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House 2: Deconstructing Peter Eisenman's Architectural Enigma
Introduction:
Peter Eisenman’s House 2, a seemingly simple yet profoundly complex dwelling, stands as a testament to the architect's deconstructivist philosophy. Far from being merely a house, it serves as a three-dimensional manifesto, challenging conventional notions of space, form, and inhabitability. This in-depth exploration delves into the intricate design, the theoretical underpinnings, and the enduring legacy of House 2, providing a comprehensive understanding of this pivotal work in architectural history. We will examine its unique features, its impact on Eisenman's career, and its continued relevance in contemporary architectural discourse. Prepare to unravel the layers of this architectural puzzle and discover the genius behind House 2.
1. The Genesis of House 2: Eisenman's Deconstructivist Approach
House 2, completed in 1970, emerged during a crucial period in Eisenman's career. He was actively developing his deconstructivist approach, rejecting the functionalist principles prevalent at the time. Instead, he emphasized the fragmentation and layering of architectural elements, creating a structure that defied traditional notions of order and coherence. The house’s design wasn't driven solely by practical needs; it was a conceptual exercise, a physical manifestation of theoretical explorations. This section will explore the intellectual lineage of the project, highlighting the influence of thinkers like Jacques Derrida and the implications of deconstruction in architectural design. We will delve into how Eisenman’s theoretical work informed the design, moving beyond simple functionality to embrace complexity and ambiguity.
2. Deconstructing the Form: Spatial Ambiguity and Fragmentation
The most striking feature of House 2 is its fractured form. Eisenman deliberately disrupted the conventional relationship between interior and exterior spaces. Walls are not simply boundaries; they are planes that intersect, overlap, and create a sense of disorientation. The viewer’s experience is one of continuous discovery, as spaces unfold in unexpected ways. This section will analyze the spatial relationships within the house, examining how Eisenman manipulated volume, perspective, and circulation to achieve a sense of controlled chaos. We will explore the play of light and shadow, how the fragmented planes create dynamic visual experiences, and the intentional ambiguity that challenges conventional notions of architectural order.
3. Materiality and Construction: A Study in Contradictions
The construction of House 2 is as remarkable as its form. Eisenman used simple, readily available materials, juxtaposing them in ways that amplify the house’s fragmented nature. The interplay of textures, materials, and construction techniques further enhances the sense of deliberate disorder. This section will closely analyze the materials used, highlighting the contrasts and intentional inconsistencies in their application. The impact of material choices on the overall aesthetic and the relationship between the house’s construction and its theoretical underpinnings will be addressed, showing how even the simplest materials can be employed to create a powerful architectural statement.
4. House 2 and the Broader Context of Deconstructivist Architecture
House 2 is not an isolated project; it sits within a broader architectural and intellectual context. It is a crucial precursor to the deconstructivist movement that gained prominence in the late 20th century. This section will place House 2 within this context, comparing and contrasting it with other significant works of deconstructivist architecture. We’ll examine how House 2 influenced subsequent projects by Eisenman and other architects, solidifying its position as a seminal work that helped shape the direction of architectural design.
5. The Enduring Legacy: House 2's Impact on Architecture and Theory
Despite its unconventional and challenging design, House 2 has had a lasting impact on architectural discourse. It continues to be studied and analyzed by architects, scholars, and students worldwide. This section explores the continuing relevance of House 2 in contemporary architecture and its contribution to architectural theory. Its influence on subsequent generations of architects and its continued presence in academic discussions will be discussed, reinforcing its status as a key architectural landmark.
Outline of a Book on House 2:
Title: House 2: Peter Eisenman's Deconstructive Masterpiece
Introduction: Briefly introduce Peter Eisenman and his architectural philosophy, leading to the significance of House 2.
Chapter 1: The Theoretical Framework: Explore Eisenman's theoretical influences (Derrida, structuralism, etc.) and how they shaped the design.
Chapter 2: The Design Process: Detail the design evolution, including sketches, models, and construction details.
Chapter 3: Spatial Analysis: In-depth analysis of the house's spatial organization, circulation, and the creation of ambiguity.
Chapter 4: Materiality and Construction: Explore the materials used, construction techniques, and their impact on the overall effect.
Chapter 5: House 2 in Context: Compare and contrast House 2 with other deconstructivist works and Eisenman's broader oeuvre.
Chapter 6: Critical Reception and Legacy: Analyze the critical responses to the house and its lasting influence on architecture.
Conclusion: Summarize the key arguments and reflect on the enduring significance of House 2 as a seminal work of deconstructivist architecture.
(Detailed explanation of each outline point would be provided in a full book-length treatment.)
9 Unique FAQs:
1. What is the primary material used in the construction of House 2? While various materials are used, the focus is on the juxtaposition of simple, everyday materials to create a complex effect rather than a singular primary material.
2. Is House 2 considered habitable? While technically habitable, its unconventional spatial organization makes it challenging to live in comfortably for most people. It prioritizes theoretical exploration over conventional notions of livability.
3. How does House 2 relate to other works by Peter Eisenman? House 2 serves as a foundational work, showcasing the key principles of Eisenman's deconstructivist approach that are further developed in his later projects.
4. What is the significance of the fragmented form of House 2? The fragmented form is a deliberate rejection of traditional architectural order, creating a sense of ambiguity and challenging conventional notions of space.
5. Did House 2 receive immediate critical acclaim? Initial reception was mixed, with some critics struggling to understand its unconventional design, yet it later garnered significant recognition as a pivotal work in deconstructivist architecture.
6. Where is House 2 located? The exact location of House 2 is generally not publicly disclosed to protect its privacy.
7. What is the role of light and shadow in House 2? Light and shadow play a crucial role in emphasizing the fragmented planes and creating dynamic visual experiences within the house.
8. How does House 2 challenge the notion of functionality in architecture? The design prioritizes theoretical exploration and the creation of a complex spatial experience over purely functional considerations.
9. What makes House 2 a significant contribution to architectural history? It's recognized as a seminal work in deconstructivist architecture, influencing subsequent generations of architects and enriching architectural theory with its innovative approach to space and form.
9 Related Articles:
1. Peter Eisenman's Architectural Philosophy: Explores the theoretical underpinnings of Eisenman's work, contextualizing House 2 within his broader body of thought.
2. Deconstructivism in Architecture: A Comprehensive Overview: Provides a broader understanding of the deconstructivist movement, positioning House 2 within this wider context.
3. The Influence of Jacques Derrida on Peter Eisenman's Architecture: Delves into the specific influence of Derrida's deconstruction on Eisenman's design approach.
4. Comparing House 2 with other Eisenman Projects: Analyzes the similarities and differences between House 2 and other significant buildings designed by Eisenman.
5. The Use of Geometry in Peter Eisenman's Designs: Examines the role of geometry in Eisenman's work, focusing on how geometric principles are manipulated to create unexpected spaces in House 2.
6. The Materials and Construction Techniques Employed in House 2: A closer look at the specific materials and construction methods, their selection, and impact on the design.
7. Critical Reception of House 2: Then and Now: A review of the initial and ongoing critiques and interpretations of the house.
8. House 2 and its Relevance in Contemporary Architectural Discourse: Discusses how House 2 continues to influence and inspire architectural discussions today.
9. The Legacy of House 2: Its Influence on Subsequent Generations of Architects: Analyzes the impact of House 2 on later generations of architects and the perpetuation of its innovative ideas.
| house 2 peter eisenman: Houses of Cards Peter Eisenman, Rosalind E. Krauss, Manfredo Tafuri, 1987 Peter Eisenman is known internationally for his innovative and provocative architecture and writings. One of the New York Five, he has been a leading figure in the architectural community for many years, as teacher, as founder and former director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and as builder. This long-awaited book is a rich and complex investigation of his first six houses, which he calls Houses of Cards and specifically about House IV and House VI. In these houses, Eisenman has tried to strip architecture of its traditional meanings and associations, making the planes, walls, and elements of the houses as valueless as an arrangement of playing cards. This book contains the architect's own texts on House IV and House VI, which he wrote in 1974, and 1976, as they were being designed, as well as an overview in which he places these houses in the context of his work as a whole. In his essay Manfredo Tafuri offers a psychological perspective; in hers Rosalind Krauss provides cultural and historical contexts. The book is profusely illustrated with sketches, diagrams, and photographs. In some ways, the book itself becomes a new project--somewhat of a metaphor for Eisenman's new approach to architecture--layered with absences and presences, a complex fiction. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: House X Peter Eisenman, 1982 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Peter Eisenman's House VI Suzanne Shulof Frank, 1994 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Lateness Peter Eisenman, Elisa Iturbe, 2020-07-07 A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be of the times—lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment. Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture Peter Eisenman, 2006-07-20 FIRST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PUBLICATION OF PETER EISENMAN’S 1963 DISSERTATION |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Eisenman Inside Out Peter Eisenman, YALE UNIV PR, 2004-01-01 Essais sur l'architecture par l'architecte Eisenman. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architecture from the Outside Elizabeth Grosz, 2001-06-22 Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. Outside also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Code X Peter Eisenman, Kurt Walter Forster, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Eisenman Architects, 2005 Peter Eisenman's competition-winning project for the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, is a formidable battery of museums, libraries, and auditoriums, a cultural acropolis atop a spectacular hillside site in northeastern Spain. By excavating the hilltop and arranging six buildings as a kind of artificial topography, Eisenman creates a new warped landscape that seems to merge building and ground, that occupies the hilltop without seeming to have been built upon it. In CODEX, the New York-based Eisenman, known for a career of formal investigations, reveals in essays and illustrations his theory of coding as a device for producing form. Through more than three hundred line drawings and perspectives, the development of the code--and the buildings and landscape it informs--becomes apparent, culminating in a giant earthwork as excavation of the site begins. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: New York Magazine , 1995-09-25 New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architecture and Its Image Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman, 1989 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Planned Assaults Lars Lerup, 1987 Foreword by Phyllis Lambert. Postscript by Peter Eisenman |
| house 2 peter eisenman: The Architecture of the City Aldo Rossi, 1984-09-13 Aldo Rossi was a practicing architect and leader of the Italian architectural movement La Tendenza and one of the most influential theorists of the twentieth century. The Architecture of the City is his major work of architectural and urban theory. In part a protest against functionalism and the Modern Movement, in part an attempt to restore the craft of architecture to its position as the only valid object of architectural study, and in part an analysis of the rules and forms of the city's construction, the book has become immensely popular among architects and design students. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: By Other Means Global Art Affairs, 2017-02-20 Peter Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect and educator. For more than a half century, he has profoundly influenced generations of academics and practitioners with his buildings, writing, and teaching.By developing formal and linguistic critiques of architecture's bourgeois conventions, his activism seeks to undermine authority by creating architecture demanding close attention.By Other Means traces Eisenman's evolution from his formative years to his well-known Houses series and beyond. Unpublished work from his undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies reveal an 'Eisenman before Eisenman'.This material is printed along with correspondence from Colin Rowe, ephemera from the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and previously unseen sketches/diagrams for Houses I, II, VI, and X.Featuring drawings and ephemera relating to various projects and proposals in the United States (e.g. Princeton and New York) and Europe (e.g. Liverpool and Venice).This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition By Other Means, curated by Mathew Ford with Jeffrey Kipnis as part of Time- Space - Existence, organized by GAA-Foundation at the Palazzo Bembo in Venice, Italy, for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, May 28 - November 27, 2016.Eisenman is most well known for his iconic and controversial design of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial) in Berlin, 2003/04. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architectures of Time Sanford Kwinter, 2002-08-23 An exploration of twentieth-century conceptions of time and their relation to artistic form. In Architectures of Time, Sanford Kwinter offers a critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the event. He suggests that the closed, controlled, and mechanical world of physics gave way to the approximate, active, and qualitative world of biology as a model of both scientific and metaphysical explanation. Kwinter examines theory of time and space in Einstein's theories of relativity and shows how these ideas were reflected in the writings of the sculptor Umberto Boccioni, the town planning schema of the Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and the writings of Franz Kafka. He argues that the writings of Boccioni and the visionary architecture of Sant'Elia represent the earliest and most profound deployments of the concepts of field and event. In discussing Kafka's work, he moves away from the thermodynamic model in favor of the closely related one of Bergsonian duree, or virtuality. He argues that Kafka's work manifests a coherent cosmology that can be understood only in relation to the constant temporal flux that underlies it. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Five Architects Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), 1975 Five Architects, originally published in 1975, grew out of a meeting of the CASE group (Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment) held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969. The purpose of this gathering was to exhibit and criticize the work of five architects -- Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, and Meier -- who constituted a New York school, and who are now among the most influential architects working today.The buildings shown here have more diversity than one might expect from a school, but share certain properties of form, scale, and treatment of material. Collectively, their work makes a modest claim: it is only architecture, not the salvation of man and the redemption of the earth.Providing complete drawings and photographic documentation, this collection also includes a comparative critique by Kenneth Frampton, an Introduction by Colin Rowe that suggests a still broader context for the work as a whole, and two short texts in which individual positions are outlined. Now back in,print, Five Architects serves as a reference to the early work of some of America's most important architects and provides us with a glimpse back at the direction of architecture as they saw it over twenty years ago. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Perfect Acts of Architecture Jeffrey Kipnis, 2001 This book presents drawings created between 1972 and 1987 by Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind and Thom Mayne with Andrew Zago. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Atomic Dwelling Robin Schuldenfrei, 2012-08-21 In the years of reconstruction and economic boom that followed the Second World War, the domestic sphere encountered new expectations regarding social behaviour, modes of living, and forms of dwelling. This book brings together an international group of scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design to reappraise mid-twentieth century modern life, offering a timely reassessment of culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life. This collection contains essays that examine the material of art, objects, and spaces in the context of practices of dwelling over the long span of the postwar period. It asks what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernism’s ordinary denizens, and how this role informs their legacy today. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Mark Foster Gage Mark Foster Gage, 2018-10-16 Gage, Yale theorist, architect, and pioneer of the digital avant-garde in architecture and design, presents here a phantasmagoria of ideas and built work in his first monograph. Architect to Lady Gaga and Nicola Formichetti, Mark Foster Gage has spent 20 years leading the digital architectural avant-garde, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in architecture and design and exploding expectations. This volume features built and unbuilt work from around the globe, from a penthouse in downtown Manhattan to retail stores in Hong Kong. The work shown goes beyond traditional architecture to the realm of fashion and fine art, and includes Gage’s celebrated Valentine’s Sculpture for Times Square, a 3-D-printed outfit for Lady Gaga, as well as designs for Google Glass, Solar Flowers, and robotic tulips. Mark Foster Gage, whose work Harper’s Bazaar has called “effortlessly chic” and who has been labeled a “boundary breaker,” is a visionary for today. Filled with surprises and creations of wonder, such as a tower for New York’s 57th Street with mouthlike balconies on giant wings or a retail space bedecked with a hundred-faceted mirror, Gage’s work at once challenges expectations of what architecture might be and, as well, frequently fills one with a sense of excitement. Gage’s work is further elucidated in the book by the critical musings of eminent architects and cultural touchstones Peter Eisenman and Robert A.M. Stern. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Eisenman Architects Peter Eisenman, 1995 In both these respects, Peter Eisenman differs not only from other architechts of his own generation, but from nearly all other architects working today. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Presentation Drawings by American Architects Alfred M. Kemper, 1977 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architecture and Psychoanalysis John Shannon Hendrix, 2006 Textbook |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Eisenman 1960/1990 Fabio Ghersi, 2007 Peter Eisenman è uno tra i maggiori architetti contemporanei. Il suo lavoro ha dato forma dagli anni '60 ad un percorso continuo di ricerca che, contrariamente ad ogni altra esperienza del secondo novecento, si è sempre rifiutato di chiudersi in una 'poetica' consolidata ed ha invece accettato la sfida delle trasformazioni epocali che hanno mutato il mondo: da Hiroshima alla rivoluzione telematica, dalla fine del futuro alla globalizzazione, l'architettura di Eisenman si è sempre proposta interprete dello zeitgeist contemporaneo. Accettandone le continue trasformazioni e muovendosi senza sosta alla ricerca dei referenti (dalla linguistica trasformazionale alla teoria delle catastrofi, dai frattali alla matematica boleana ...) che sembravano volta per volta le migliori chiavi interpretative di quei mutamenti, Eisenman ha prodotto un'architettura di incessante sperimentazione che tra idealità e disincanto, aspirazione all'uno e coscienza del molteplice. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman Stefano Corbo, 2016-04-15 Peter Eisenman is one of the most controversial protagonists of the architectural scene, who is known as much for his theoretical essays as he is for his architecture. While much has been written about his built works and his philosophies, most books focus on one or the other aspect. By structuring this volume around the concept of form, Stefano Corbo links together Eisenman’s architecture with his theory. From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman argues that form is the sphere of mediation between our body, our inner world and the exterior world and, as such, it enables connections to be made between philosophy and architecture. From the start of his career on, Eisenman has been deeply interested in the problem of form in architecture and has constantly challenged the classical concept of it. For him, form is not simply a cognitive tool that determines a physical structure, which discriminates all that is active from what is passive, what is inside from what is outside. He has always tried to connect his own work with the cultural manifestations of the time: firstly under the influence of Colin Rowe and his formalist studies; secondly, by re-interpreting Chomsky’s linguistic theories; in the 80’s, by collaborating with Derrida and his de-constructivist approach; more recently,by discovering Henri Bergson's idea of Time. These different moments underline different phases, different projects, different programmatic manifestos; and above all, an evolving notion of form. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach based on the intersections between architecture and philosophy, this book investigates all these definitions and, in doing so, provides new insights into and a deeper understanding of the complexity of Eisenman’s work. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Blurred Zones Peter Eisenman, 2003 Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial presents seventeen design projects, both built and unbuilt, and twelve essays that attempt to illuminate and illustrate the conceptual activity of blurring. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: From Bauhaus to Our House Tom Wolfe, 2009-11-24 After critiquing—and infuriating—the art world with The Painted Word, award-winning author Tom Wolfe shared his less than favorable thoughts about modern architecture in From Bauhaus to Our Haus. In this examination of the strange saga of twentieth century architecture, Wolfe takes such European architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Bauhaus art school founder Walter Gropius to task for their glass and steel box designed buildings that have influenced—and infected—America’s cities. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architecture Francis D. K. Ching, 2012-07-16 A superb visual reference to the principles of architecture Now including interactive CD-ROM! For more than thirty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has been the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated Third Edition features expanded sections on circulation, light, views, and site context, along with new considerations of environmental factors, building codes, and contemporary examples of form, space, and order. This classic visual reference helps both students and practicing architects understand the basic vocabulary of architectural design by examining how form and space are ordered in the built environment.? Using his trademark meticulous drawing, Professor Ching shows the relationship between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultural boundaries. By looking at these seminal ideas, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order encourages the reader to look critically at the built environment and promotes a more evocative understanding of architecture. In addition to updates to content and many of the illustrations, this new edition includes a companion CD-ROM that brings the book's architectural concepts to life through three-dimensional models and animations created by Professor Ching. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Cities of Artificial Excavation Peter Eisenman, Alan Balfour, 1994 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Buildings of Vermont Glenn M. Andres, Curtis B. Johnson, Chester H. Liebs, 2013 Bennington County -- Rutland County -- Addison County -- Chittenden County -- Grand Isle County -- Franklin County -- Lamoille County -- Orleans County -- Essex County -- Caledonia County -- Washington County -- Orange County -- Windsor County -- Windham County. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: American Masterworks Kenneth Frampton, David Larkin, 2002 During the 1920s, for example, Frank Lloyd Wright recovered the now-ubiquitous concrete block from what he termed the architectural gutter, using it in several remarkable homes in Southern California, among them the Storer House in Hollywood of 1923.. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Fin D'Ou T Hou S Peter Eisenman, 1985 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Trajectories in Architecture Michael Jasper, 2023-04-21 Trajectories in Architecture: Plan, Sensation, Temporality presents a compelling examination of underlying issues in late-twentieth-century architecture. Three formal preoccupations and conceptual orientations are used as guiding threads or trajectories. These three trajectories – the plan as conceptual device, a logic of sensation, and temporalities – serve to organise individual chapters in the central sections of the book and provide a new lens to the study of period work, revealing architectural conditions and consequent spatial effects little explored to date. Trajectories in Architecture adds to scholarship and expands our understanding of the role of conceptual and formal criteria in the analysis and creation of works of architecture. The book provides potentially transformative new interpretations of influential architects and key projects from the last half of the twentieth century to reveal new alignments and potentialities in architecture’s recent past as a contribution to identifying future possibilities. In so doing, the book argues for the still-latent potential in modern architecture’s traditions and design principles and their future expression. Trajectories in Architecture includes analysis of significant projects of Le Corbusier, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Louis I. Kahn, and I. M. Pei. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: John Hejduk, 7 Houses John Hejduk, 1979 |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Automatic Architecture Sean Keller, 2018-02-12 In the 1960s and ’70s, architects, influenced by recent developments in computing and the rise of structuralist and poststructuralist thinking, began to radically rethink how architecture could be created. Though various new approaches gained favor, they had one thing in common: they advocated moving away from the traditional reliance on an individual architect’s knowledge and instincts and toward the use of external tools and processes that were considered objective, logical, or natural. Automatic architecture was born. The quixotic attempts to formulate such design processes extended modernist principles and tried to draw architecture closer to mathematics and the sciences. By focusing on design methods, and by examining evidence at a range of scales—from institutions to individual buildings—Automatic Architecture offers an alternative to narratives of this period that have presented postmodernism as a question of style, as the methods and techniques traced here have been more deeply consequential than the many stylistic shifts of the past half century. Sean Keller closes the book with an analysis of the contemporary condition, suggesting future paths for architectural practice that work through, but also beyond, the merely automatic. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Oppositions Reader K. Michael Hays, 1998 In its eleven-year history, Oppositions, the journal of the New York-based Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), had an impact far beyond what its modest cover might suggest. Indeed, Oppositions set the agenda, introduced the key players, and published the seminal pieces in the theorization of architecture in the last twenty years. It is a testament to the enduring importance of the journal that its issues are still highly sought after today, prized (and priced) as collector's items, and found behind the desk at virtually every architectural library. Oppositions Reader collects the most important essays from 26 issues of Oppositions. Essays from the editors of the series-Peter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Anthony Vidler, and Kurt Forster-are included, along with texts by such noted architects, theorists, and historians as Aldo Rossi, Alan Colquhoun, Leon Krier, Denise Scott Brown, Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Mary McLeod, Georgio Ciucci, and Rafael Moneo. The page design, by Massimo Vignelli, has been faithfully reproduced. Harvard Professor K. Michael Hays has selected the writings for inclusion. Contributors include: Diana Agrest, Stanford Anderson, Giorgio Ciucci, Stuart Cohen, Alan Colquhoun, Francesco Dal Co, Peter Eisenman, William Ellis, Kurt W. Forster, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Giorgio Grassi, Fred Koetter, Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, Mary McLeod, Rafael Moneo, Joan Ockman, Martin Pawley, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Denise Scott Brown, Jorge Silvetti, Ignasi de Sol -Morales, Manfredo Tafuri, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, and Hajime Yatsuka. It is an understatement to say that this volume is indispensable for any scholar or student interested in contemporary architectural theory. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture Pier Vittorio Aureli, 2011-02-11 Architectural form reconsidered in light of a unitary conception of architecture and the city. In The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Pier Vittorio Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. Aureli uses the term absolute not in the conventional sense of “pure,” but to denote something that is resolutely itself after being separated from its other. In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organization, and its government. Politics is agonism through separation and confrontation; the very condition of architectural form is to separate and be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form: the city as the composition of (separate) parts. Aureli revisits the work of four architects whose projects were advanced through the making of architectural form but whose concern was the city at large: Andrea Palladio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Étienne Louis-Boullée, and Oswald Mathias Ungers. The work of these architects, Aureli argues, addressed the transformations of the modern city and its urban implications through the elaboration of specific and strategic architectural forms. Their projects for the city do not take the form of an overall plan but are expressed as an “archipelago” of site-specific interventions. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Architecture Thinking across Boundaries Rajesh Heynickx, Ricardo Costa Agarez, Elke Couchez, 2021-01-14 While most studies on the history of architectural theory have been concerned with what has been said and written, this book is concerned with how architecture theory has been created and transmitted. Architecture Thinking across Boundaries looks at architectural theory through the lens of intellectual history. Eleven original essays explore a variety of themes and contexts, each examining how architectural knowledge has been transferred across social, spatial and disciplinary boundaries - whether through the international circulation of ideas, transdisciplinary exchanges, or transfers from design practice to theory and back again. Dissecting the frictions, transformations and resistances that mark these journeys, the essays in this book reflect upon the myriad routes that architectural knowledge has taken while developing into architectural theory. They critically enquire the interstices – geographical, temporal and epistemological – that lie beyond fixed narratives. They show how unstable, vital and eminently mobile the processes of thinking about architecture have been. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Such Places as Memory John Hejduk, 1998-04-28 The poems of an architect whose affection for urban reality and imagined space is as evident in his writing as in his buildings and drawings. The poems of John Hejduk are almost nonpoetic: still lives of memory, sites of possessed places. They give a physical existence to the words themselves and an autobiographical dimension to the architect. Architect Peter Eisenman likens them to secret agents in an enemy camp.Writing about Hejduk's poems in 1980, Eisenman observed, Walter Benjamin has said that Baudelaire's writings on Paris were often more real than the experience of Paris itself. Both drawing and writing contain a compaction of themes which in their conceptual density deny reduction and exfoliation for a reality of another kind: together they reveal an essence of architecture itself. This is the first comprehensive collection of Hejduks poems to be published outside an architectural setting. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: Tracing Eisenman Stan Allen, 2006 Perhaps more than any other architect practicing today, Peter Eisenman has made a career out of devising a dialectic of oppositions in architecture. With references to societal alienation and existing architectural forms, his work derives much from Friedrich Nietzsche, Noam Chomsky, and Jacques Derrida. He led the loosely knit group of architects known as The New York Five (which included John Hejduk, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and Richard Meier), who made an effort to introduce a theory and artistry of modernist architecture as rigorous as that of the European avant-garde. This is the first comprehensive single-volume overview ever published on Eisenman's buildings and projects, from his first work, House I (1960), to his most recent projects, currently under construction in Spain and Germany. The book includes all the projects Eisenman has created, with essays from international architects and critics, including Greg Lynn, Sanford Kwinter, and Stan Allen.Eisenman currently teaches at New York's Cooper Union and at Princeton University. He has designed a wide range of projects, including the Wexner Center at Ohio State University, which received a 1993 National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects, and the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which opened in spring 2005. |
| house 2 peter eisenman: An Introduction to Architectural Theory Harry Francis Mallgrave, David J. Goodman, 2011-03-16 A sharp and lively text that covers issues in depth but not to the point that they become inaccessible to beginning students, An Introduction to Architectural Theory is the first narrative history of this period, charting the veritable revolution in architectural thinking that has taken place, as well as the implications of this intellectual upheaval. The first comprehensive and critical history of architectural theory over the last fifty years surveys the intellectual history of architecture since 1968, including criticisms of high modernism, the rise of postmodern and poststructural theory, critical regionalism and tectonics Offers a comprehensive overview of the significant changes that architectural thinking has undergone in the past fifteen years Includes an analysis of where architecture stands and where it will likely move in the coming years |
| house 2 peter eisenman: A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture Dr Elie G Haddad, Asst Prof David Rifkind, Ms Sarah Deyong, 2014-03-28 This book provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the developments in architecture from 1960 to 2010. The first section provides a presentation of major movements in architecture after 1960, and the second, a geographic survey that covers a wide range of territories around the world. This book not only reflects the different perspectives of its various authors, but also charts a middle course between the 'aesthetic' histories that examine architecture solely in terms of its formal aspects, and the more 'ideological' histories that subject it to a critique that often skirts the discussion of its formal aspects. |
