PETER EISENMAN

KSHITIZ AGARWAL B.Arch IV

ABOUT
Peter Eisenman was born in Newark, New Jersey. He studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities . Eisenman first rose to prominence as a member of the New York Five. In 2001, Eisenman won the National Design Award for Architecture from the CooperHewitt National Design Museum.

STYLE
Eisenman has always sought somewhat obscure parallels between his architectural works and philosophical or literary theory. His earlier houses were "generated" from a transformation of forms related to the tenuous relationship of language to an underlying structure. Eisenman's latter works show a sympathy with the ideas of deconstructionism.

 He tries to do is to unlink the function that architecture may represent from the appearance - form - of that same architectural object. Concepts:
Artificial excavation Tracing Layering Deformation

Techniques:

Shear Interference Intersection Distortion Scaling

 Artificial excavation Find traces of history. Interpret form and meaning. Derive new forms and meaning by layering and deforming.

 Shear Skew objects Interference Study interactions Intersection Emergent shapes Distortion Transform shapes Scaling Rotation

Method

Historical reading of the site

Superposition

Deformation strategy
Diagrammatic image

Elaboration
Design

Diagrammatic image
Additional elements Outside architecture Related to project Informing and deforming

 Diagrammatic image
Add to superposition Deform composition

Model

Diagrammatic model Physical scale model Computer model

Deconstructionism
Characterized by ideas of fragmentation. Characterized by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.
Coop Himmelblau (Wolf Prix), Vienna

IBA Block 2, Berlin

Works
House VI(Frank residence), Cornwall, Connecticut.Design: 1972. Wexner Centre for the Arts, Ohio State University,Ohio, 1989 Nunotani Building, Edogawa Tokyo Japan, 1991 Greater Columbus Convention Centre, Ohio,1993 Aronoff Centre for Design and Art, University for Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1996 City of Culture of Galcia, Santiago de Compostela, Galcia, Spain, 1999 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, 2005 University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale , Arizona, 2006

House VI
Located in Cornawall,Connecticut. Eisenman created a form from the intersection of four planes, subsequently manipulating the structures again and again, until coherent spaces began to emerge. The envelope and structure of the building are just a manifestation of the changed elements of the original four slabs, with some limited modifications.

 The purely conceptual design meant that the architecture is strictly plastic, bearing no relationship to construction techniques or purely ornamental form.

column/beam intersection at red staircase

The use of the red stairs in House VI is somewhat odd. It is an upside down stairs, marked red, which functions only as to divide the building and provide the house with symmetry.

Wexner Center for the Arts

Location : Ohio State University,Ohio Building Type :University arts center. Construction System :steel, concrete, glass. Included in the Wexner Center space are a film and video theater, a performance space, a film and video post production studio, a bookstore, caf, and 12,000 square feet (1,100 m) of galleries.

 The design includes a large, white metal grid meant to suggest scaffolding, to give the building a sense of incompleteness. The extension of the Columbus street grid generates a new pedestrian path into the campus, a ramped east-west axis. a major part of the project is not a building itself, but a 'non-building'.

 Scaffolding traditionally is the most impermanent part of a building. Thus, the primary symbolization of a visual arts center, which is traditionally that of a shelter of art, is not figured in this case. For although this building shelters, it does not symbolize that function.

Conclusion
The architecture of Eisenman had many different angles and difficulties when analyzing it and trying to describe it in general terms.

forms are no longer a means toward an end, but an end in themselves

Thank You