CHARLES JENCKS Deconstruction: The Pleasures of Absence \)\\A. ~OO\\I'JE.~ HOUSING l'ROlECT, MOTTTIIl)A\1 . i7 Irlhere really is a 'Neo-Modern' architecturc~ many architects and critics have been quick to claim, then it must rest on a newtheory and practice of Modernism. The only such development to have emerged in the last 20 years - known as Deconstruction or Post-Structuralism - takes Modernist elitism and abstraction to an extreme and exaggerates 1t1ready known motifs. which is why I would continue to call it 'Late'. Hut il also contains enough new aspects which revalue the ~upposiljonsofcultural Modernism [0 w!'oach probably ~tern, all they do with Eisenman, frorn hl~ complex attitude to his ethnic ielent ity, aJewi,h pa<;t at once denil.!d and accepted as an emblematic role, Gehry changed hi, surname from Goldberg in his 20!>, but now rl.!grct~ it and would like to recoll,lruCI hi~ name again .Itld \\-car hi!> Jewi.\hne~, openly.: E~tcnsive psychoanalysi~ ha!> helped him, as it h:v. Ei!>Cnman. to underst:ltld his double motivel- and how they arc quite nonnal in Amenc:tn life: a youthful renunciation of Judai..m. a lurn to athei.,m and then a return 10 elhnic identity, even the role of profe~~lOnal outca,l. the tiif!e/"elll. 'Being accepted isn't everything', he ~ays a, the opening proverb 10 hi~ hfc'" work, a.. long a.. one's unacceptance i.. accepted. I The-.c ironie~ partly c:!. Inthi..sen-.e the fi..,h ..... the pcrfcct'iymbol for Dccon~tructiO& i,t :trchitecturc, preciscly bccau'>C it h an absurd //0/1 seqllit/fr. If. following Nietzsche, there i<., all arbitrary ba:.c in all cultural form, aoo if architech ean never prove their choice of style and omumcnl.lhtl'l why not fi~h? They 'decon~truct all our llssumptiom' and ~how, ifi! needed showing,thlltthere i~ no natural and absolute base to architec, tural ~tyle. ' I have di<;cussed this marine animal al such length becau\t Ii) ullpllcatioO\ for design are more revealing than the abs\J"J.ct Decoo~t ructiom of Eisenman. Tschumi I't {II. They force us to confrotll 'otherness' in an unambiguou~ fonn: you can sublimate fractured gnds and :lbstractioll. but not thi' recognisable scaly friend. For Tat Shock of the New·, Gehry ~ub~lilulc, 'The Shock of the Fish' and iii thi, \Cn'iC, and other.., hi, Decon~tructiOIl i~ a kind of UltJ"J-MorJem. ism: '... if cvcrybody'~ going 10 ~uy that classiciMl1 i.. pctfcttKl IGdlfY h allacking Po,t-Modert\ cla......ici~m here I then I'm going til ..ay fi~h i.. perfection. so why n01 copy lish? And Ihen rtl be damna! if I don·t find reasons to reinforce why the n"h is importam and Il10It imcresting than elassicism, Th:II'~ intuitive . . : } Here we ha\'eIbf Gchry dialectic. which like Ei!>Cnman', i" a form of 'anti-classicism·. • ~lI.~"K /Juun .l JO R \.OYQI..A u..w SOli)!)! I O~ ""/J~U:S 1'/!11. FlSll ItF.sTAlItA'T. KOIU obJcct, for the Formica product called Colorcore. a pri),tine pl:l~t ic laminate whIch alway), looks fa....t.dlQu" no mailer how you cut it. In a mood of in'pired desperation Gchry threw hIS uptight material ill the noor and it decon~tructed into piece~ with flppcd or fractured edge~. From thc~e Hllperfect/perfect part~ he made lhe M:.lles ofhis fish lamps art Objects rather than reading lights, which scll in a gallery for wcl l over 10,000 do[[url;. (llllention Ihi~ inllaled price because it comradicls Gehry'~ u~ual che:IP*~e aesthetic lind ~how~ his typical abi lilY 10 move acro~scategories. e breakllge, the tr:lIlsfonnation,thc pun~ (' fi~h <;cale" arcthe righl scale for bUlJdlllgs') all havc thcircountcrpart m Eisenman. who will superimpose layers of glass and then break them to gencmle new, non-human foml)' ofa lransfonnational order.' The parallel is obviously with Duchamp's UJI"Rl' Glms. 19 15-23, which wasn't finished until il was broh.en. The Ihh as Gehry'~ representational ~ign has been analy<;cd for its ChnSlian-FrcUlhan ovcrtone~, but Ihcsc are prohably Icss iml>Ortant than IwO more obvious meanings. II'S a friclldly image which people will rcspond to with affection, a~ thcy do to elephant and dmosaur bUIldings (other lInimals which have been comtrucled many limc~ a~ habitable volumes). Moreover, in il~ sheer gmtuity it bccomesGehry's emblem for the artist and architect, hi,; version of a Corinthian capital 110 alway" having the enemy clo'>C at hand. depending on it forOJlPO!' tional definition. Till, brings ~o the crux, and what is pertl'lps veiled hypocr;s)".d Dccon~tructiorf.ITf alwi1Y~ depend, for j", meaning on lila! y,hicttli I)rcviulisly constructed. It always posils an Orthodolty which It 'wi! verh', a noml which it bre:.lks, nn ,assumption and ideology wh\l:ll~ undennines. And the minute it lo~s tilis critical role, or bcc()ll)e"ll dominanl power it.self (as in so many academics), it becomo tyr:UlllIcal bore. The samc b true of Deconstructionist architctlure.n works be..t as an eltception within a strongly defined nonn. Gehry'.. addilions to and tmnsfomlntions ofthe Loyola 1...:1", ScllO.l are acase in poinL The urban context may notconstitutea strong DI"f'" - it"~ a near slum close 10 downtown Los Angeles - but Gehry borrowed the adjacent morphologyoflowersand industrial fabric,' as he has adapted the small-block planning and ColI(l.~f' Cir\' oftil PO~I-Modem classicists whom heOlherwiscdisdains. Thc!>C nomlll8: then fmcturcd andcroded to createan ensemble of threc (noo) temple and onc (non) palazzo sunnounted by acentral (non) aedieulaofrli.,' The client 'i,'W a dassicising typology as suitable for lhe siudy ofl1~ which has its rools in GrefCe and Rome, and it'sGehry'~ simulbllrO. acceptance and resistance of Ihis which gives the scheme • l"(IU~ , I • Ihe selle b,se a m~ roof, tiona funci a don blue! \ide y asGo classi his el, Yet Dt.-cor plicito awink. langu. and thi of the 1 lime ar tension. Columns and colonnad~s arc built with a primitive solidilY lacking b:J~c, capit:ll and cntasis: a free~tanding ponico i~ buil! in aJummiurn and repeatcd on a larger SCOllc - both versions withollt pet!unents: a belfry ha~ nu visible bell: a .Rom:lnesque' chapel is madc flOm rough Finnish plywood and glass: and three gmnd stairways contemporary Baroque nourishc" - arc con~tructed without mouldmg~ or balu~ters. The willdows of the (non) pal;lzl.O are the typical punched voids of Adolf Loo". rcctangles thm are cla~sically proporuoned but missing their 'eyebrows' and other articulations. Thc~e ~bo;cIlCCS may have annoycd the Viennese, 70 ycars ago. but here, however, critics and thc public ttdmire the plen~ure uf the<;c mi~sing clements and find them \uitable for the infoml:ll1ty of Los Angelc,. Thearchitccture brettks up and frames socialactivity very effcctively, andallows many opponunities for silling down or moving through and o\erlhe space. Altogether it's a successfully ~ulcd and punctuated urban place which owe~:L 101 10 the classical typology it dccon~trucls. Gchry's WL)sk Hou~e :tddition~. a penthousc 'vi Ilage' placed on top of an apartment in BcVC'rly Hills, uses one fraclllred language to contmst with asecond. conventional one. A villttge typology subven, thepristine pmk base in the liollywood lntem:ttional Style. Gehry has ~aLn appropriated:lIlddccon,tructed theclas,icisTllofMk hael Gravc),. • !be Post-Modem cla~sici~t he often chides. who"-C initial Portland lC~me ul\o had a village of primitive temples surmounting a gianl b.1se.Thus the temples of Graves become:1 greenhouse/dining room, ,mule pink elevator shafl and a corrugatcd metal studio wilh bowed roof Some interior spaces arc elided - Ihus denying Ihe representational truth of these volumes - while others do indeed hold discrete fuocuons. For instance, and quite oddly. Gehry puts the kilchen under adome borrowed from Nero's Golden House, and then paints it b;lby blLIC! The intentional ·bmltaslc-' of this gesture is repealed on the other \i& where aziggurat shape is paillled with an industrial colour known a~Golden Cadillac. Ineffect Gehry is not only sending up Graves and classicism. but the whole neighbourhood. the pre-ellisting building, bt\clicnt. and himself. Yet this is not a radical critique or subversion, but us with much lleI:onstruction, somcMling closer to music hull satire - a wry, complicitous insinuation. ajokc made from within the SYSlem and told with aWlnk. Deeonstructiolllsts often assert that one must operate inside the llnguage, (or'text' ofsociety) in order 10 break down its ussumptions, mil thIS iscenainly-Gehry's tactic. He usually lriCS to work with some ~ tile assumptions and taste of his client. 1(\ bring the building in on and budget. and to come up with ingeniou:. functional solutions. CI-IARLES JENCKS In the Wosk penthouse the space fiows freely between volume~.yet is partly divided by subtle articulation,. The client's brightly coloured paintings, tiles lind IIrtefacts arc ~yl1lpmhetlcally framed and SCt off by Ihe background, yet contrasted. Indeed. since Miriam Wo,b, contributed so much ofherown style to the de~ign. it is 'finished' and detailed to a degree rare in Gehry's work. Deconstruction is most effective when nomlS of con~truclion and omament are also there to be resbtcd.111e dangcr forGehry, which he hasn't altogether avoided wilh his increase in commiSSIOns tlnd attendant poetic license. is that hi~ work Ix:comes completely arbitrary and henlletieally sculptural. referring only to his whims of composition. Hh TllO~1 ~uccc<;sful intervention\. such as the attachment to the Aerospace Museum in Los Angele~, relale dj!)XII~ III the functIOn lind urban - here, the celebration of night and the mixed, scrniJj)C.. On the exterior a Lockhead F l(}.l Starfighler both an icon in thc ConSlTuctivisllradition lind in I tdonut building~. The broken suggest thl' ·mony'!!.ity of i i IS C","" ,the cnergy ofexplosive suggest Ihe contradictory aims of the defence dollar weaponry is buill and destroyed for symbolic purpo:o.cs: it's an effective analogue of the_bar~cacoph..ony of the Cold War. However,thc Acrospace Museum has a characteristic Gehr)' problem: it aW1UI1s the rather drab building to which il is p(fached. tllU~ denying the possibility of a gentle di.o;coursc and continuity. 111b is Ihc classic stance 01 mO),t ueconstruction, which lIlakes contact with what exists by contrast and aggression. Rem Koolh:tas and N,-~,·Constructivism TIle Nco-ConstrtJclivist aesthetic unites the work ofGehry with Ihut of such designers as Rem Koolhaa~. Arquitcctonica, Zuha I-""did and Bemard Tschumi into a clearly identifiable 'school'. Whereas Gchry tends to revive Early·Constructivism, especially in his exhibition ~tructures on the Constructivists, Koolhaaio and I-Iadid lean towards Late-Constructivism (the work of Leonidov), and Tschumi towards the most rire practitioner of the style - Chemikhov. As wilh mo~t revivals therc is an ideological component and here it is an allCmptto continuc a Modernist tradition of the 30s and 50s which was hcading toward~ both mass-popularity and hedonism. Koolhaas looks to the 50s populism of Wallace Harrison and, at the samc lime, to the programmatic inventivenessofManh:utan, the 'culture ofcongcstion' which produced the delirious superabundance of piled-up life·styles 121 , l)ECONSTRL;C'nON and fUllclion~. Drlirimu ""('I" Yo,-.4. is ~ form of Surmlionalism, a Koo lhaa~painting.Aceiling~lide~downintothcwall,givingpersptt· ~urreal :md rational ptJlcmic for building our t:itie~. Idcologically liv3Idislortion,whilelhe\uspcndedovoidchampagnebarand . oppo~ed to Po~t·Modemi!)T11. it i!) nevcrthc1c~~ hi~lOrici~t: it~ revival~ balcony 3dd further lIc("clerations of movemcrll. Colour contrast! are ju~t confined to the poSl-10~. increasc The ~pced and, tllkcn togcther, 1111 the moving fonll~ con~'e} **,oolhaas lmd hi~ group calied OMA (Office for Metropol itan the feeling ofa very ~wi nand controlled dancc. 'nle ant i-gravitutiO!l3! Architecture) have prcxluccd many city project~ which iIlu~lrate their architectlire of Leoniduv i~ used here effectively a~ foml~ are held II theorieJlandhavewonJlcveral~olllpctitions-onlYlofindlhcm,elve~ 'tcn~ion in "pace', bodies which arc fTOlcn in mid-leap. A~ placed second after political intervention." OMA's work i~ not ~o Koolham; Contra~ls ~tcrcotypcs Ihe way a Surrealist plays much Decon~tructioni~t n~ combinatory. combining typologic~ of 'cxqui~i\(' corp\c' - thaI is, a~ a serie~ of coo! . i 1 many different Modemi~b Hilber~eimer. Mies. Cedric Price. pan eolli~iom. There i~ a built-in alienation to . method Makvich. Leonidov - bUI doing ~o in a way which i~ discontinuou, cach language gameconfroms the next with no implied integrationnt' with Ihe exi~t] ng f:lbric. 110; in the sehcme for the Pan; de 1:1 Vi Ilettc. ThI~ mcaning., win ncr ur loscr. lin kagc or rcsol ution. As in Ddi,-itmsNrlayering of oppo~ed sy~tcm! of life. . _ a Significant effect on Hadid, Ar(IUileClOllica ,md T~chumi. who are Unlikely a<; !I may at first sec]! Arquitectonica ha~ turned Kool· !V)lrC obviously within Ihe general trend. haas' approach into a very succes~ful commercial formula in Millllll.. itFor the Pare de la Villettc Koolhaa\ propo~ed all illleresting Dew but then this Floridacity h:lse~~entiali!>ed New York trends inthcpall. lan(bcape Watcgy to delll with an ovcrly complex and delailed bricf. most importantly for this tcamthe ~Iyle known;]~ Sky~craper Dero. He divided the long sitl! into a series of lateral 'band~' of different Laurind;1 Spear and Bcm;lrdo Fort-Brescia. the wife-and-hu5band activities and planting. The~e thin band~ have small clements or leader~ ofArquitectonic;!. :1~~Url1e MOdcmisttypologie~ for their woo. ·confetti·~prin l...1cdrandorl1lyovcrthe~ile.Thcnl'orl1e~a layeroflarge - such a!> the repetitive glas.. box - and then break it up with III (dements, including the existing building~. then circulation :md con- iI.')sortrnent of graphic Illotif~: red tri3nglc. yellow balcony and bil" necting layers. TIlliS the ~upcrimposition of five separate systems square (a void of space known a~ a ·~kycourt·). Thc three BauhallS. results in n rich texture which copes with the complex programme and primaries arc thu~ used 10 decon~lruct the dumb box. in this its uncertain growth :lIld funding. Thi~ nexibility and indeterminacy. rectangle of expensive condominiulTls di~guiscd a~ offices " indebted to Cedric Price'~ 'non-plans' of the 60s, ha~ an elegance and slick. black mirrorpla!e. The name of these luxury I I humour not often found in the genre, Becau~e Ihere-is nooverall figural 'The Atlnntis·. is a>. much .1 nOll SI'{{JliIJl'- as a que~tion of ~tyling ml ~hapc .the scheme isdisoriell1ing, ao; is all good Decon<;truclion, blJl th~ one is bound to question whether the motives are I staCCato of repeated band.. does provide a minim:tl coherence for the than arti ~tic. Arquitectonica might well protest that ~s;;t;"" delightful 'confetti' of buildings and gardens to play against. Jt's vel)' unfair; after all. their namboyant an is in~!>ired by commerce much the urban garden dem.!!!.lded in the brief and ultimately a neY{ fall1asies. Hence the names. 'The Palace'. 'The Babylon', 'The MIT' model for Deconstruction, as chnl lenging and convincing..as anythinit ade CetUer' (on Miracle Mile. Coral Gables): hence the allachmeml T,,<:humi and Eh,enman have propo~d. No doubl somelhing Ii!..e it 30~ ~hapes such :IS kidneys and boomerang~; hence the 'codtaH' will be built ~ome day. colours and chic surface~, the design from outside-in. One '>theme, the Churchill Plan for Rotterdam. U~~ a Dccoli- This last method. a rever~:tl of Modcmist (toctrine, Slill relaltI ~tru('tionisll1let~ ofcomt>osition where skyt'Craper volume~ are cut clo~ely to the Modernism of hoi iday architecture. to thcir love ofRIO up and inverted. nlU~ inclined planes and column~ lean in counter- d~ J:lIlciro, and ~or this.rea~on.their stylr night be c:llied. withOlT!) pomt 10 euch other (Hadid take~ thl~ distortion 10 ;J fun her extreme). sl ight cX:lggeratlOn, 'M 1;IIllI-Nlemeycr~cause they tum 2(}.. ModAnother schemc. for Chedpoinl CimrJic. takes the Berl in Wall as its ernhm on its head and sometimes literally 011 its ~ide (walls are trealtll departure pom! and ring~ the changes on repeated clemenls: 110\ only as roofs and vice versa), they :Ire more directly subver~ive to tit the wall, butlhc courtyard house, chimney. ~tairway, curtain wall :lnd rnovemelll Ih:m arc outsidcr~. Their comlllerci:lJ play with the ~'lllfl\o what Koolh:1:I~ provocatively calls ·the limp curve ofhulllanism'. One llIar of social rcsponsibil ilY deconstructs, as it were, 'the ideologic!! of their 11Iany p:linting~ display~ the kilid of iI1t ricme, ab..traci pia11ning a~SUIll piion" of sociaIi"Ill from withi11 •• Or doe~ i\'.' that J J P Oud and other Dutch Modemi..ts pract i-;ed in the e;]rly 20~. is more a continualion of the Miami vernacular, all i It ~how:. all urban tis~uc which is continuously varied and effectively Morris, L;Jpidu~, Modeme and marketing. The intention~ and ~Ib parcd into mcely M::tled domeslic i"raglllem$. Koolhaas might be are deeply ambiguous, even diffused in opposition~. For pubU: reluctant to attribute this 10 hi~ Dutch background and the tradition of buildings, such as the North Dade Courthouse, they adopt a moo Dc Hooch, but il i~ implicitly Ill~r('., and il mediales effectively the over- ~eriou~ ver~ion of Nco-Constructivism; for shopping centres flll:f concenlration inherent in his 'culture ofconge~tl{ln'. Thi~ i~ no "nail marina/condo>. they proffer a mixture of the namboyant and thedum!t. mutter since the major problem of mass-culture is its anomie: it~ lack The graphic invention of Spenr i~ evenly balanced by Ihe 9S!UII: of divi~ible. defeno;ive space. and its absence of sma Il-\Cale identity. !>aleslll:lnship of Fort-Brescia. a rn3n who ha~ gained the confider.ctli Koolh:Jas'~ tiro;t major completed building. the National Dance deve lopers nOI only in Florid:! and Texas. but Peru as well. 1"IuI Theatre in The 1·lague. i~ more reticenl than his painting!). partly combination allows Ihe very programmatic density and opposni{ll because of the site and budget constraints, .lJld partly because he which OMA ~eek: al the Miracle Center a shopping mall is setoff~ advocates a 'new sobriety'. The Minimalism ofMies disciplines all the functions which Koolhaas finds e~sential for the 'culture abstnlct ~haJ>Cs which ri~ll and fall in h;IPPY agitation n~ in Gehry's tion': the swimming pool. thealre and heallh club. penthou"e. They arc org:lIliM!d loo~ely in it spiral of materials and opposition which Ihese functions implY,lheir ~chizoid col(lur~ lhal run from blad.. SIlICCO to gold Ie;lf. This ~lart~ :ttthe back smOOlhed over by an accomlllodniing version of r. with the mo~t uti.lil.ari:m fom]s, and the t~lll!>O pi~ks up as.o?e. Illo.ves .,T '>/:Zaha H,~did '.~ .Neo:ConMruelivi~m. b.y contras\' i~ . more . ,1rOTJIld the site giVing way 10 glazed 111011fs. slopIng alul11l1llllm piers f and closer III Splnt 10 liS source, lhe mys11cal Suprematlslll ofKuun~ (1":11 'cocktail stick~·). a Illuml of dancing figures on the stage tower, M:l1evich and hi~ block cOlllposition~ known as Tektonics. and then the most sensuous shupe - an inverted cone. in gold - which Arquitectonica and Tschurni. Hadid has been marks the entrance and re~tauranl. The W;]vy roof, the interior ovoid Rem Koolhaas, who was her tutor. For several ~:IIellile ~u~pended by cables and the swilllming pool suggest a was a member orOMA and since then ~he has taught at the counter-theme, the programminic hcdonbm which underlies OMA 's tural AssociatiUIl in LondOn, acentre, iftherc. bone, ';·sd",," theory. The foyer h:ls the dyn31llic sp.;llial quality conveyed in a movement, providing show.Ji:pacc fQLthc Deconstructionists' 122 etquislti~ dr..wingio.' Indeed these dmwingl>. and '>Onlclimc,> paintings. \lthich exprc~~ an cncq;clic. sometimesexplo,I vc and u..ua11yoptim;,lie rOml of 'LIlli-gravitational archi tecture. arc Ihe cv"ente of the movement. more influential than the few completed buildings and \/rvcrgcnt theory. ''f= V..ahll Hadid 's winning entry for the Peak competition in Hong Kong tlcmplifics thi~. TIle idea of the lux urious dub is conveyed through adynamic painting that "i!cm.'> 10 be exploded aparl in a ..eric~ or frktured pl:.lllcl>: actually ifs based on an 'exploded isometric' proJeclIOn It. hich i.. vlftually impossible to figure oui. 6 lue and grey facel$ ~rncl lhc lIlountainou\ topography and Hadid ill1ilgincs Ihal several iOCl..·OUICIOps will be. polished so lhal her flying beams would lie in •'101m a ~hiny new nature._With thi!o.rod:•.y..arcruteclLlre we are clo:-c 10 DomcllIg's Expre"sionism and his Stone IlouioC. But Hadid'selcmCIlI\ IreJcc:tilincaJ. the tectonic bearn~ of Malcvich made eE!a Ions, rotated orf the grid and conmined with slight curvks and dissonant 'ingtes. The new feeling of explmive, warped dYl1<1mism CO!lle~ frolll llie~l'ule e laycr,~ In other words 'layering'. common to bOlh Latc- and Posl-Modernl,I\, is being used as an antigrlYltutional device. And had il been built. the engineering to hold the building up would have been a ~eries of box tl\l..~es and box be;un.. flyingslighllY:lI angle-.. toward, each other the 'cocktail st ick~' of Koolhaa~, The end rewlt re~embles :I Malevich Tcktonit: which ha~ ~n clong.ned and ..kewed by an earthquake. Such 'Plllnelllry Architecture'. a~ Hadid calls it. i, placed in oppo~itlon 10 hi~loricism by her and critic~ such as Kennelh Framplon. For him the work continues the 'unfinished project of IViQderni..m·. IIIlplymg thai Moderni~m was fundamentally concerned wilh '01:1tbineerol lci~I1l' and · hedoni~m ·. Excepl for;l few Con"tructivi~t and B.auhau~ dCMgner, this characteri~ation 'Iounds unM.ely. Equally bi/.arre" the notion thatlhis 'Nco' style, a revival of the 20s and 5Q." 1!>II't lllstorici\t. Frampton is much clo,er to the mark when he char,lcteri,c~ the whole oeuvre a~ a kind of 'cur~ive script' ;llld ~ay~ 'This mscription i ~ ~o hermetic a~ to dcfy decoding'. This comment is offered a\prai,c and it'~ one thatillight be appl ied to Dccon~truct ioni,t an:hiteclUl"i.' III general. One thing that define, it as Nco-Modem is ptcisely tll1~ lx:rwnal symbolism, the texi which only il\ author tmderstand~ and controls. Here we touch on a paradox of iA"'ConMruclion. Having. wllh Rnland 8anh,,>. announced the 'death of Ihe author', 'the plcasure of tbe tut' and the joint crealion by rn:l1ly teXh. or 'imenextuality', tieslgncrs ~uch a~ Iladid, Libe~kind and Eiscnmlln nevertheless create thtmOSI individu:11 ,ymbolislIl po,~ible, one where only the author has tbc authomy to tell you what il mC:lII~, This ultra-poetic use of language i~ virlu:tlly private and Iherefore authoritari::m; fully archiICClurullanguage must, by definition. Ix: more pUblic, And },etcenainly there are shared mellning"10 the ~Iyle, Manyofthe yuunghaveade\'clopcd tasle for dynamic abStmclion and the majority of the profes~ion are still Lale-Modemil.t!., This archilecture may be 1IIIpO~lble to dl'Codc in specific in,tances. as Frampton aver~. bUI in perJI it Signifies Ihe delenninalion 10 continue Modernism as an title discour'>C and it has a very ~lrong ideological component. I-Ience the~'OO~tant references to Le Corbusier.Terragni and the Constructivb11)1'iCd nOi so 111l1ch a.. 4uotes. but a~ the final meaning, ilJ~d's work jiig.niHes quite clearly the continuation ofModernism J\ ~ di,torted ubl>traclion...Her office project for Berlin is ahllo~t Ihe !lI1IUlaLslab block. but is gemly warpt..--d, ~kewcd and bent. Just ab the Rococo slyle made very small variations on all essentially economic lInIcIurc, ~hc twi,t~ functional clements IUld cxtends wall.. al the Cl'lffieI'!lIOgive Ihe appcaranceofa wilful exuberance.The plansoflhis I ClIARLES JENCKS bUilchng !ohow a few boomerang walls and leaning piers. the customary 'cocktail sticks'; Ihe transparent cunain wall sho\9sgenlly curving ~kin th:lltilt~ OUI as it ri~es; and Ihe sequence of space is punctuated by layered wedges and cantilevered beams, Inother words. a refinemenl of dYllamic expression is made by wtmbles Chemi~hov's· 101 archllecturalfictions' io method and slyle: the graphic abslfaclion of the aerial perspective Qwes sOl1)elllin& to Cedric Price, Archigram and OMA. This I'ISI i, recalled by the di~location of ted dot~, green lines, and cinC\,..tE MIN!STIJI. Dl,.hUN. 191'11. AER IAl. VIEW Thefo/ie.fput intoopcration ageneral dislocation; they draw into ;t everything Ihut. until maimenam, seems to have given architecture meaning. More prccisely, everything that seems to have given architecture overto meaning. They deconstructfirst ofall. but not only. the semantics of architecture. ... Analways-hiemrchisingnostalgia: architecturewiIImaterialise the hierarchy in stone or wood (hyte); it is a hylclics of the sacred (hieros) and the principle (arcM), an archi·hierafic.f ... These folies destabilisemeaning, themeaningofmeaning. the signifying ensemble of this powerful architectonics. They put in question, dislocatc, dcstabilise or deconstruct the edifice of this configuration .. , We should not avoid the issue: if Ihis configuration presides ovcr what in the West is called architecture, do these folies not Tlti'.e it? Do thcy not lead back 10 the desert of 'anarchitecture', a zcro dcgree of architectural writing where this writing would lose itsclr, henceforth without finality, aesthetic aura. fundtunentals. hier.trchictll principles or symbolic Signification: in short ill It prose made of abstract. neutral. inhuman, useless, unintwbitablc and me•.mingless volumes? Precisely not.The/olit'.'. affinn ... they maintain. renew and reinscribc architecture. They revive. perhaps. an energy which 124 a singular dcvice ... Thcre are strong words in Tschumi's lexicon. points of greatest intensity. These are the i m ills (transcript. trunsfercoce. etc) and, above all. de- or These words speak destabilisation. deconstruction. and. first ofall.dissociation. disjunction, i An architecture ofheterogeneity. interruption. But who would have built in this manner? Who counted on only theenergies i a simple displacement or dislocation. Thc~fore i";:~: needed ... it gathers together the diffira"ce ... A 1 aimed at a spacing and at a socius of dissociation.II At momentS in this analytical panegyric to Tschurni, when he asks rhetorical questions 10 answer them in the Derrida sounds like Nieti'_",che: at other times his thinking by alliteration and analogy, as if poetiC I would rationality.'2 If he film with nihilism i I only to rcjcct it and thereby assen a generalised he switchcs back and forth quickJy betwcen many possiblc' dcconstruction/ reconstruction antinomies of Nietzsche. stalemuteofoppositions it is possible to find Iw", '"" 'h g I.,, - I ,., OIl! "'h '"' -LoV Ibo: IIJI eltpl' Ven' et..w oolou 111 IIIsh ""be non-p !hi> emphasis on Ihe plNlJwe of wandering in an unstable penncable 'weave', to use his met:tphor, a kind ofin-between or liminal st:tle, 3nd the idea that Tschumi's Pare fonns a 'sodus of dissocia.tion' which gathers together dljjfrtlllCC, As :tlre:tdy mentioned I would dispute Ihat the latter constitutes a real plur3lism, which must be founded on a wider set of public Innguages than a restricted :tbstraction, buttherc C3n be no doubt about the pleasure of Tschumi's constructions and layout: the tilted waJls which recall the anamorphic projeclions of 1·ladid, lhe undulating tensilc walkways (engineered by Peter Rice). lhe nying c:mtilevcrs :rndskewed 'cocktailslicks', the juxwposed space frames in blood-red Slcel, the collision of different planIS and curving aJli!c~ of trcc~. I.n shon. Nco-Constructivist aesthetics arc played with consider:Lblc Invention and skill. As for the 'point-grid' plan and the random sprawl. this is meant TO be inTcrpretedas emptiness (whaT Tschumi calls la m~'e \'idt, or 'empTY slot"), the kind of urban reality 31ready created by Modemislll. industrialisation 3nd Ihe 'dispersion' ofcontemporary life.I J The nitic Anthony Vicl1er juxtaposes this Cllsical. EmpTy Man, or Orgman, as Rosenberg also notes ironically ·is. wilh necessary additions and disguise, nOlle else than the new i11lelleclual talking about himself l1: the nomadic intem,lIjollal lr:lveller withOUT family attachments or long-tenn commitments or a paSTthaT he cares to recognise. In brief it's a picture of Ihat beall-it/l'lIl of the 20th century. the Futurist and ExistentialiST who defines his goals and changes them wilhot1\ much scntiment or angst. And yeT lhis ideal type. the Empty Man. has anOTher aspect 10 his characler which may come 3S something ofasurprise: he always !'>eeks and then predicl:lbly finds. like a 13th-cen1ury pilgrim pursuing the HolyGrail. the empty centre at Ihe he3n ofsociety. the self-contradiction ofall texts. Ihe Great Void of Extinction - and this cheers him up. • For whaT he has discovered is 3 religion without faith. a positive nihi li sm.l~ or in Derrid:t's terms an affinnative Deconstruction. This certainty of rne3ninglessness is vel)' bmcing: it also leads 10 a very coherent style of absence. something equivalclIlto Ihe great styles of iconoclasm and self-renunci3lion ofCistercianism ofthe 13th century and Zcn- Buddhi ~t art. Hirami Fujii. ill part:1follower of Ei~enman. i:, one maSter oflhis genre who produces many buildings which signify the beaulies of abscnce: missing w:llls and windows. CUI planes, uncoloured surfaces, etc. As he describes it. his method of 'metumorphology allers acquired meanings (customary codes) for the ~ake of producing non-conforming relationships· .19 A set of mechanical operations, different from Tschumi's and Eiscnman 's in operation but similar in their random mechanism. is performed to aHer the customary codes: ·.tIispariTt, gapping, opposition. rcversal' .:"!II Characteri~tically the grid marches all over The building in black and while reversals to destroy the conventional relations of up/down, roof/wall and furniture! room. Another master of Ihis cryptic rei igious style is John Hejduk whose bleak 3nd beautiful constructions ofren resemble a functional mechanismlhm is deconstructed and reconstiTuted on a new scale. For Beriin he has designed ascenario 3nd set of67 slrucTurescaJled Viclimswhich are intended to be placed. one each ye:tr, on the site of the romler Gestapo Headquarters. Each one is n3med wiTh a label thai is both funclional 3nd associative and Ihen placed on :I poinl-grid with no 125 DECQJ\'STRUCfION discernible overall geometry of layout. A relflted ll1echani~m, The Collapse a/Timf>, was buil! by the Architectural Associmion for a London Squflre, an odd choice of -;ite for this structure because, as an adjacent plaque indicated, iI too commemorated the victim<; of the Gestapo, Passers-by could watch over a four-week period whi IeTime, repre~cntcd by a sct of stacked cubes (coffim?) numbered one to 13, fell to 45 degrees and then collapsed onto their bier. The image of railroad track.., five pair~ of wheels and the bleak wood containers W:l~ both l>OCtic;Llly childlike and disturbing, humorous and reJJlor~eless, a vivid memorial to those who took their la.stjourney on a wooden train. The blocking of the '12th hour' implies that we are now POSIHolocau~t and the prCsem:e of the number 13 is a funny/mordant reminder ofthat noor which is u~ually missing in skyscrapers. Hejduk combines word. ~cenario and Minimali~1 image in a unique style, but his work rekltes to that work of Libc~kind and Eisenman in having ~ln almost nihilistic ml!taphy~ical origin. Peler F.iscnnmn, t he Ilosilive Nihilist No architect is more commi tted to the faith ofdogmatic ~ceplicism, the importance of the ~aps and contradictions within the text, than Peter Eisenman. In about 1978 he bccmtlc a Dcconstrul,tioni~t and at the same time underwent psychoanaly~is: two events that have no doub1 reinforced each other and his own dogmatic scepticism. It's illuminating to give a brief summary of his development, partly ba~ed on his own word~. bcc(Ju~c it :.howll how much he i~ attractcd 10 currem phil()sophie~ and thCl)ric~ of lhe ml)Ll1cnt.arut how he intentionally 'mis-rcad~' them for hi~ own purposc~ to give his work wllllt he rightly calls a 'didactic energy' .~I His building~, writing~ and theories all h,lVC a frantic energy and arc compLLI~i vdy mixed toge.ther a~ if thi~ might produce a real brcakthrough, a new non-arr.::hitcctuTC which is part wntLng, building and model. Paradoxically his aesthetic ha~ remained much the same white-gridded abstraction a~ his first housc~. although ..ever:!1 tactics ,uch a~ the L-"hape and half-buried building have been added 10 the repertoire. The fiN hou,cs, numbered I and II. were carrying forward the Modemi~t ~yntax of Le CorbLl~icr and Terragni. Houses III and VI were L.lIe-Modem exercises in 'pure formali"Il1', int1uenccd by the art-hi~lOrians Rosalind Kraus~ and Clement Greenberg, Structuralists ,uch as Lcvi-Stmuss and Cho1Tl~ky, and Minimalists ~uch as Donald Judd. House X, 1918, is the "Iasl f(lrlllali~t work' and the 'first usc of decornpo"i\ion which i~ oppo~itc to a ratiOnal transformational proces~' , The building wa~ de~igncd by :.ubtracting elements and by a 126 '>Crie~ ofmechaniclli processes which destroyed the centre ofthe house (decellLTing), anthropomorphic scale (scaling), and customary u~age.t .(a ~as~ wall i~ used as a floor lind is cantilevered ovcUipace). House X itself was not built, but a ver~ion or it was, a s;till further methods of decelllring, with what could be . rhetoric machine, bUl lhe important point is that cach method i~ on his mctaphy!Sics of nih iIiSill. the {'"i,lfl:lllt' he pres ume ~ r Modem project. (Perhaps it should be mcntioncdat this pointt )\'(1.\' a humanist Modernism, a truth he conveniently overlooks: case it is his intention to subvert and deconstruct it.) 1'lou!>C I la, initially designed for his friend Kun Forster, ofthe Geny Center, is based on 11 ~eries ofL's below ground and also rotated with respect toench other. cube, arc mean[[0 •suggesl amore LI ncertaincondition ofthe linivcr"c. House I1,1 lakes lbi ~ condition of uncertainlY as its point of dcpanure ... We live in an age of partial objct:ts ... the whole h fu ll ofholc,' .~. From this slage. according 10 Eisenman. there i~ a "hift in hi~ work IOwards the bigger scal\,' hc :,ceb out urban project.\. - and toward, mnsilkring the site. The Cannarcgio project for VCIHCC. 1978. indil'jIles thiS shift toward~ what I would call his' Non-I)osi-Modenllsm·. l~t i~'flis use of Po,t-Modem nonm in an invcrted or Decon<;lmClell '/I'~y. nll1~ re'IKlnding 10 ContcxlUali~m. he both denies the fabril.' and hiStory of Venice and a....cn~ the (l1'-I'(,II('e of Lc Corbu!>ier's hOl-.pital lfO.,tect forthiscilY. by using II'i grid as;1I1 orderingdevice.The WhClllC LU pl.bLU\'e bouquet of·non-.\o· (·non-mime[ic. non-lwrr.Jlivc and lionlenebrate') and illake.. Ihe decompo.\oed 1I0u~ I Ia for its nOI1-"ale. Thl~ i~ 10 be buLit .Il. three differenlly scaled objecb. One of Ihe obJech is nooul four feet high, it ,il\ in the ~4u:'lTe and i" the model of a housc. You can look at it and think 'well, Ihal i.. not a house; it L~ Ihe model of Hou\C Ila.' n len you take the .!lame Object and PUt it III House II a; you build House I Ia at a human !>Calc .lIld )OU put [hi~ !>time model of il inl-.ide ... the larger Object CIIARLI:S JE.'IICKS jo/it's. as a pure intellcctu:11 condition which has begun !O dominate hi~ work, life aml mental ..tate. In Ihe early ROs the Institule for Architecture and Urban Sludic~, which he hud co-founded. began to decon~truct as he tumed hi<. crfoTl:; towar He bI..'Camc alienated from some of 1m. friend~ and. for a time, hi~ wife and children. Even hi, Mudenl~ at Harvard. where he taught from 1983 to 1985. went through lraumas of dc-stabi li ~alion and momentary withdrawal n~ he introduced Deconstruction as a practising method.!7 After !>everal wrillcn al\acks on Chl.\.sicism and Post-Modcmism,~~ hc took direcl aim l\! his former friend and ideolo!,-ical enemy, LeOIi Krier. the exponent ofcl:I"'Mci~m and defender of Alben Speer. Kricr'~ revivalil>m was di~missed a~ no\talgic. OUI of touch with modem '-Ciellce and equated with the anti-Semitism of Spccr and other Nal.ls. A~ Kner apparently once confe"scd to Eisenman thaI the 'holllele~~ Jewi~h Lntellectual' wa~ n01 the ~tani ng polm ofhI, urbanism.lhi~ lup~eon his p;Lrt is once again tttken as the authoritarian nature ofclas~ici ...m.. Any WOll1an', Eisenman ~aid pointing at the audience. 'who l-.ubs(;ribes \0 chl!>"'lcism is self-denying· ..... ·LogoceniriMIl·. the favoured Sill of O(,'constructioniM\. ;mthropocentrism.hierarchy. anti-ferninI~m. anti· Sel11Ltism and no't:llgi" I!M II \ minimali:<.Cs Ihe "maIler one. Once the object inside is memorialised. it i~ no longer the model of an object: it ha~ been trnnsfonned ... into a real thing.. As a eOIl~e(lucnc:e. the larger hou\C.the olle at anthropomorphic "ale. no longer function~ as lhouse ...Then there is the third object.which I' largerthan the other two. larger than reality. larger than :lIlthropomorphic Dtte~~ity ... [t become~ a museum of allthe...c things.~ fm! is reminded here of MO/una's houses-within-houses. hh AmiDM'rllllJ~ 80.\ of 1971. ba~cd on Th~ M Ol/ill/' Gou~'/' rhyme. and ikHles' endless library of Cd il~ mark al1(\. since it a..,umed a totalising ideology. was in any C:i!>ca very non· l)ccon'truct ionl~t act. Ei"Cnman'~ <;cept ici~1l1 and dislLke ofthe classical ha~ found expressIOn IIlIl1:my n.'cent articlclo and urhan projecls.lII Primary among the laller was hh wmning enlry for !>oclal hou\lI1g in Berlin, an IBA project localed ncar the Berlin Wall lind Checkpoll1t Charlic. The tr:tumntic p;lsl of Ihi ~ city afforded Eb(,IH1l;ln, as ;t did Hejduk and Libeskind. a good opportunity to represenl c:Lta,trophes and diM:ontinuilie<; ofthe pa~1 and prc"Cnt: 'German, killing Germans trying to nee from Gemlany to Gennany' as one Circular and mordant propml1lOn PUI il.11 Eisenman', first scheme. produced in 1982. po~tu la!ed the redevelopment of a wholc block with additions (a mu...culll and walkways) and subtr.lctions (an 'artlficial excavation' down 10 IRlhcentury foundation~), but in the event only 37 apanment umll-. were con~truclcd on Ihe sOUlhwestcomer. His inlenlion here was to provide un altemativc to Post-Modern historici~m with its emph:l:-.i~ on cunlinuity. wholellC~s and patching up thc frugmcnted Modem city. This last approach i~ dismissed as an attempt to 'cmbalm time', or 'reverse or relive it" - 'a fonn of no!>talgi:l'.l~ Instelld Eisenm:m propose~ in a disinterested way a ncutr'dli~ing 'anti-memory', somcthlllg aklll 10 127 -DECOl\STRUCT10i'll T~hullli 's reproduction of Ihe stalUs (Iuo: Anti-memory doc~ notseck or posit progress, makes no claims to a more perfect future. or a Heworder. predicts 1l00hing. It has nothing to do with historicist allusion or with values or functions of particular fomls: il inste:ld involves tlu' //Iakillg of(/ plan' (It(/( dl'l'il'l!S its 01'111'1' from ,ht, obsClII';IIg of ;fS 0 11'11 r('('(}II('l" I'{I P(lS(. In Ihis wily memory and anti-memory work oppositely but in collu.')ion \0 produce asuspended object.;1 frolen fragment ofno paM and no future, a place. leI LIS..ay It is of its own time," 'Our time'.judged from the completed building. is where a lighl green wall with a white grid OIJpliqlle represents the remaining buildings 011 the site, while another grid shifted from the fi r~t one by 3.3 degrees rcprescnt~ ISth-centu!')' foundation5 and the Mercator grid, th:lt abo stract ordering pattern which 'ties Berlin to Ihe world'. Above ':111. it rcprescnb the Berlin W:lllj u~t 10 the north. In cffcclthen. like Richard Meier's 3,; degree shifts al Frankfurt. we have a Late-Modemi~t dealing wilh a PO~I- Modern Iheme,thc representation of sile requiremcnts,The problem is. however, IhlH no one could possibly know this without reading Eisenman's explanations several times tx--cause so much is intentionally ob.')cure dighlly. Ihe tilled block ~ccrllS to ~mash through the greenish block to re-emerge On thi:' corner, only Ihen 10'dissolve its figlrral identiry: This lilled block. in fragmented grid" of white. grey and red. provide!> a welcome ~ynco· pation and identity for each fl:lI: all the window.. here vary and Ihe double,sIQ[e), wbjtel:rid sllCCessfull ycontrasts with thc..!!!Q3..(lredictable rhythms of the background grccn. In conventional temlSIt'S a delightfully moving l>et of ~ulllc~/ Jlne~ coloured ¥.r~ which provide individu:llilYand anonyllllly in mea~ure.-and the .')kew h ",n',;o,;, 1<",1 what might have been or womtin-in-the·street. what aOOUl the deeper reading for the cognoscenli. the manwith-the-Eiscnman-text-in-hi~-hand. the Empty Man? Here there are problcm~ of inconsistency which cannot be deconstructed away, The greenish grid, which represents Ihe ~Irect line and previous buildings. unaccounlnbly changes its colour to the grey-Ted-white grid on the 12R west comer. There is no semamic reil~on for this and it seems.')imp() an aesthetic decision, 10 hllnnonise the colours and fomls of th~ facade. And such harmonic), b:mal integrations for Eisenman, 3ft precisely whal he seeks 10 deconstruct in h i~ pursuit ofan hones! 'anh' cla~~ ic i sm', A I~o, and pcrhap~ more importamly,the 3,3 metre Ixlse~ me,mtlo refer to Ihe heighl ofthe BerlinWall, but it is treated a~ a,~laJJ wall of cheerful squares. or on the ~outhwcsl corner, an exercise II perky selback... In other word, the 'memory' of Ihis. the most trau· matic wall in the We...!. is ae.')lhetici.')ed and triviaIised. the aCCUS.1IKl1 Ih;lt Eisenman level.. at Po,t-Modem historicism, The confirmed sceptic might an~wer that no Deconstructionist CJI be perfect: there's alway, incoherence in the text. So how do weJ~ the difference between good and bad Deconstructionist bui1din~t Again there is no CleM an~wer to thi), as Ei ~e nman has said: 'Lookm,: allhe corrosion of fomlal c;negories, the work [of mine Isuggests tI\:I! there is no ~uch Ihing as Ihe good or the beautiful· ,·14 If the worl is thlll nOI meant 10 be 'good', it still remains 'not·bad', either: othcrwi!.tl wouldn 't write at such length on the~e tortured incomislencies, Rr Ihi... is the l>ubject of Ei"l!Tl1llml'S art. ~ystematic doubt. and it Il!~e\ con ~iderable effon and courage forhirn to pursue it. On theotherhri it wouldbe naive not10 recognise ~uch "Ceptjci~m as areigningfashiccl ofour time, with graduate schools and Parisiansalons full ofJ)outtl Thomases. Eisenman's winning entry for an Ans Center in Columbu!>. lakes his rhetorical slrategies a ~Iage beyond Ihe Berlin ~chcme. A it j" b:t~ed on l,he..s,hifJ bc t ",9i!'1T1:W~~ , 'artificial eXCllv8tlon' complex,fragmented figure~ - ,ign~ ofdoubt. Ag:lin and harmony for the ab~lract layering of white and grey grids. it exhume~ an old building - in thi!> ca.;e the foundations of ar armoury - and use~ it as a 'fiction' to be built as a 'ghost' another narrative and ronnal device borrowed from Post,ModefII But whcrea~ a Post-Modemi.')1 might have stitched together present and rUlure, Eisenman builds the abSlracted fragmeruof ~OllQury as a ruin. Red masonry to'Werl> buill from a new' material tic down it jumble of canted rectangles. one of WhICh, a ' whIte grid of galleries and the main spine, sma~he~ betl\l'Cn exi~ti ng bui ldings and Ihen rises up '[ike a north arrow', andc~l'nJll('l like one of Hadid's skewed nying beAms. Obviou~ly Eisenman hAS been influenced here, as clscI\'hel't, other Deconstructionists, and in this shnring ofccnainconvclltlOO't arc witncl>sing the growth of a new convention and sct of howevershort-lived. The long Ihm rising spine - Ihe skewed ,"" I I , I B n f, ", • -decOI\~truch the hier.lrchic:. .mll harmonic' of thc two r.llh..:r dull buildings to either side and, like onc of Frank Gehry's bumptiolls ,'tdges driven into a cla..sical clicht, this aCI of contextual murder !rings a certain life to boredom. Onc may que....ion the frenetically fllgmented confusion, but the Arts Center explicitly a:.ked for :1 building .... hichwould represent theexperimental nature ofconlempomy an and in Ih i~ sen"!! Ihey have achievL"t :tnnollry neXl10 an earthworl.. II fa Michael Hei7.er. One m:lY aho (Itlc>tion the reference oftile tilted grid, .",lIer all. i~ the city grid really wurth repre"!!lHing, or i:-. it merely a \Rtext 10 convince the client that thi.. 13 dC!~ree shifl and its costly rolli~inn'i are neces'>ary? A~ u>ual Eiscnm:m profrers .1 sel of paraoo(es: ·We u~cc! the ,itc-'b a p;tlinm,el!: ;. pl:tee to write. e~ and lellintc.lhistoryl': 'Our building I"ever~es the process of the "ite inventing the building IPost-Modernisml. Our building invent~ the site'.TII(' rc~urrecled, ab~tracted armoury'affirms the signi fiCtwho thinks it'),;\ vcry interc~ting insigtll into my psychology. He understands II much better than I do, 111 a certain scnse',J7 Since architecture i)' a public art and Romeo and Juliet will not be built. we'll le:tve ih analy~i> 10 other~ more highly JXlid for the task. BUI it.. extension of previous ideas should be mentioned, the method of laycrinJ:l and crackinJ:l gla,~ plane~ to imroduce non-anthropomorphic tropes- 'scaling', 'SLltX!rillll>o,ition' and 'sclf-similarity'.These, III Ei..enll1;LIl·~ word~, creale a 'M:ale-specifity in thaI it is a recursive sca!e: it re!:Lles to it~ OWII being, Its scale is imerna!. In this work, we arc !:lIking about the lo~, of God, the lack of belief in the incarnation, and the need for:1I1 inc,ITIHlIe mediator. We are talking aboutlhc loss of ~elf as Ihe only identifying metaphor ... Kccursive, self-similar. diSI.:Olltinuous geometry i ~ potenti:tlly a scalc non-specific to man's geomelry'. ~ Why the 'need for:1I1 im;:amatc mcdiator' isn't another vestigial <>elltimcllt of· Pmt-Modern no~t:.llgiil' i~ not ex pJained: but the absence ofGod i~, ofc(\ur~e. the uttimale reference for alt Ihis de-cenlred work. 11 brings up the point of whcther the feehng of loss - so powerfut in Tschumi. Hejdul.. , Libe~I..ind and Ei"Cnman - isn't a fonn ofNietl.schI'I--,-IOM EISE.'I;I.tA'. L TO /I \10~ 01' IIOU5( II A . A)(O'l;O\IFl1I.l(" M()UU (If- II()I'SI X !hetoricaltropc<; mto hi~ own amloury 'fiction'. ':mli-mcmory', ·ltpreSentation·. ·figuratlon · - he b(:1::lIne mudl closer 10 the Po"tmistshe ~pumcd. BUltosave lum!>Clffrom this unspeakable fate. lIr invencd their prim:try mctho{h and tumed miraculously into a -\OI-Posl-Modemi:.I'. Thu~ for l)o~I-Modern '~illlulalion· of ruins, instance. Eisenman propo\Cd:1 'di""illlulalion' 01 ruins, thaI is• :otmterfeit excavatIons :md f:llse foundat ions that either pretend 10 be rulones, or repre~nt in !.Oll1C phoney material the fact that they'rc "".One 'iCheme of Il1'i, the Romeo and Juliet project for the Venice &rnnalc. 1985,take" the texts of Da Porto and Shakespeare, among 1IIbm, as its departure pamt for showing the inherenl conflicts ~\\een the two famou~ rami1ic~ of Verona. It makes this the pretext lorI·superpo~ition· of conflicting scales and endless mi~-reading~ Im:t part of its lille, ·Moving Arrow~, Ero~, And Other Errors',lI! , ., . method oC amplifying or diminishing a grid or I t it rd:t~~ il!!!Y 10"ilselL('self-similarity') is the rhetorical !~ used :.Ind]ire~b, forInstance, in II diminished model ofthecilY a: Vrrona being inscned in the citadel of ROllleo's castle. So Illany Rtb shifts and ·superposition<;' and 'excavations' are used here that wnman quickly lo~es his privileged role as the author of this lext In an amusing and revealing admission, says this of itS represenean, oratleasl Exjstel11iall~t, revjvalism. Whatever theca!>C. Ei-.enman and Derrid:I'" garden forT'iChumi's 'park oflhe 21 stcentury' is where all this :Ibsence comcs logclhcr and occomcs recursive, referring to itself in a kind of ~i1ent ping-pong game of nothingness. First of all there wa:o. a cryptic b.1ulc going on over precedent: which 'aUlhor' TschullIi wilh hi!. 'Joycc's Garden' of 1977, or Eisenman With hi~ Omnaregio prOject of 1978 - fi rst invented the famous OceonstructioniS! 'point grid', a dispute rendered void in the scholar's mmd by Archizoom's 'Non-Stop City' of 1970, or Barsch and GinLburg's 'Green Cily' for Moscow. 1930. Ei~enman nodoubt wanted to take the credit for discovering Lc Corbusicr's 'politi grid' for his Venice liospital of 1964-5, and this i)' referred to in the layout of the garden which combines both Le Corbu:-.ier's and Tschumi 's grid with his own Canrmregio project: its eroded L-Shapes, a diagonal cut and po~ltive and negative 'excavations'. In the garden another diagon31 is added to pick up Tschumi'~ :tnd then Iwo grids arc rotated at an angle 10 suggest to the cognoscenti 1l13t Eisenman had the idea before his friend (ie Tsehum;' s Pure is bcrmilled in the fragmented imagc~ of the Pari~ rampan~ (elcv;.lted) and abattoi r:. (~unk). Thc~c are .trace". from the site and it~ history of con~t.ant destrucliOIl and recon~lruction. the 11l0~t recent bcltlg in the ~O~ when the ~Iaughterhou~s were tramfonncd at greal poillical and economic e."(pen~c (repre~entell by the golll colouring?). Binary nppositions aTC ~ignified ~ Parisian aballoir/ltalian Sl:lughtcrhou~e (~iw of the Venicc Hospital). Tschuilli/Le Corbu~icr. hou~cl folly. Iife/ctc:tth ~ a~ well a1) the siIIIultaneityofpa~t. present and ful ure. The whole g:trden i ~ called 'Choral Works'. aCollaboration ofDerrioa and Ei~enman. who ~ing their sacred and metriclll hymn in uni~on 10 -.n audicnce of knowing Empty Men: other Deconstructioni"I" who will contemplate with reverence their need for an .illcamatc mediator' they cannOt have ~ the ple-.sures of sacred absence. Ei~emllan explains: The ide;J of the qU;Jffy becomes a very interc~ting notion. ThaI i<. whal we are using in La Villellc. We ;Jre using two pieces: the , , / quarry and Ihe pnlimpse"l ... Now YOlltake the stones and build one projC(;1. Someone else will take the slOne~ from our project ;Jnl! bui 10 something elM! ... We start frol11 the palimpsesl whit'll i~ the supcrpo~ition of two piece~ [Cannaregio ,md Tschumi?J which then becomes a quarry and then you subtract from lilt p:tlimpset leaving the tr:lce of the fonner superpo~ition. but abo the tr.lce of the subtraction. sO in other words we arc tall.1ng. about ·choTa·. The combinat iOll of the superpo:.ition of pahmp<;e~t and quarry give" you 'chora' which is the progrJmme thai Derrida sel for The La Villcl1e project. $u we :lTe inlo !iOml~TealI} very (;fazy thing~ al La Villelle ...w Eisenm:tn's rhctork machine seems to have dominated progr. Hadld :lod othcrs. If one "alue~ Dccoo~ ' Iruclionists from a ~ceptical I>o,ition. as I do. then it io; for theIr inventive rre\hne~" their bringing of ncw ru1c~ and conventions to the tired game of Modernism, for making it trul y 'Neo'. If one ha!. doubt!> about the generJ.lilY01 approach. they concern the 'dogmatic M:epti~ th.rn' which 1<' alway.. ,ure ofthe negative re ~ullo; and the anti-political and anti-public nature of the ilClivily, A, a Mandanll MY1c Ot..'Con, ~truction jo;, as Manfredo Tafuri wTOtCOflhc New York FIVe and olher, 111 1974, 'Clrchi/('rf/lrl' dalls Ie iWIlr/oil" .~' Uh.e a Rococo boudoir It can bc sensual and cng"gingly complex, but ii', fundament"lly undemo· cratic, And here hthe rc,,1 contradiction in Dccon'truction: in ~pite of the claims 10 pluralism, dif/emll(,(" 'a wOIr on totOllity' and defence of 'olherneo;!.·, Ihis hcnnclic "ark is oflen monist, eliti~t . intolcrant and conveys a ·1.:1Il1ene..~'. Perhaps. in architecture. thi" i.. a resuh of staring into the Void for too long: il ha ~ re,ulted In a priv:ne reJiglOu, language,of ~clf-den ial. Becau~e of ,uch supprc$<;ion~ and contradiction, one could ;Irgue Ihat a real [)ecoINructioni ~t architecture of v"riety :lIId humour has yet 10 exi,\. Null'S I S« 1'hr Ardlu/,/,wrt' of fl'(IIIA GI'III),. 19frJ-I fJl)6, cshibiuon. Walker An 23 Peter Ei!>Cnman, .PO,I·hmctionall~11l .. 0PIHlWlmIS 6. Fall 1976, pp ii-iii. Ctmtr antl~, Rll."I.oli. Nc.... Yorl, 11)86: Prol!rt',.I;.'f· AI'I!titnlW'(', Oclll- 24 'A Poclic~ ofthe Model: Eisenman', Doubl'. IlIlcrview With Peter Ei)Cn~ 1986: !lOIISt' Imd Garde" (LS cd) ;IW;lrd for archlllXlure. Augu~1 1987. m:m by David ShapIro J.nd Lilld ~;Iy SI,lInm. 1981. in /(/1'1/ (/I' M(Hlrl, IAUS, ~ SeeThoola\ 5 Iline\ ' I!cayy Met:l!. The r::tluc:llion of I'()(;' III Till' Ardu- RillOli, .\lew Yor~ . 198 I. pp 1 2 1 -~_ flUro/Fr(II/(Gt'lin"(J/,,il, pp IO- It. 16. IS. 2~ ihid.p I::!l ) iNl. froll1l~plccc. 26 Kennelh I-mmplon w..~ lhi: Dm.:e'or ot the JAUS for ..c\,crJI mOlllh~ 1\1 I Set thi! (h \Cu~Slo n ofthe'ThrL'e GI:l~~ Inddrnt' In fm'OIiKlI/ioll", ill AI'! hi- 19115 beforr r 4-19,,\1\ hit',\ 12, 65-75, tran, lallon by Kale LlIll..er. \llacquc~ Dcmda, AA fi/I'I' t2. P 70. lJ 8emardTschumi. 'La Ca~c Vide', ,\A Folio R, 1986. P 3. IJ Anlhony VIdler, 'Tnck-l rack'. tl}ii/. PP 20.21. I! 8emJrdT~huml. 0fl IiI. p 26. • Il.arokJ R~ nbcrg , 'The Orgalllcnean Phanta"y·. Tlrt' TralJilitm oj Iht' ~ \lcGrav.-1hlL 11)65, pp 269-285. "Rlbtnberg, 0(1 ,il. P 284. II See my "me Perennial ArchIH_'CtuTllJ Debale, A~U'lct Reprcsem:nion·. I:rIM/tfllf({/IDesi/:lI, Vu153, No 7(8, 1983. pp 10-16. I~ lhrOOlI FUj ii..Archi'ecwraI Metl1l11Orpholugy: In Qlle~1 of 'he MechR'\IIIo/'Meamng'. 0PIJlI.lllirmJ 22. Fall 1980, pp 14 19. ""d. Set 1l1ltl'Yle.... belween Peter Ei~nrnan and Car~lcn Jucl-Chrhtianscn, \.I\I.U':o 12, October 1987, p 10. __ iIIId,p 12, 1979. al~o see the rctcrencc, 111 the PUb1rl':11I01l clled II1lhe "reviou~ noiC. ::!<) ·1l11!."-C rernarl, by b ,enlllan were made al 311 Archilcclurnl A~sociallon IIX'ture, :v1i1Y29. 1985. J(J "1111." End ofthe Cia'i)ieaI'. 'The I'utllily ofOblCCh ., 'The Begllliling, the End 31111thc IkglllrUrlgAg,UtI ' •or111 0~1 rcccnily.Archi,ecturc and Ihe Problem nfthc Rheturic:tl I'Igllrc·. IflA+U, R7:07. pp 17·22. 31 For thi~ quote ~cc Su,an Doubi1cl, 'The DiVIded Self. Pmkr<'f.\I\'I' ,\rdlltl'rfHre 3. 1987, P~2. 32 Sec Pe,er EI!.enman. 'The City of Arlillcl,11 [\c:l"aIIOI1·. Ar.-lUf<'Clllr