PETER EISENMAN

LIFE | WORKS | THEORIES

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BORN : AUG 11 1932, New Jersey, us

Columbia high school New jersey

Went to cornell university to study b.arch

(batch of ‘54)

Masters in design, columbia university

Willian Trantman – First inspiration.

Nobody in his region took arts & architecture

Trantman introduced him to architecture, a study where one

could ‘Draw and make models’!

Was extremely good in swimming. Left swimming for

Architecture.

Wasn’t the conventional student. Never gave to attention

To the ‘standard’ way of learning. (books, etc)

Always interested in other activities in Cornell.

Got a gold medal for his thesis. This was a breakthrough

moment for him as it got him intrigued in architecture.

Korea war. (1956-1957). He served as a Lieutenant and

While at the war, he realized how passionate he was for

Architecture.

Came back and worked for Percival Goodman at Columbia andLater for Walter Gropius at Boston

Michael Mckinnell his roommate once told him “ You got all greatIdeas but you need to have the knowledge of architecture!”

Went to Cambridge - PhD

Met Colin Rowe, his mentor and major influence in his life.

Summer of 1962, went to Princeton, met Michael Graves, Arthur

Drexler (Director at MoMA. Started CASE : Conference of Architects

for the Study of the Environment at MoMA.

Foundation of NEW YORK FIVE.

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Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmay, John Hejduk, Michael Graves and Richard Meier h

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“Five on Five” appeared in the May

1973Architectural Forum, rejecting the “black

and white” worldview of the New York Five – and

the abstraction, formalism, and purity of

modernist principles.

Summing up the position of the “Grays,” as they

were known, Robert A.M. Stern later wrote,

“‘Gray’ buildings have facades which tell stories.

These facades are not the diaphanous veil of

orthodox Modern architecture, nor are they the

affirmation of deep structural secrets.” This was

in opposition to the ideas of the “Whites,” as the

modernists were called.

Romaldo Giurgola, Allan Greenberg,

Charles Moore, Jaquelin T. Robertson, and

Robert A. M. Stern

1967 Founded “Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies” with Arthur Drexler and

Jack Robertson.

Peter as Director.

Started a magazine and a newspaper here. OPPOSITIONS and SKYLINE

1960s-1970s : single family houses

1982 left the institute and started a partnership with Jack Robertson

ROBERSTON/EISENMAN ARCHITECTS

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They participated in major Competitions.Won the CROSS POINT CHARLIEAndWEXNER CENTER competition

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Jacques Derrida

• Founder of Deconstruction .

• Peter Eisenman followed Derrida’sprinciples in architecture

• He shakes up concepts like ‘text’.

• Questions about the borders, the frontiers, the limits that have been drawn.

• Impossibility of setting up a perfector ideal structure. That which cannotbe presented for conception or perception.

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“The “real architecture” only exists in the drawings. The “real building”

exists outside the drawings. The difference here is that “architecture”

and “building” are not the same.”

-Peter Eisenman

HOUSE IV

• Situated on a flat site in Cornwall, Connecticut

• The design emerged from a conceptual process that began with a grid.

• Eisenman manipulated the grid in a way so that the house was divided into four sections and when completed the building itself could be a “record of the design process.”

• Therefore structural elements, were revealed so that the construction process was evident, but not always understood.

Architecture as a piece of art- Forces users of the building to question and critically examine architecture, as they would with a painting.

Deconstructing norms in architecture to create something “unconventional” out of the same “text”.

The structure was incorporated into

Eisenman’s grid to convey the module that

created the interior spaces with a series of

planes that slipped through each other.

He made it difficult for the users so that they would have to grow accustom to the architecture and constantly be aware of it. For instance, in the bedroom there is a glass slot in the center of the wall continuing through the floor that divides the room in half, forcing there to be separate beds on either side of the room.

WEXNER CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

Buildings are not simply physical objects, but artefacts with meaning, or signs dispersed across some larger social text.

Memorial for the Murdered Jews, Berlin

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Inside the info centre

•Breaks the notion of comfort

•His scheme for architectural design drawn from philosophy and linguistics

•He suggests a psychological void which provokes individual and cultural anxiety and dislocation

•induces destabilization and rupture in the very structures so long associated with comfort and shelter

WEXNER CENTER OF ARTS

Design process

• The literal use of the rotated grid is used by Eisenman as an extensive method of giving the architecture its own voice.

• The identification of the dialectic grids stems from conditions that exist at the boundary of the site, Eisenman then grafts one grid on top of the other and seeks potential connections or ‘event sites’ at the urban, local, and interior scales.

• The gride is the primary circuit or pathway of the building.

• The scaffolding is scaled to represent the module of the grid that is interpretable at a human scale.

• The scaffold is reduced to its raw type, to the essential condition that signifies the essence of its existence that being an impermanent accessory to architecture that allows its construction, but does not necessarily shelter.

• This architecture of non-shelter is aligned directly adjacent to an interior pathway within the building that does enclose and protect.

The figure of the armoury Eisenman has presented along the south pedestrian access (the most visually accessible elevation of the building) has been reduced to a series of fragments of armoury-like forms that indicate the ‘essence’ of the armoury without reproducing any of the original intricate detail.

The lack of historical fidelity in the reconstruction of the armoury, the fragmentation of the form, and the insertion of dark glass into the voids left between these fragments seems to speak of the disjointed manner in which we reflect the past, and in turn, it serves to remind us of a past we have lost and can never return to.

Eisenmanproduces three very distinctive extensive and intensive operations of shifting, figuring, fragmenting that coalesce into an engaging ecology for the celebration of creative thought.

Cannaregio Town Square, Venice

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- Derived from an architecture that invents its own site and program.

- Grid of Corbusier’s Venice Hospital is continued as a structure over the site.

- This grid marks a series of voids which act as metaphors for man’s displacement fromhis position as the centered instrument of measure.

References

• http://www.davetenhoope.com/downloads/Peter_Eisenman_-_Between_method_and_madness.pdf

• http://www.arch.uic.edu/pdfs/portfolios/kalina.pdf

• http://www.architectural-review.com/view/interviews/interview-peter-eisenman/8646893.article

• http://bombmagazine.org/article/5991/

• http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2012/02/29/peter-eisenman-speaks-on-deconstruction-and-architecture-at-the-deutsches-haus/

• http://books.google.co.in/books?id=95cYe1q8xrQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=peter+eisenman&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sFwZU7_4KMWGrge4zoD4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=peter%20eisenman&f=false

• http://spaghettionastick.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eisenman-peter-diagram-an-original-scene-of-writing.pdf

• http://www.slideshare.net/vikashsaini78/peter-eisenman-30129612

• http://www.slideshare.net/saniyanalband/peter-eisenman-saniya-nalband-sybarch40

• http://archinect.com/features/article/4618/peter-eisenman-liberal-views-have-never-built-anything-of-any-value