Objects with no Man

Rather than simply deriving its forms from functional needs, Eisenman sees modernism as “work on the language itself ....It fundamentally changed the relationship between man and object away from an object whose primary purpose was  to  speak about man  to  one  which  was  concerned  with its  own  objecthood.”

Honestly my first impression to this is that it is crazy but that is probably due to all the education that I’ve had that has told me to never make an object but make it part of the landscape and that everything needed reasons behind which brought in the program. My logical brain was right on board with the need to reason everything. Why do something that didn’t have purpose. But then I decided I had to actual look at it for itself. The first thing that came to mind was the Denver Art Museum. It has the feeling of just wanting to be an object that is its own thing without regards to the program. Yes it might look cool in photos, however, when visiting the building it feels out of place and you think what is this. (Especially when you look at the other, smaller art museum that is on the same street) The crazy angles on the exterior are reflected on the interior with the awkward, nonfunctional angled walls. When walking around rather than focusing on the works of art on the wall, which should be the focus, I was too busy trying not to hit my head to the odd low cut angles that went overhead.

The main thing that stands out with the building are the stairs and their “dizzying” effect. It is supposed to effect a fair amount of people who visit. It has to do with the varies angles of the wall throwing one off their balance because the normal visual cues that let someone know that they are upright are skewed. When I was there I experienced such an effect and it was one of the strangest feelings I’ve experienced. Depending on which wall I was looking at my brain would unconsciously tell my body to start to lean in a certain direction to re-right my balance which simply made me more unbalanced. It would feel like that I could never stand up straight. However, if I closed my eyes I had no problem correcting myself and could stand still rather than a slight weird wobble.

In the end I still can’t agree with the idea of architecture being these self-contained objects, it takes away man but isn’t it man which we should be buildings for.