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Peter Eisenman Exploring The Possibilities of Form PDF
Peter Eisenman Exploring The Possibilities of Form PDF
David Kochman
twentieth century. His theories have led to a new way of thinking about architecture
in the post-post modernist world of architecture. This paper will explore the basis for
underlying processes that brought about their evolution into the next phases of his
work.
At the end of Modernism, there was a general feeling among architects and
the general public that architecture, then known as the International Style had
become inhumane, monotonous, and hostile. Although Modernism upheld that its
considered client needs, it was repressing its reality of the way functions and
activities interacted. Thus, a need for a new way of thinking about architecture
arose. Deconstructivism was one of the archetypal responses. Working off many of
the principles set forth by those in the field of psychology and philosophy such as
would reject fixed models, schemas, grand narratives or other total explanations on
the assumption that the order that they portray is built on a repression of the real
diversity of things.
Kochman2
Jacques Derrida.
In the late nineteenth century, Sigmund Freud pioneered new methods in the
way mental illness was treated. Believing that mental illness was the product of a
repression of childhood events, background, and past experiences, Freud noted the
way the patients avoided certain subjects, phrases, and figures of speech. The
psychologist could then target those areas for analysis, a method known as
psychoanalysis. In other words Freud set out to ‘deconstruct’ the speech of his
patients in order to find the repressed source of their anxiety. In this way he could
In the 1960s the French philosopher Jacques Derrida began to apply this
Freud’s method to analyse these writings, Derrida believed he could reveal the
repressed ideas that underlay the apparently smooth, elegant and well-constructed
arguments put forward by other philosophers. Derrida believed that “no theory could
whole system.”2 If the writing did appear to be coherent, it could only do so by hiding
or repressing something that did not fit its view of things. As a method of illustrating
creating a montage of texts on the same page Derrida believed he could expose the
flaws of the arguments and make the reader take a more objective stance in
Kochman3
It is around this time in the late 1960’s that Architecture and the philosophy
of Deconstruction converged with the initial meeting of Derrida and Eisenman, who at
the time had founded New York's Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.4 As a
result of the partnership they formed, much of Eisenman’s theory and work are
The first application of these ideas comes about with the series of houses
Eisenman designs following the completion of his doctorate. These houses manifest
shelter. The first shelters, typically caves, responded to the physics of architecture,
and brought about the initial idea of what architecture was. This idea about what
the occupation of form, cultural practices are altered or dislocated. Thus the act of
Eisenman believes modernism failed to dislocate stating that its failure lay in an
but it “anticipated the impossibility of achieving that vision and its own fatal
that it sheltered the institutions of man from “anxiety and uncertainty” instead of
challenging the cumulative metaphysic. Eisenman asserts that the Hiroshima was
the final blow to the Utopian philosophies of Modernism, as man “could no longer
Eisenman states that man now lives uncertain of the future, where the
institutions of church, school, and house are all called into question.
own coming into existence, freeing architecture from its institutional control, thus
‘curing itself.’ Although this notion is similar to the attempts of the modernists,
believes that if he succeeds at doing this, architecture’s interiority will allow for a
the individual and cultural dispositions. Eisenman had the chance to test his
theories for the first time with a series of houses for affluent clients who were willing
reference to the clients in naming the houses and also any reference to context.
With House I Eisenman uses the diagram to separate form from function, instating
translational rules that Eisenman claims will allow the architecture to generate its
own form and create its own history without anthropomorphic reference,
This, he hoped, would create a genuine dislocation and allow new possibilities of
stating that as it was conceived free of external meaning and in abstract model form,
Knowing that meaning can still be derived from an object by the way it works
in a system, Eisenman expanded his investigation with House III to include the
value and meaning for the participant. The participant evaluates these systems by
“arbitrary but established rules.” Ultimately then, these hierarchies have a direct
connection back to society and the existing metaphysic, as they are established by
could include but not be limited to dialectics of oblique views and frontal views,
longer operating solely on an object level, but instead attempting to alter people’s
building as self-analysis, a conscious effort to forgo repressing elements that give the
building its meaning. Eisenman later refers to this phenomenon as a trace. At the
same time, Eisenman comes to a realization about his work to this point: that by
merely a new set of rules. Although the process Eisenman is using seems to produce
Additionally, this is also the point at which critics like Charles Jencks claim
Eisenman’s theories become both more accessible experientially and less accessible
obscure.”16
houses Eisenman worked with the object as a signifier, this project attempts to
operate under the philosophy that the only understandable aspects of the house are
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almost impossible to decipher. 17 This reinforces the philosophy that the building is
One encounters [dispersal] within the room with transparent floors and
ceilings and opaque walls…The space in which the viewer finds himself
is, then, one whose perspectives run vertically and diagonally through
the system of the house rather than horizontally…the occupant is
forced to view the space as a linked set of opposing terms, to
encounter the “room” less as an entity than as one part of a system of
differences.”18
With the end of the House series came Eisenman’s first opportunities to apply
the theories he had developed throughout the building downturn of the 1970’s to
Eisenman’s approach, which essentially ignored program and context, could work on
a larger scale. In Philip Johnson’s book Five Architects, Philip Johnson posed the
this question, one must jump ahead to Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the
Visual Arts.
For Wexner Center, Eisenman incorporated both old and new theories into its
design, bringing issues of the diagram as generator, the grid, trace, and dispersal
with him from past projects to bring about a displacement, but also considering new
aspects such as context and program. R.E. Somol provides an explanation as to why
Eisenman would do an about face from his previous stance regarding program and
context:
Kochman8
It is difficult to understand the Ohio State Center for the Visual arts
without talking about the site…Eisenman’s former reluctance to admit
that such circumstances affect architecture has, at least implicitly,
changed…Peter Eisenman seems to have discovered that architecture
needs to include outside parameters in order to be produced, and that
only in the frame of its external circumstances does it acquire
meaning.”21
From the start the Wexner center provided a true opportunity for Eisenman to
bring about a displacement by challenging the way a center for the arts is used.
Eisenman does not give a definitive answer for what such a center for the arts should
be, however; but rather, what it is “not” through his theory of dispersal.23 The design
focuses intensely on using the trace as a generator, although not in the same sense
as the early house projects. The House projects exhibited traces of their own coming
Kochman9
into existence; with Wexner center, Eisenman is using the trace as it derives from
between the University and the urban fabric of Columbus.24 The physical
manifestation of these grids becomes the spaces with which the program and the
Here Eisenman is providing the opportunity for the Architecture to be dislocating and
Maybe more profound is the way Eisenman uses the historical reference as a
trace. During his investigation of the site’s history, Eisenman found that an Armory
had once stood on the site where the center was to be built. By reconstructing
fragments of this old armory, Eisenman is evoking a response from the Architecture’s
participants that through the process of dispersal, the fragment that now stands in
place of the armory is “not” the armory but a simulation that has been affected in
Besides extending the idea of a trace to be not just interior to but also exterior
to architecture, this idea also strikes a chord with the very basis of Deconstructivist
concept refers back to the very basic ideas of habitation. If the space is no longer
notions about the way the space is used, a condition Eisenman refers to as a priori,
commissions for additional buildings that utilize much of the same theory present in
Wexner Center. Some of these projects include a proposal for the Carnegie Mellon
Convention Center, and a proposal for the Center of the Arts at Emory. 28
the next step he would be taking with his Architecture, using the computer as a
potential, heralding it as the first means of generating architecture that could truly
passage, Eisenman states how one would begin to use the computer as a design tool
and how it would change the architect’s role in the design process:
Kochman11
One can set up a series of rule structures for inputting into the
computer not knowing a priori what the formal results will be. Then the
process becomes one of testing algorithms against possible formal
results. The writing and correcting of these algorithms becomes one of
the tasks of design. One can correct the images to make the rule
structures more apparent or to make them more able to be built.
These are set images loose from the history of architecture and the
history of the individual who is conceptualizing. This allows the
computer to open up what was previously repressed by the individual
psychology or history and the history of architecture, which was
assumed to be the entire knowledge and nature of architecture. But
since architecture is always developing, an individual at any one time
does not have access to its entire history nor to its possible future
history; the computer accesses these possibilities…there is no
beginning, there is no truth, there is no origin, and there is no a priori
given. In other words, there is no longer the necessity to begin from a
rectangle, a circle, or a square.30
On the other hand though, Eisenman states that progress in the fabrication
and construction industries needs to occur to equalize the present disparity between
computer generated form and buildable form. He states that although the industries
create each part of the building, which ultimately makes the cost of the building
standard enclosure system or non-90 degree corner, they too respond negatively.
Eisenman concludes that, “Until we can free the computer from the designer, from
the process, and from construction, there is not going to be any change at all.”31
Ten years have past since Eisenman’s interview with Ars Electronica, and
since that time Eisenman has continued developing his rapport with the computer.
With buildings designs like Haus Immendorf, BFL Software, the Staten Island institute
of Arts and Sciences, and the Virtual house, he has experimented with the ways
forces of site and context can interfere with a volume to create an Architecture of
Kochman12
topology, re-investigated old issues of profile, poche, and section, and how they can
Eisenman’s generation like Frank Gehry and architects of a new generation like NOX,
Foreign Office Architects, Morphosis, and Brauer & Gernot using advanced programs
like CATIA; computer generated form and buildable form are finally converging.
Architecture, introducing concepts that had never been previously associated with
Architecture may be summed up best by his own post-script in the 1987 book, House
of Cards:
CAVEAT Imagine that you are holding a small glass vial in your hand.
Inside the vial is a blue gas. The little vial’s smooth shape feels cool
against your fingers. You could turn it around or upside down, and
watch the blue gas slowly turn, folding in and through itself, reaching
the side of the vial and moving off in different trails. The gas’
movement is perceptible through its blue color, but the glass enclosing
it is unmoving. Then notice the small cork in the top of the vial. If you
pull it, two things might happen. The blue gas might escape and
dissipate into thin air: the container, emptied, would lose its definition.
The one can only be seen against the other, their interdependence
absolute. But in their differences are inscribed their particularities. The
opening of the bottle might yet have another effect: the blue gas could
be transfiguring, and through this action of opening you might never be
the same again.
Now imagine that this book is like a vial. You have already opened it.
Now just close it.33
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Endnotes
us/freud/index.html>
/lecturers/derrida/>
/lecturers/derrida/>
4 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
p.167.
pp.167-169.
pp.170-172.
p. 172.
p.172.
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pp. 174-176.
177.
178.
p. 178.
p.177.
p.177.
16 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
p. 180.
p. 180.
19 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
20 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
21 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
22 Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Ohio State University. New York: Rizzolli
23 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
24 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
<http://www.greatbuildings.com/-buildings/Wexner_Center.html>
26 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
27 Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s
pp. 227-231.
http://www.aec.at
Kochman16
http://www.aec.at
http://www.aec.at
http://www.aec.at
222.
Kochman17
Bibliography
Eisenman, Peter. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1989.
us/freud/index.html>
/lecturers/derrida/>
<http://www.aec.at>
buildings/Wexner_Center.html>
Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Ohio State University. New York: Rizzolli