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Wednesday14 August 2013

Eisenman's six point plan

14 May 2008 Peter Eisenman set out his thoughts on architecture at RIAS 2008

Media has invaded every aspect of our lives. It is difficult to walk out on the street or stand in a crowded elevator without encountering people speaking into cellular phones at the top of their voices as if no one else was around. People leave their homes and workplaces and within seconds are checking their Blackberries. Their iPhones provide instant messaging email, news, telephone and musicits as if they were attached to a computer. Less and less people are able to be in the real physical world without the support of the virtual world. This has brought about a situation in which people have lost the capacity to focus on something for any length of time. This is partly because media configures time in discrete segments. Focus is conditioned by how long one can watch something before there is an advertisement. In newspapers stories keep getting shorter, the condensed version is available on the internet. This leads today to a corruption of what we think of as communication, with a lessening of the capacity to read or write correct sentences. While irrelevant information multiplies, communication diminishes. If architecture is a form of media it is a weak one. To combat the hegemony of the media, architecture has had to resort to more and more spectacular imaging. Shapes generated through digital processes become both built icons that have no meaning but also only refer to their own internal processes. Just think of any architectural magazine today devoted, supposedly, to the environment, and instead one finds media.

The corollary to the prevalent media culture is that the viewing subject has become increasingly passive. In this state of passivity people demand more and more images, more visual and aural information and in a state of passivity people demand things that are easily consumed. The more passive people become the more they are presented by the media with supposed opportunities to exercise choice. Vote for this, vote for whatever stories you want to hear, vote for what popular song you want to hear, vote for what commercial you want to see. This voting gives the appearance of active participation, but it is merely another form of sedation because the voting is irrelevant It is part of the attempt to make people believe they are participating when in fact they are becoming more and more passive. Students also have become passive. More passive than students in the past. This is not a condemnation but a fact. To move students to act or to protest for or against anything today is impossible. Rather they have a sense of entitlement. The generations that remember 1968 feel that those kinds of student protests are almost impossible today. For the last seven years we have had in the US one of the most problematic governments in our history. Probably the most problematic since the mid-19th century and president Millard Fillmore. Our reputation in Europe, our dollar, our economy, the spirit of our people, has been weakened. In such a state of ennui people feel they can do little to bring about change. With the war in Iraq draining our economy there is still the possibility that the political party responsible for todays conditions will be

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Eisenman's six point plan | News | Building Design re-elected. Will this have consequences for architecture?

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This passivity is related to architecture. Architecture today relies on one of passivitys most insidious formsthe computer. Architects used to draw volumes, using shading and selecting a perspective. In learning how to draw one began to understand not only what it was like to draw like Palladio or Le Corbusier but also the extent of the differences in their work. A wall section of Palladio felt different to the hand than one of Le Corbusiers. It is important to understand such differences because they convey ideas. One learned to make a plan. Now, with a computer, one does not have to draw. By clicking a mouse from point to point, one can connect dots that make plans, one can change colours, materials and light. Photoshop is a fantastic tool for those who do not have to think. The problem is as follows. So what? my students say, Why draw Palladio? How will it help me get a job? The implication is this: If its not going to help me get a job, I dont want to do it. In this sense, architecture does not matter. In a liberal capital society, getting a job matters, and my students are in school precisely for this reason. Yet education does not help you get a job. In fact, the better you are at Photoshop the more attractive you are to an office, the better you will work in that office. If I ask a student to make a diagram or a plan that shows the ideas of a building, they cannot do it. They are so used to connecting dots on a computer that they cannot produce an idea of a building in a plan or a diagram. This is certain to affect not only their future, but the future of our profession.

The computer is able to produce the most incredible imagery which become the iconic images of magazines and competitions. To win a competition today one has to produce shapes and icons by computer. But these are icons with little meaning or relationship to things in the real world. According to the American pragmatist philosopher C S Peirce there were three categories of signs: icons, symbols, and indices. The icon had a visual likeness to an object. Robert Venturis famous dictum categorised buildings as either a duck or a decorated shed; the difference between an icon and symbol in architectural terms. A duck is a building that looks like its objecta hotdog stand in the form of a giant hotdog or, in Venturis terms, a place that sells ducks taking the very same shape as a duck. This visual similitude produces what Peirce calls an icon which can be understood at first glance. Venturis other term, the decorated shed, describes a public facade for what amounts to a generic box like building. The decorated shed is more a symbol, in Peirces terms, which has an agreed upon, or conventional meaning. A classical facade symbolises a public building, whether it is a bank a library or school. Today the shape of buildings become icons which have none of these external references. They may not necessarily look like anything or they may only resemble the processes that made them. In this case they do not relate outwardly but refer inwardly. These are icons that have little cultural meaning or reference. There is no reason to ask our more famous architects: Why does it look like this? There is no answer to this question because Why? is the wrong question. Why? Because the computer can produce it. One could ask these architects: Why is this one better than that

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one? Or Which one of the crumpled paper buildings is better? Or Which one is the best and why? There is no answer again to these questions. Why? Because there is no value system in place for judging, and there is no relationship to be able to judge between the image produced and its meaning as an icon. These icons are made from algorithmic processes that have nothing to do with architectural thinking.

Edward Said in his book On Late Style describes lateness as a moment in time when there are no new paradigms or ideological, cultural, political conditions that cause significant change. Lateness can be understood as a historical moment which may contain the possibilities of a new future paradigm. For example there were reasons in the late 19th century for architecture to change. These included changes in psychology introduced by Freud; in physics by Einstein; in mathematics with Heisenberg; and in flight with the Wright brothers. These changes caused a reaction against the Victorian and imperial styles of the period and articulated a new paradigm: modernism. With each new paradigm, whether it is the French revolution or the Renaissance, there is an early phase, which in modernism was from 1914-1939; a high phase, which in modernism occurred 1954-1968 when it was consumed by liberal capital after the war; and a period of opposition. The year 1968 saw an internal, implosive revolution, one that reacted against institutions representing the cultural past of many of the western societies. This was followed by post modernisms eclectic return to a language that seemed to have meaning. The Deconstructivist exhibition at the MoMA in 1988 put an end to this clich and kitsch style. Today I say we are in a period of late style. A period in which there is no new paradigm. Computation and the visual may produce a shift from the notational but this in itself is not a new paradigm. It is merely a tool. The question remains: What happens when one reaches the end of a historical cycle? On Late Style by Edward Said describes such a moment in culture before a shift to a new paradigm. A moment not of fate or hopelessness but one that contains a possibility of looking at a great style for the possibility of the new and the transformative. He uses as an example Beethovens Missa Solemnis, written at the end of Beethovens career. This was the composers response to the seeming impossibility of innovation. Instead Beethoven wrote a piece that was difficult, even anarchic, that could not be easily understood and was outside of his characteristic and known style. Beethovens later work is an example of the complexity ambivalence, and the undecidability that characterises a late style.

This last point deals with architecture and its unique autonomy. Since the Renaissance in Italy when Brunelleschi, Alberti and Bramanti established what can be called the persistencies of architecturesubjectobject relationshipsthese persistencies have remained operative to this day. Albertis dictum that a house is a small city and a city is a large house, remains with us in all works that we see. In other words the relationship between the part and the whole: the figure and the ground, the house to its site, the site to the street, the street to its neighbourhood and the neighbourhood to the city. These issues constitute the basis of what would be called the dialectical synthesis as an aspect of the ongoing metaphysical project. Thus one of the things that must be investigated is the problematic part-to-whole relationshipwhich is part of a Hegelian dialectical idea of thesis and anti-thesis forming a new whole or synthesisand the relationship of building to ground. Architecture has traditionally been concerned with these dialectical categories, whether it is inside/outside, figure/ground, subject/object. For me today, it is necessary to look within architecture to see if it is possible to break up this synthetic project from within. This attempt is what post-structuralism would consider the displacement of the metaphysics of presence. If we continue to think that what is presented is necessarily truthful or what we see is truthful and also

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beautiful then we will continue to subscribe to the myth that architecture is the wonder of the metaphysics of presence. It may become possible with such an awareness to move away from what I call the hegemony of the image. People always say formalism is the project of architectures autonomists. For me it is precisely this autonomy which is architectures delay of engaging with society. If it is architectures activity and its own discourse which in fact impacts society, then to be an architect is a social act. This does not mean social in the form of making people feel better or happy. Or building houses for the poor or shopping malls for the rich or garages for Mercedes. I am talking about understanding those conditions of autonomy that are architectural, that make for an engagement with society in the sense of operating against the existing hegemonic social and political structures of our time. That is what architecture has always been.

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Readers' comments (7)

Do you agree or disagree with any of Eisenman's points? vgberti | 17 May 2008 8:36 am GREAT, ispiring, bravo. zaruno@gmx.de,kaitimmermann@gmx.de | 17 May 2008 12:11 pm Eisemann's six point plan david chenery | 19 May 2008 2:57 am 'hegemonic social and political structures'! Hmmmm? Ask anyone on the street what that means and

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they'll look at you like you're from mars. While-ever architects talk about architecture to themselves we are never going to be social. Talk about intellectualising an act which is asking us to be more inclusive than ever. Communication is a social act. If a computer can assist convey a visualisation the achitect has had in their mind to the public or an individual then a social interaction is achieved. Modelling ideas is an interactive process not just an image though. With greater versalitiy to adjust and fine tune the design the computer acts as a tool for progressive interaction and problem resolution. Computer visualisation offer the architect a chance to see the building from a perspective not initial thought of. This assists in the review and refiniement of ideas. I don't claim to know all the answers to the design of a building before they are investigated. I don't know about creating 'pointplans'. They appear a pragmatists way of trying to deal with a problem (which cannot be determined) by creating finite answers. I feel for Peter's frustration but cannot blame the machine for lackings in imagination of the user and ways in which to communiate. From my experience computers can (at this stage) only partly contribute to a the language of architecture and the social output. There remains an essential connection of human hand-eye-heart-mind that computers cannot generate or simulate. There is something to be said for the commonality of drawing on a piece of paper to someone that does not understand a building process or is not understanding/familiar with what the architect is talking about. I find i get tripped up in communicating an idea sometimes where the computer is waiting to generate or the program crashes for example! A discussion complemented with sketching confirms an idea with a fluiditiy and familiarity that makes for effective dialogue. Most probably because the client may similarly feel compelled to pick up a pen and respond. Computers (at this stage) for me reiforce the development of the idea. So in summary, Yes, agree computers are probably not the right vehicle for generating ideas, however no that they are not contributing to the development, refinement and communication of ideas which make architecture a social act. I understand the main obstacle to architecture meaning something and being accessible to the community (global or local) is the way architectural education fails to facilitate individuals to become empowered professionals offering a competitive service to the public after their teritary study is complete and the profession's own arrogance in the way architect's organisational bodies fail to promote and effectively communicate the service of architecture as tangeble and accessible to anyone other than those with the money to pay for it or those educated in its way. Which in reality is most people. Architecture is a beautiful global language but not (in reality) for everyone. Computer's are therefore understandably down on the priority list of failings in the architectural profession for me. Randy Hickey | 19 May 2008 6:00 pm Peter, you've done it again and I thank you profusely. You have now awakened those who think that the computer is the answer to everything. As Frank Gehry says, "It is a TOOL ..." and it is only a tool. It has been misused recently. You six points are accurate in every sense and I hope that the Colleges and Schools of Architecture wake up to these points and enliven the students once again as to their mission in this field. We have lost touch with inspiring those who are going to eventually become our successors. We have place an emphysis on all the WRONG things about our profession. Students are more interested in grades than in exploring, researching, drawing by hand, photographing, visiting great sites of architecture and learning from them in historical and technical aspets. Our students have been dumbed down to take profession exams that don't prove a damn thing about the responsibilities and obligations that we used to hold dear to our hearts. I could go on and on, but

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PETER, you have definately hit the nails on the head. BRAVO! Keep it up, for you are as inspiring to me as you were when you were a guest lecturer/ professor at the University of Houston in the late 70's. You woke many sleeping students and staid professors then and you continue to do so. Thank you! Jack | 19 May 2008 7:49 pm Eisenman is spot on with his points and his presentation. It is ironic coming from one of the most abstractly theoretical architects of the 1970's. I expect that this is not contradictory, but would love to ask him to address this and to hear him explain his consistency of thought or changes in theory and practice. The second point that I would raise is that although I agree with his statement that people are not working within the language of architecture today (my nomenclature), and lack the world view of 1968, I would say that I am very impressed by recent visits to the GSD at Harvard where the students are taking the lead (ahead of the faculty) in design with consideration of the greater global issues. I am not clear that architecture itself is not being lost in well-meaning social concerns, or non-architectural Maya-based form- where the design is entirely about the process. Eisenman's 6 points are thought provoking and very timely. Thank you for presenting this. john langdell | 2 June 2008 12:22 pm so everything I have learnt and know is wrong and pointless? Seven years taught me everything you can put down in 700 words shame on me Seif El Din Shawky | 5 June 2008 3:02 pm This is just the frivolous babble of a pompous old man. Peter Eisenman has always been TALK, that's it." In a sense, what theorists like him were doing was playing word games. They were twisting reality through linguistic manipulation." It is always easier to point out the negative impact todays issues have inflicted than the positive. Talk about Le Corbusier and Palladio, they were artists. ARCHITECTURE IS NOT ART. Enough with the pretentiousness these aged 'masters' evoke. If anything, architecture today is heading towards the PRAGMATIC, SUSTAINABLE and HUMANITARIAN. The computer as he so disgustingly puts it has aided us in ways unthinkable to minds like his, although surprisingly his 100+ employee firm use every technological means available to win his highness those self-glorifying competitions he always enters. Peter, adapt to our times and help us with positive reinforcement or do not say anything at all. Disgruntled 22year old student - Egypt Desktop Site | Mobile Site

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