039_The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture

Critic|all II International Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism
La base formal de la arquitectura moderna: método de análisis de Peter Eisenman
1
Coppolecchia, Francesco ; Guido, Luca
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1. Independent Scholar, Bari, Italy, francesco.coppolecchia@gmail.com
2. Independent Scholar, Venezia, Italy, lucguido@gmail.com
Resumen
Durante los años 1960 y 1970 el tema del lenguaje se convirtió en objeto de interés en varias disciplinas. Muchos
críticos y teóricos de la arquitectura discutieron sobre la posibilidad de concebir la arquitectura como un lenguaje.
¿La arquitectura es un idioma? Y si es así, ¿cómo funciona su gramática y la sintaxis? ¿Tiene un significado
convencional? El arquitecto estadounidense Peter Eisenman trató de responder a esas preguntas escribiendo su
tesis The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture elaborada en la Universidad de Cambridge entre 1960 y 1963. El
trabajo crítico de Eisenman constituye el intento de analizar la arquitectura más allá de los métodos geométricos
y proporcionales. Según Eisenman la idea de la arquitectura como lenguaje es una propuesta teórica para
demostrar la primacía de la forma en la arquitectura, en oposición a fundamentos estéticos, estilísticos y
funcionalistas desde el Movimiento Moderno. El documento tiene como objetivo explicar las teorías de Eisenman
en la arquitectura, centrandose en su fascinación con el análisis formal. Las teorías de Eisenman representan un
punto de vista alternativo dentro de la arquitectura posmoderna, que vio la forma como resultado de la
investigación de los arquetipos y su síntesis. Eisenman, por el contrario, considera la forma en términos de sus
cualidades, como dispositivo de la estructura interna de la arquitectura y de esta manera, en su obra se expande
el dominio del enfoque de la autonomía en la arquitectura, proporcionando una explicación lingüística de
propiedades formales. Según la teoría de la composición de Eisenman, los objetos arquitectónicos no se revelan
como unidades geométricas completamente aisladas. El espacio arquitectónico es relativo siempre poniendo en
comunicación el interior con el exterior, una figura con otra, en una concatenación continua de formas. Esto, a su
vez, es lo que permite a Eisenman definir la forma en la arquitectura como un sistema de deformaciones y como
límite espacial al mismo tiempo. Esta investigación estudia los escritos de Eisenman y también su producción
arquitectónica llamada Cardboard Houses (1967-1979), más tarde conocida como House of Cards. Por otra parte
este documento se detiene en el libro Ten Canonical Buildings (2008), la última actualización del método de
análisis de Eisenman que sugiere, como escribió Stan Allen, "la construcción de una nueva ortodoxia" en la
arquitectura.
Palabras clave: Peter Eisenman, análisis formal, objeto espacial, arquitectura, lenguaje
The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture: Peter Eisenman’s Analytical Method
Abstract
During the 1960s and 1970s the theme of language became the subject of interest in several disciplines. Many
critics and theorists of architecture argued about the possibility to conceive architecture as a language. Is
architecture a language? And if so, how does its grammar and syntax work? Does it have a conventional
meaning? The American architect Peter Eisenman tried to answer to those questions writing his dissertation The
Formal Basis of Modern Architecture elaborated at Cambridge University between 1960 and 1963. Eisenman’s
critic work constitutes the attempt to analyze architecture beyond geometrical and proportional methods.
According to Eisenman the idea of architecture as language is a theoretical proposal to demonstrate the primacy
of form in architecture in opposition to aesthetic, stylistic and functionalistic foundamentals since the Modern
Movement. The paper aims to explain Eisenman’s theories on architecture focusing on his fascination with formal
analysis. Eisenman’s theories represent an alternative point of view within post-modern architecture, which saw
form as result of archetype research and synthesis. Eisenman, in contrast, considers form in terms of its qualities
as inner structure device of architecture and in this way his work expands the domain of autonomy approach in
architecture, providing a linguistic explanation of formal properties. According to Eisenman’s composition theory,
architectural objects are not revealed as completely isolated geometric units. The architectural space is relational,
always putting in communication an internal with an external, one figure with another, in a continuous layering of
forms. And this, in turn, is what allows Eisenman to define form in architecture as a system of deformations and
as a spatial limit at the same time. This research investigates Eisenman’s early architectural writing and also his
architectural production called Cardboard Houses (1967-79), later known as House of Cards. Moreover the paper
dwells on the book Ten Canonical Buildings (2008), the last upgrade of Eisenman’s analysis method which
suggests, as Stan Allen wrote, “the construction of a new orthodoxy” in architecture.
Key words: Peter Eisenman, formal analysis, spatial object, architecture, language
1. Introduction.
The work of the American architect, Peter Eisenman, has created a stir in the debate on contemporary
architecture for his ability to simultaneously arouse interest and anxiety for over forty years. Not by chance does
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the cycle of projects of the Cardboard Houses (1967-1978) not merely represent an original, significant approach
to the architectural project, but is also commonly acknowledged as a true theoretical manifesto.
The widespread popularity of his work is certainly proportional to the amount of his written work published over
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the years and to the enormous attention reserved from the critics to his projects, particularly in Europe , where the
American architect is taking his initial steps towards international success.
However, what is the linchpin of Eisenman’s theory of architecture? One of the nuclei of the American architect’s
thought is, without doubt, his continual questioning on the formal essence of architecture, beginning with the
disclosure of the legacy of the Modern Movement. However, the method of analysis proposed by Eisenman
appeared evasive compared to the question as to why that legacy had failed, and why it had then burgeoned into
the stylistic features of the International Style. Furthermore, Eisenman was accused of not clearly explaining how
this failure was linked to the loss of the formal paradigm of the historic avant-garde.
Colin Rowe was the first to solemnly reject Eisenman’s hypothesis in the introductory pages of the catalogue of
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the Five . Rowe had been a sort of mentor for the young Eisenman and he had also been one of the professors,
with whom he had studied between 1960 and 1963 at Trinity College, Cambridge, whilst preparing his doctorate
thesis. Rowe’s criticism was founded precisely on the lack of commitment shown by the young American
architects as they salvaged the Modern Movement in a formalist sense, annulling the reasons that had led to the
historic fracture in the purist paradigm. For Rowe, the temporal suspension in which the recovery of the
“revolutionary myth” occurred was an ambiguous vision of the world.
In other words, the autonomy of the Eisenman proposal manifested itself through the desire to escape from not
only a congealed, but also a superficially transmittable architectural theory.
In this flight, his interpreters incorrectly acknowledged an attempt to detach from the dominance of the real world,
which was confirmed by the unresolved question of the relationship between architecture and the city, and in the
reduction of Eisenman’s projects to Cardboard Architecture [simple cardboard boxes], in the same definition that
the architect defiantly proposed for the works he built: “Cardboard is used to signify the result of a particular way
of generating and transforming a series of primitive integer relationship into a more complex set of specific
relationships, which became the actual building. In this sense, cardboard is used to denote the particular
deployment of columns, walls, and beams as they define space in a series of thin, planar, vertical layers. It is not
so much a literal recognition of the actual surfaces as cardboard-like and thus insubstantial, but rather is meant to
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signify the virtual or implied layering, which is produced by the particular configuration” .
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According to Tafuri, “this exaltation of the pure logical process in processing form” was linked to an idea of
“avant-garde as an ideology of continual innovation”, in which “the search for an architecture as such”
represented once again the immersion “in the auroral climate of the avant-garde”. In other words, to challenge the
castle of ideologies of Modern Movement in favour of a logical-analytical approach to architecture definitely
coincided with the atectonic translation of the forms of columns, walls and beams in virtually homogeneous
elements. However, the geometric transposition of a form in an exclusively logical, pure, transcendental field
produced “the absence of architectural «discourse» and ascetic rigorousness bordering on fanaticism, in the
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construction of that absence“. These early interpretations of Eisenman’s work, commencing with the
aforementioned seminal texts of Rowe and Tafuri, have so far generated a critical, stratified genealogy that
accused the hypothesis of an architectural theory, based on purely formal assumptions of inconsistency. What
Tafuri and Rowe rejected was the idea that architectural form could have value, in particular commencing with the
expressive mechanisms and meaning inherent within form itself, leaving aside all utopian, social, historic,
technological and functional ambitions of architecture.
On the other hand, it does not appear that Eisenman’s attempt to place at the centre of the debate the theme of
the specific delineation of architectural form, i.e. the “technique” to construct the form of an object, presupposes in
itself the annulment of those utopian requests. Since, if this were the case, there would be nothing left but to
consider architectural form as the result of an “apathetic” gesture, lacking pathos.
Neither can reducing the problem of the generation of form to the widely debated topic of architectural form as
language justify the common critical interpretation. This was initially encouraged by the author himself and
handed down to us, according to which Eisenman’s work is said to represent a useless game, founded on the
dangerous paralysis of the semantic element, as precisely identified by Mario Gandelsonas in his analysis of the
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work of the young American architect in his famous article, Linguistics in Architecture .
The attention of the world of architecture towards linguistics began with the progressive dissolution of the
certainties of Modern Movement and the resulting attempt to break the ambiguous relationship that had been
created with the International Style, between the dimension of the myth and the formal solutions adopted.
However, this fracture remained visible exclusively in the work of architects, such as Eisenman, for whom an
escape route, a new definition of architecture, could be to make the elements and tools involved in the constituent
process of the form of a product into something palpable.
2. Form and Architecture.
Clearly, it is possible, therefore, to identify a precise, theoretical field of investigation into Eisenman’s work and
consider the cycle of his early projects of the Houses as a phase of speculative investigation, which transcends
into a method of analysis. In this sense, the analytical diagrams made by Eisenman to comment on his Houses in
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various publications can be considered a true instrument of architectural composition.
Many have identified the spectre of an irresponsible automatism, of automatic writing in the process used by
Eisenman; above all in the face of a difficult consequential reading of the passages from one diagram to another.
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However, from the publication in 1987 of the book, Houses of Cards with the drawings and sketches that
accompanied those diagrams, this is no longer possible, since we understand how Eisenman worked on the
definition of space and simultaneously on the process of generating form as spatial matrix.
Furthermore, with the publication of his doctorate thesis entitled The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture (1963),
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which remained unpublished until 2006 , it appears obvious how it is no longer possible to understand the
meaning of Eisenman’s early works, by putting aside his analytical-compositional method.
Whereas the presentation via analytical diagrams has always proposed a reading of the buildings as consisting of
“discreet” geometric elements (line, plane, volume, that is column, wall, room), in Formal Basis the idea of form,
expressed first in the dual generic form-specific form, and then as a property of the generic form (volume,
Cartesian grid, mass-surface and movement), does not enable geometric units to be taken into consideration
“discreetly”; On the contrary, via text and diagrams, Eisenman suggests we read inside the architecture by
means of some geometric devices, which only as a whole constitute spatial lumps.
The 60s and 70s of the last century featured numerous studies, which attempted to explore the logical structure of
human thought, defining its intrinsic characteristics and its expressive-cognitive mechanisms.
Fig.1
They were years, in which an epistemological verification of knowledge was attempted, underlined by the more
general effort to establish a boundary between a scientific method and other types of approach.
The method of analysis developed by Eisenman - similar to his method of composition- has a theoretical
foundation in the discussion on architectural language and in the problematic relationship between form and
meaning, that is to say between a formal base and syntactic structure.
The interest in a rational theory of form, in relation to the architecture of the Modern Movement, was stimulated by
his meeting with Colin Rowe, with whom Eisenman established an intense intellectual exchange. Already wellxi
known for his scientific merits, Rowe introduced Eisenman to the seminal research of Rudolf Wittkower from an
iconographic, historic and proportional viewpoint. Through the teachings of Rowe, Eisenman understood how he
could find analytical and formal similitude among the purist projects of Le Corbusier and the villas of Palladio,
commencing from a concept which held that “the geometric key [of the Palladian villas was] more unconsciously
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than consciously perceptible to anyone” who were to visit them.
Rowe’s work placed the architecture of Wright, Le Corbusier, the picturesque villas of the English and American
countryside all on the same plane, as though they were archaeological findings, bodies to section, analyse and
investigate their inner structure that is their composition.
In other words, Architectural Composition becomes an element of the formal analysis of the process of
construction of the work and, of the work itself. This is in contrast to the mystification of the author, and lies
beyond the field of functions and causes, which establish the utility and historic and cultural reasons for it.
Eisenman asks himself how to make this process of recognition of the conceptual structures of architecture clear.
Therefore, the answer to the question of a new rationality of the architectural theory constitutes the platform of
Formal Basis. This was, in a certain sense, an attempt carried out by other researchers. In Notes on the
Synthesis of Form, (1964), Christopher Alexander moves the object of the investigation from the result to the
“process of design; the process of inventing physical things which display new physical order, organization, form,
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in response to function” . Although on the one hand Alexander focused his interest on questioning the frequent
failures and limits found in the design, and therefore in the shapes, on the other, the idea was to resort to an
analytical process that could avoid them by using precise diagrams. However, the introduction of logical
structures – the need for rationality –, was a field that appeared to be dominated by artistic instincts and intuitions,
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gave rise to a major consequence: “the loss of innocence”. And this loss lies deep in the central nucleus of
Eisenman’s analysis, aimed, on the contrary, to the encoding of the hidden structures of the language of
architecture.
Compared to the mystical neo-functionalism of Alexander, who was at Trinity College Cambridge at the same
time, Eisenman proposes a method of analysis and composition that releases the formal structure from the
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historic sequence of the functional models. .
So form is not considered a product influenced by society or by history. This is a crucial passage in Eisenman’s
thesis: although he recognised the importance of form, regardless of a particular historic moment, Eisenman
refuses the idea that it is the result of technological development, and highlights the properties of form itself a
priori. The introduction to Formal Basis actually opens with a sort of epistemological indication: to remove the
continual, historic contextualisation, which had transformed the Modern Movement into what was seen as a
restrictive, limiting, permanent revolution to found a specific, rational theory for architecture, in order to tie the
value once again to a universal meaning. These passages showed the firm conviction of the specificity of studies,
contributions, processing and research, which all refer to architecture and especially to the discipline of
Architectural Composition.
The theoretical discussion follows a trend that continually oscillates from the general to close detail and, following
this outline, the theory is divided only apparently into two parts: the first proceeds from the epistemological
problem of the juxtaposition of fact/reason to the description of the grammatical and syntactic structures that liven
up the formal systems; the second, however, presents the analysis of eight formal systems, represented by two
architectural works, identified respectively in the work of four masters of the Modern Movement.
The analyses of the works of Le Corbusier, Wright, Terragni and Aalto are precisely the proof of Eisenman’s
attempt to explain how a formal system can serve, step by step, to read the “constitutive” process of a work of
architecture. According to Eisenman, the theme of intelligibility of architecture is hinged on the gestalt principle of
figure/background, by means of which the form emerges, which sinks its roots into the equilibrium of the
relationship between the inside and outside.
Form, therefore, possesses a picture of reference that is not merely material, but also relies on the process of
geometric abstraction that enters the variable relationship between object-figure (inside) and model-background
(outside). From these considerations, Eisenman presumes the possibility of breaking the relationship between
inside and outside, by separating the concept of form in two other terms: on the one hand, a specific form and on
the other, a generic form, according to a plan that seems to follow the concepts of signifying and significant. The
first form refers to the geometric translation of the relationships between a model and any absolute antecedents,
such as figures, solids and planes; the second responds to the internal functional needs, to the formal and
programmatic external conditions and is subject to a review of the former in the event of choices which do not
match. These two split images of form constitute the architectural “mark” (or to simplify, we could say drawing). At
the same time, the reference is obvious to the demolition carried out by modern linguistics starting with Ferdinand
de Saussurre: in the triangle that can be drawn between the reference object, the significance and the significant,
the only possible mediation between reality, consisting of the architectural object, and the mark, that is the
architectural representation implemented by graphic means, is actually entrusted to the conceptual domain of
forms (or of the relationship between generic form-specific form, significant-significance). According to Eisenman,
the logical contents of the compositional structure of a piece of architecture lie in the geometric interpretation of
the relationships between the inside and outside of a form, and in their translation into relationships between
ideal, geometric figures and plastic deformations. The generic form is temporarily understood in a platonic sense,
«with its intrinsic laws», whereas the specific form represents the consequence of the former, adapting to a real
configuration and to a specific function. The «generic form» has absolute priority along the scale of architectural
terms, just as the «specific form» continually refers to the former. The «generic form» is then divided into two
types: «linear» and «centric»; for example, the cube and the sphere belong to the first type, the cylinder and the
double cube to the second, as they are «primary solids». Every «primary solid» possesses intrinsic
characteristics, and this is fundamental for a «grammatical interpretation of a given solid». These characteristics
correspond to the absolute, transcendental nature of the «generic form» compared to the «specific form», and
they can be considered objectively only by excluding every «aesthetic preference».
Therefore, reading the fundamental theoretical passages of Formal Basis in relation to the analytical work
demonstrating the thesis proposed by the architect in the text, it can be observe how in nuce, Eisenman defined
architectural form as the product of a logic operations sequence from a generically described geometric solid up
to an object defined in its functional aspects and specific materials. It is for this reason that the little-know but
widely cited Eisenman’s doctoral thesis, is really offered as a primary tool to examine the formal nature of the
Houses cycle outside the manifesto provocative character that has always accompanied it.
3. A case study: House II.
To demonstrate this, it is proposed here a brief analysis of the formal structure of House II, built between 1969
and 1970, as a paradigmatic case study of the Cardboard Houses projects, in refutation of the autonomistic
interpretation proposed by the critique, which has sanctioned its theoretical non-productivity. In this analysis a
series of compositional techniques can be seen that can be found by superimposing the method described in
Eisenman’s PhD thesis.
One of the most interesting aspects of this house is the initial reading of the entire formal system, which receives
its first constitutive deformation into the relationship between the internal, generic system and the external, formal
vector. This constitutive deformation, which also responds as Eisenman described, to the relationship between
general and specific form, defines one of the most important parts of the house, that is, the entrance device.
From this first definition, all the formal solutions for each space of House II can be inferred.
– As an isolated body, the form of the house can initially be understood as a generic form, like a square.
According to Eisenman, the characteristic of a centric generic form is not only to recognise the centre, but also to
define the square corners.
– Subsequently, this system responds to two types of deformation which fulfil:
- the topography of the house site and exposure to the sun;
- the external linear vector that is parallel to the site of the house, and particularly to the west entrance
façade.
A patio opening to the south and east meets the panorama towards a slope and the sunniest living areas of the
house. The deviation of the north-south external parallel vector of the entrance must first be subject to an L
deviation to the north-east, to be closer to the position of the building, always according to a parallel south-north
axis and making an L deviation to the right (east). It is a diagonal condition of entry that Eisenman solves through
the linear figure of the formal echelon system, like a double L.
Fig. 2
– Initially, the centric condition of the internal system is subject to a distortion to acknowledge the entry condition,
setting an echelon system of movement. The entrance west façade suffered the movement of the external parallel
vector through a system of cuts in the same direction, and through an L volumetric subtraction in elevation,
emptying the entire volume of the second level and the rectangular entry volume. Although an empty corner lies
between the west entrance and the south façade, which recognizes the initial, generic, centric condition, the
entrance position is located on the northern limit of the front entrance, thus recognising the external linear
condition. The thrust of the entry vector in the northeast corner is perpendicular to the plane of the façade, which
breaks the entrance path from south to north. In addition to the opposite response of the internal system (northsouth) to the thrust of the parallel south-north axis, it generates a translation of the first square plan and doubles
it.
– The two squares generated in this way, while acknowledging the conditions of the angular, general, centric
system, react to the initial deformation of the entrance system and to the double L echelon system of movement,
which is the external access system. This diagonal condition of the echelon system of movement within the two
superimposed squares allows the system to be split into two mass-surface sub-systems, corresponding to the
initial square in the plane, and to the second square obtained after the translation (in both west-east and northsouth directions), respectively:
- the first mass-surface system is set completely solid from the north wall, and it develops a partition
system, cut along the diagonal of the echelon system: from the entrance in the north-west towards the
south-east corner. It is a surface system that retains a certain ambiguity (according to the Eisenman’s
definition of the 3rd of Le Corbusier’s Quatre Compositions)
- The second is itself separable according to two interpretations: the first mass-surface system, a series of
volumetric planes parallel to the west façade; and the second, corresponding to 3rd of Le Corbusier’s
Quatre Compositions, perpendicular to the first system, corresponding to the covered volumes raised
according to the diagonal, which are void at the junction of the south and east façades according to a
Cartesian grid system.
– The front entrance, responding to the volumetric linear deformation, will develop into three layers according to
the system of surface mass-volume set of plans. This is what allows Eisenman to the meaning of form in
architecture as a system and as a spatial limit at the same time, in a continuous movement, in which the
thickening of one boundary fulfils the relationship with the other. We can see the poetical limit as the operation of
bringing together the subject with every part of the architectural object-device. This operation consists of the full
opening of each device in relation to another, in a substantial cancellation of the figure-ground-relationship,
towards an incredible figure-figure definition, in which the subject is contained in a equally incredible figuresubject-figure definition.
It would be possible to continue the analysis of the case study selected to disassemble the project in all its
specificity, highlighting the many facets through which individual formal device operate with each other. However,
what is important to note is that the deployment of Eisenman’s compositional logic is strongly tied to the definition
of a formal poetic or better to say an idea of architectural form significance only in its own making.
4. Ten Canonical Buildings.
Under this point of view the analysis of the author's initial work is important to understand how he maintained the
same tension in the design of form in both projects and the texts produced up to the present time, while using
conceptual tools more updated to the architectural debate. It can be observe, therefore, how in recent years this
tension has prompted Eisenman to deal more clearly the problem of form focused on its decomposition. In this
perspective, the book, Ten Canonical Buildings (2008), represents a development of a method of analysis, tested
in years of uninterrupted research. In this work, Eisenman clearly demonstrates how his critical horizon is not
restricted to the formal reading of the buildings and its application in the design. The validity of Eisenman’s
analyses also transfers to his teaching of architecture. In other words, Eisenman uses the method of formal
reading as a design tool and as a tool for critical investigation. The educational value of his book does not consist
merely in the clarity of its presentation, but above all in the fact that the ideas and topics actually come from a
series of university seminars, held by Eisenman from 2003 to 2006 at the Princeton University School of
Architecture.
As Stan Allen wrote in his preface, the book Ten Canonical Buildings “suggests the construction of a new
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orthodoxy” alluding precisely to the educational dimension of the “meticulous formal readings” developed by
Eisenman. Years after he had devised his Formal Basis, Eisenman insisted on the idea that forms are the source
of every idea in architecture, and excluded the application of foreign concepts to the discipline of composition.
This was the same approach he had presented in his book in 2003 entitled Giuseppe Terragni, Transformations,
Decompositions, Critics, the fruit of a previous research and in the more recent work entitled Palladio Virtuel
(2016), in which Eisenman applies the method of formal investigation to the buildings of two architects from the
past. However, Ten Canonical Buildings adds a further challenge. In the context of his analysis, Eisenman states
that the “term canonical encompasses the potential heretical and transgressive nature of ways of close reading
architecture. […]More specifically, the term canonical begins to define the history of architecture as a continual
and unremitting assault on what has been thought to be the persistencies of architecture: subject/object,
figure/ground, solid/void, and part-to-whole relationships.
These concepts become canonical over time; therefore, in their attack on the canon, these buildings become
canonical in themselves. But as a group, the buildings herein do not represent a canon. Rather, the idea of the
canonical begins to describe potential methods of analysis, which derive from an interest in reading architecture
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in a more flexible and less dogmatic way.”
Fig. 3
Not by chance in his introductory essay does Eisenman recall his objective of following the teachings of Rowe,
lingering on the “Invisible” structures of architecture. Or those structures that are capable of generating
architecture. The choice of buildings, on which to carry out the analysis, lingered on the potential, expressed by
the “canon” in architecture and, therefore, on the projects that have stimulated other architectural interpretations
or that suggest, in formal terms, additional outcomes. According to Eisenman, the Palais des Congrès-Strasbourg
by Le Corbusier, not only constitutes the interpretational model of the Jussieu Libraries of Rem Koolhaas, but also
constitutes a moment of inner criticism of the language used until then by Le Corbusier himself. The house Il
Girasole by Luigi Moretti was chosen because it introduced concepts that were to become typical of Postxviii
modernism, whereas Farnsworth House as it represented “a manifestation of Mies’s first diagram”, a clear
attempt to abstract the design theme of the relation between a geometric grid and internal space, which
characterised the work of Mies. The Peter B. Lewis Building for the Weatherhead School of Management at Case
Western Reserve by Frank Gehry was chosen because it expressed a theoretical break compared to the modern
paradigms found in Schinkel’s Altes Museum. The Adler and De Vore Houses of Louis Kahn, contrary to his more
well-known projects, “are an obscure pair of houses that were never built, yet they demonstrate certain of Kahn’s
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ideas in what was a crucial turning point in his career” . In the choice he made, the three buildings representing
the twenty-year period from the end of the 60s to the 80s were Aldo Rossi’s Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena,
which “presents a critique involving surreal or super-real shifts”, the Leicester Engineering Building by James
Stirling that “reverses the conventional solid/void characteristics of materials” and the Vanna Venturi House of
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Robert Venturi that “evokes the form of an American shingle style with European overtones”. Together with the
aforementioned buildings by Koolhaas and Gehry, the list of ten includes the Jewish Museum by Daniel
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Libeskind, which “marks a series of traces of its process of becoming” .
In his analysis of these works, Eisenman often uses the term “textual”. He revises the theory set out by Jacques
Derrida in Of Grammatology and alludes to the design choices as elements of a “criticism” that questions
architecture on its specific condition and its narrative potential. As in Formal Basis, the architectural works are
analysed via diagrams that do not tritely shine a light on the proportions of the project. Instead, they break it up
into parts. Thus, the House, Il Girasole, highlights the difference, for example, between profile and shape in the
façades which, in some cases, act as a shield, their stratification into layers, the operations of volumetric fracture,
the classic assonance and critical fractures, or yet again the geometrical organisation of the columns that is read
as a sort of rhythmic score of the space and the floors. By applying the same notions, he identifies similar
operations of volumetric fracture and stratification of the façade of the house designed by Venturi. The diagrams
highlight how the formal choices become true spatial vectors capable of compressing or dividing a space and how
“classical and modern tropes operate simultaneously; the heritage of this house is one where that evolution is
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constantly at odds, and ultimately remains undecidable.”
This unusual approach makes Eisenman appear as a radical architect, beyond the pragmatic or superficially
formalistic fashions. According to Eisenman architecture is, therefore, characterized by a precise grammar. The
forms are like elements of a syntax and every form has a precise meaning in itself or in its relationship to the
parties, participating in the construction of architectural space. Every thoughtful compositional choice is attributed
to a compositional logic.
With the buildings chosen in his book, Ten Canonical buildings, beyond the precise period of time from 19502000, which basically refers to the passage between the Modern Movement paradigm and Post-modernism,
Eisenman does not want to offer recipes for contemporary architecture “but rather presents a slice in time that is
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part of an endless cycle of becoming and, as such, an idea of infinite displacement”.
Notes
1. See: Eisenman, Peter. Houses of Cards, Oxford University Press, New York (US) – Oxford (UK), 1987.
2. Italy, in particular, transmits and catalyses Eisenman’s thoughts. We need to remember the popularity of some of his first
article (Eisenman, Peter. 1970. “Dall’oggetto alla relazionalità. La Casa del Fascio di Terragni”, Casabella, Genuary no. 344:3841. idem, 1971. “Notes on Conceptual Architecture. Toward a Definition”, Casabella, November-Dicember no. 359-360:48-58.),
in the Casabella magazine, published first in Italian and then in English, his studies on Giuseppe Terragni, his intellectual
exchange with figures such as Manfredo Tafuri and Aldo Rossi, and, more generally, the relationships he established with the
School of Venice and Milan. Just as well-known are the results of these exchanges: Eisenman’s participation in the 15th
Triennale in Milan in 1973, at the Europa-America, centro storico, suburbio exhibition at the Biennale in Venice in 1976, the
publication of an Italian version of the catalogue in the famous exhibition on the Five Architects, organised by Arthur Drexler in
New York in 1973, as well as the project for the area of Cannaregio in Venice in 1978, held during his participation in an
international workshop.
3. Drexler, Arthur (ed.). Five architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York (US): Wittenborn & Company,
1972, 3-7.
4. Ibid., 15.
5. Tafuri, Manfredo. Five architects N.Y., Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1981., 13.
6. Ibid., 13.
7. Gandelsonas, Mario. 1973, “Linguistics in Architecture”, Casabella, February, n. 374, [also published in K. Michael Hays
(edited by), Architecture| Theory| since 1968, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998 pp. 112-122]. In his analysis of
the work of Eisenman in his famous article, Linguistics in Architecture (1973), Mario Gandelsonas precisely identified the new
intellectual dimension that had hit architecture and the operation the young American architect had set up: “[…] one of the most
interesting and original aspects in the work of Eisenman is the discovery of the possibility of modifications within architecture
which are the result of a shift in the dominant characteristic of architecture from the semantic to the syntactic. By “paralyzing”
the semantic dimension, the syntactic dimension is seen in a new light. In this way both the syntactic and the semantic
dimensions of architecture stand uncovered, thus permitting not only new access to their makeup but also a potential point of
departure for the development of a non-ideological theory”.
8. See: Drexler, Arthur (ed.). Five architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York (US): Wittenborn &
Company, 1972
9. See: Eisenman, Peter. Houses of Cards, Oxford (UK),New York (US): Oxford University Press, 1987.
10. Excluding the first chapter of the dissertation published in the article: Eisenman, Peter. 1963. "Towards an Understanding of
Form", Architectural Design, October, no. 10:457-458.
11. Rowe,Colin. 1947. "The Mathematics of Ideal Villa", Architectural Review, March, no. 101:101-104, and id.,1950.
"Mannerism and Modern Architecture", Architectural Review, May, no. 107:289-90 [then collected in Rowe, Colin. The
Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge (US), 1976].
12. Rudolf Wittkower, Principî architettonici nell'età dell'Umanesimo, Einaudi, Torino, 1964, 75. [English translation by the
authors from Italian]
13. Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973, 1.
14. Ibid., 8.
15. See: Eisenman, Peter.The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2006, 307-309.
16. Eisenman, Peter. Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008, 9.
17. Ibid., 5.
18. Ibid., 21.
19. Ibid., 20.
20. Ibid., 23.
21. Ibid., 24.
22. Ibid., 137.
23. Ibid., 24.
Fig.1 Left. Analytical Diagrams of House II, published by Peter Eisenman in Houses of cards, Oxford (1987). Right. House II,
Axonometric drawing. published in Five architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York (1972).
Fig.2 Left and Right. House II by Peter Eisenman
Fig.3 Left and Right. Analytical Diagrams of Luigi Moretti's Casa "Il Girasole", published by Peter Eisenman in Ten Canonical
Buildings 1950-2000 (2008)
References
Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1973 [1st ed. 1964].
Drexler, Arthur (ed.). Five architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York (US): Wittenborn &
Company, 1972, [then published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1974, 1975].
Eisenman, Peter. 1970. “Dall’oggetto alla relazionalità. La Casa del Fascio di Terragni”, Casabella, Genuary no.
344:38-41.
Eisenman, Peter. 1971. “Notes on Conceptual Architecture. Toward a Definition”, Casabella, November-Dicember
no. 359-360:48-58.
Eisenman, Peter. Houses of Cards, Oxford (UK),New York (US): Oxford University Press, 1987.
Eisenman, Peter. 1963. "Towards an Understanding of Form", Architectural Design, October, no. 10:457-458.
Eisenman, Peter.The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2006.
Eisenman, Peter. Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008.
Gandelsons, Mario. 1973, “Linguistics in Architecture”, Casabella, February, n. 374.
Hays, Michael (ed.). Architecture| Theory| since 1968, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998.
Rowe,Colin. 1947. "The Mathematics of Ideal Villa", Architectural Review, March, no. 101:101-104.
Rowe,Colin. 1950. "Mannerism and Modern Architecture", Architectural Review, May, no. 107:289-90.
Rowe,Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, Cambridge (US): The MIT Press,1976.
Tafuri, Manfredo. Five architects N.Y., Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1981.
Wittkower,Rudolf. Principî architettonici nell'età dell'Umanesimo, Torino: Einaudi, 1964 [1st ed. 1962].
Biographies
Francesco Coppolecchia (1980), architect, graduated from Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia in
2006. He received his PhD from IUAV in March 2011, with a dissertation entitled “The Formal Basis of Modern
Architecture: Composition as formal technique. Systems and devices of the P. Eisenman’s House II”. The
research was developed as Visiting Scholar at CCA Study Centre in Montreal, Canada (2010) and at the
Eisenman Architects office in N.Y., to inquire into the significance of Eisenman’s initial projects architectural form
in relation to drawing and sketching, providing quite another point of view to the so-called automatic
mechanisms which have always explained Cardboard Houses (1967-79). The results of this work have been
collected in the volume “Tecniche di analisi e di composizione” (ed. by L. Semerani et alii, Padova, 2011) and
exhibited at several institutions, including the Politecnico di Milano and Hafencity Universität Hamburg, Germany
in 2012.
Luca Guido (1981) is an architect, critic and historian of contemporary architecture. His PhD dissertation entitled
Building the American Landscape examines the relationship between city, architecture and landscape in the U.S.
from T. Jefferson to F.L. Wright. He is also interested in the developments of modern theories during post WWII
years and participates in numerous conferences on that theme. He has been post-doc fellow at Istituto
Universitario di Architettura di Venezia and contract professor in other Italian universities.