. He then won the Pritzker prize in 1993,
and was subsequently commissioned in 1996 to build the Los Angeles cathedral (a building
I have criticized in a 2012 review). The architectural power brokers decided the direction of
architecture: Alexander was left behind and pushed out of the system.

Eisenman explains how he creates forms that make him feel high in his own mind, instead
of considering the mundane needs of the user. Thus it comes as no surprise that he wants
to express a stressed conception of life through his buildings twisted and unbalanced forms.
This honest admission of following a design philosophy that makes buildings uncomfortable
points to vastly different values from Alexanders scientific rationality. And saying so openly
(in the early 1980s) gave an example for young architects to follow, which is what they did.
Critics associated an attraction of the mind to architectural form with intellectual and
material progress, whereas feelings and connections to the earth are interpreted as
common and a thing of the past.

A theory of architecture is useful to humankind as a whole only if the theory resonates with
the deep feelings and direct experience of ordinary people. An alleged theory cannot look
down on the public and talk only to some small elite. It cannot treat the common person as
ignorant, and presume to claim there is no truth about anything in architecture. There is
indeed, and the truth exposes the absurdity of much contemporary architectural discourse
trying to hide under a relativist bluff. Perhaps this is why Alexander and his understanding of
architecture were marginalized by a fanatical relativism, prompting a much later comment
by Eisenman: I think Chris unfortunately fell off the radar screen some time ago.

If values in architecture have been arbitrary, or at least idiosyncratic for several decades, as
Alexander suggests, how could this situation have lasted for so long, and why does it still go
on? It seems that a culture of images serves capital-induced development, and especially
speculative building. And so we are faced not simply with silly or absurd form languages
assuming central prominence, but with a powerful and entrenched system that favored this
event. The system consists of the construction industry that is now entirely dependent on
industrial materials and production methods, the licensing process that has been adjusted to
permit only approved images, the banking sector that finances speculative construction, the
insurance industry that approves only a certain type of construction, etc. And this system is
fed by the architecture schools.

The system makes an enormous amount of money for the developer, but does not have to
generate either good architecture, or a healthy environment for the user. Remember that for
several decades now, the client is no longer the user: the client is the developer. Architects
therefore do what the developer wants, which is to sell the building as an image. This is
totally distinct from a building as a living and working environment for people. Those
architects who are the most effective salespersons for developers are consequently
rewarded above all others, with prizes, commissions, and influence.

Therefore, we find ourselves facing two very different conceptions of what architecture is
and ought to be. On the one hand, the present-day system promotes a culture of images,
and its built-in inertia makes sure that very little else can be built. A student cannot even
learn the techniques to design anything outside the current system. On the other hand, the
approach and material of this book makes it possible to understand how architecture
actually works to adapt itself to human use and sensibilities. How the built environment
influences people, their health, and their activities. And that understanding helps us to
sustain life on earth.

Order the International edition of Unified Architectural Theory here, and the US
edition here.

Readings:

Christopher Alexander (2004) Some Sober Reflections on the Nature of Architecture in

Our Time, Katarxis N 3. Reprinted as Chapter 34 of Nikos A. Salingaros: Unified
Architectural Theory: Form, Language, Complexity, Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon
and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2013.
Christopher Alexander & Peter Eisenman (2004) The 1982 Alexander-Eisenman
Debate, Katarxis N 3. Reprinted as Chapter 33 of Nikos A. Salingaros: Unified
Architectural Theory: Form, Language, Complexity, Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon
and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2013.
Nikos A. Salingaros (2004) Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, Umbau-Verlag,
Solingen, Germany; Fourth Edition 2014, Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon and Vajra
Books, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Nikos A. Salingaros (2012) Fashion and Design Ideology in Sacred Architecture: A

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