Understand Eisenman?
To tell the truth, I don’t. And I do not like his work. Last year, I went to Cincinnati. I saw Frank Gehry’s Vontz Center for Molecular Studies, Thom Mayne’s Campus Recreation Center, Bernard Tschumi’s Lindner Athletic Center. These three buildings left a good impression on me. But when I saw Peter Eisenman’s DAAP. It’s not good. It just snowed and the front door got wet and slide. The building was painted with pink and other bright color. But on that night it feels very dirty.
After reading what he writes, although I still don’t like his works. But I think I can understand him in somewhere. Eisenman is a pioneer. When he wrote <Post-Functionalism>, he already noticed that after “Functionalism” replaced “Modernism”, “Functionalism” had a lot of weakness such as no connotation, aesthetic fatigue, light pollution. The only way is to find a new thing to replace it. So he put forward “Functionalism”. Although his word is not easy to understand, even how to solve this problem is not very sure. But he played a pioneering role in architecture.
Still cannot understand his theory about architecture very well. But I think to understand what he wants to do with the architecture is enough.
Chen, I wish you would have told me that you went and saw DAAP! Yes the building is absolutely hideous. (Did you know that they only semi-recently painted it?) And yes the appearance was not kept particularly clean at all. But in a way, the not-perfect appearance allowed for much more experimentation from the students. In my undergrad, people were pouring concrete left and right, or making models out of jello and chocolate (the latter was mine), and candle wax. Do you think that same kind of thing would happen at Lee?
ReplyDeleteI think you make a good point here, we don't necessarily have to like how Eisenman designs or thinks, but I think we have to recognize that he did play a pioneering role in architecture like you said and was doing something that made people think.
ReplyDeleteI agree with lillian about how Eisenmans's architecture played a important role in making people think of possibilities. As many architects he has been successful in few buildings and unsuccessful an other but still he did manage to experiment and give back something to the world.
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