INTRO
This paper,
discusses Peter Eisenaman and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin
briefly and talks in depth about deconstructivism – a label tagged to all of
Eisenman’s work, what deconstructivism means to the architect and how he seeks
to answer the reluctance of the people toward such unconventional forms.
Peter
Eisenman studied in the architecture school as an undergraduate at Cornell
University. He received
a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Cornell, a Master of Architecture Degree
from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge. He received an honorary degree from Syracuse
University School of Architecture in 2007.
He first rose
to prominence as a member of the New York
Five (also known as the
Whites, as opposed to the Grays of Yale: Robert
A.M. Stern, Charles
Moore, etc.), five architects (Eisenman, Charles
Gwathmey, John
Hejduk, Richard
Meier, and Michael
Graves) some of whose
work was presented at a CASE Studies conference in 1967. Eisenman received a
number of grants from the Graham
Foundation for work done
in this period. These architects' work at the time was often considered a
reworking of the ideas of Le
Corbusier.
Subsequently, the five architects each developed unique styles and ideologies,
with Eisenman becoming more affiliated with Deconstructivism. (Wikipedia)
Eisenman has
been known to be exteremly liberal when it comes to expressing his views on his
theories and philosophies. His projects such as The Memorial to the Murdered
Jews in Berlin and The Great Columbus Convention Centre are solid proof of his strong hold on the theory
and ideology he eventually made his forte – deconstructivism.
Deconstructivism
is a style that emerged after the post modernist period. Modernists strongly
believed in the importance of function over form, promoted minimalism and
shunned any kind of ornamentation. Post modernists wished to embrace historical
references which modernism had rejected. Deconstructivism was a new approach to
the ideologies of modernism.
It is believed
to have a strong confrontational elelment which constantly seeks to eliminate
the notion of predictability and seeks to make the user comfortable with the
visual and experiential discomfort that the built environment has to provide.
“The experience through the presence of
an object must not give you the understanding of the object.” -Peter Eisenman1 (Eisenman,
2012)
Elaborating on
this statement, Eisenman explains, the architectural elements in a building
help the user to gain a deeper understanding of the space they are in. His
ideology, however aims at constantly breaking and eradicating the predictable elements
in a built environment.
Eisenman has
explored different territories: first, structuralism and Chomsky’s linguistic
theory; successively, Derrida and Delueze’s post-structuralism, passing through
the influence of Colin Rowe’s formalism, and his recent interest in the return to autonomy as
theorized by Pier Vittorio Aureli.2 (Corbo)
His
differentiation between a deep and superficial structure would be the main
reference for Eisenman’s discourse: the American architect in fact
distinguished between superficial/sensorial aspects (colour, texture, shape,
and so on), and deep aspects (frontality, compression, and disjunction). To
cite Rafael Moneo, we may say that Eisenman built a dichotomous version of his
architecture, based on the opposition between the mental (the deep structure)
and the sensorial (the superficial structure).3 (Corbo)
This
segregation of the deep/ mental structure and the sensorial structure is what
forms the basis of Eisenman’s ideology. And this ideology when put into
constructing a building would mean doing so irrespective of the needs of
functionality, symmetry or aesthetics and hence his works are labeled as
deconstructivist.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews, Berlin
The idea of building the memorial was reduce the meaning of
experience as much as possible, drawing a parallel to the situation in the
holocaust cells, Eisenman further explains that the memorial gained inspiration
from the fact that the holocaust cells reduced of the meaning of experience.
Eisenman’s ideology fits perfectly into the project of
constructing a memorial for the murdered jews. The memorial fully consumes the
architect’s ideology of breaking down and segregating experience and
understanding. As mentioned earlier,
Eisenman’s philosophy persistently seeks to reiterate the separation of
experience and understanding. The experience of a building, he mentions, must
not uncover the understanding of the building.
Jacques Derrida
His works, hence, always suggest a notion of breaking pre
existing notions in new ways through deconstructivism.
Later, he talks of Jacques Derrida, a famous French
philosopher who, Eisenman follows meticulously, and his theory which in a way provides an explanation to the constant
reluctance of the users and the people towards deconstructivism.
The reason why deconstructivism is not widely accepted by
its users, keeping aside the overwhelming form and the fact that experience is
segregated from understanding, is that this ideology doesn’t suggest a direct
link to origin and truth in architecture. It appears to many as frivolous
because the form and experience are incapapble of being understood by a people
who have always related to built with familiar symbols and forms.
Jacques Derrida helped understand this problematic
constraint which often crops up in Eisenman’s and other deconstructivist
architects’ works.
Conclusion
Peter Eisenman is an
architect who strongly supports the notion of having solid and strong ideas
and ideologies. Built, he says, is not
the solution or answer to all the problems. Great architects, he says are those
who write strong philosophies in architecture, such as Alberti, Vitruvius, Rem
Koolhas etc. Comparing writing to building, writing provides scope for
reflection and reading architecture means revisiting a philosophy or a detail
about the building. The experience through a building is however only one time.
Deconstructivism, hence holds strong ground- historically and philosophically.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Book : From
Formalism to weak Form by Stefano Corbo
Interview
by Peter Engelmann
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