Are You Allowed to Smile in an Eisenman Building?
I have always thought of Peter Eisenman as an architect for architects. The idea that architecture is a language, and therefore obviously the most important language, and therefore obviously the only thing that matters seems to be ready-made to impress other architects. Then the purpose of a building is simply to start a conversation with people about the cool drawings you made. One of the building typologies that this approach seems perfect for is a school of architecture. As an example, Eisenman's 1996 renovation of the DAAP (Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning) Building on the University of Cincinnati's campus. (aka. the pastel palace)
This building attempts to merge the four existing buildings into one "cohesive" college. Since it is for architecture students, Eisenman takes every opportunity to make the architecture the center of attention. Most notably the walls jutting into staircases and columns placed so close to the entrance that the door slams into it every time, and of course it is very VERY pastel.
It gets the job done, professors reference it all the time. There are some nice compositional moments of compression and expansion, there are also stupid moments where he used FOAM as the exterior cladding and 10 years later it required an exterior renovation that COST AS MUCH AS THE ORIGINAL BUILDING.
Anyway, you can not simply work, live, study, smile in an Eisenman building, you can only marvel at how Eisenman collided this Eisenman grid with that Eisenman grid to create an EEiisseennmmaann, clearly the greatest Eisenman who ever Eisenman'd.
This building attempts to merge the four existing buildings into one "cohesive" college. Since it is for architecture students, Eisenman takes every opportunity to make the architecture the center of attention. Most notably the walls jutting into staircases and columns placed so close to the entrance that the door slams into it every time, and of course it is very VERY pastel.
(I can't even get pictures of the building to line up)
It gets the job done, professors reference it all the time. There are some nice compositional moments of compression and expansion, there are also stupid moments where he used FOAM as the exterior cladding and 10 years later it required an exterior renovation that COST AS MUCH AS THE ORIGINAL BUILDING.
Anyway, you can not simply work, live, study, smile in an Eisenman building, you can only marvel at how Eisenman collided this Eisenman grid with that Eisenman grid to create an EEiisseennmmaann, clearly the greatest Eisenman who ever Eisenman'd.
Great post, it occurs to me that architecture that primarily serves as an object, in this case a collision of self-derived grids, operates to us humans thusly, aka absurdly.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways I feel like architecture schools should fall in a completely separate market than all other buildings. There are no rules... you can design a building that examines historical architecture principles, or create spaces that are intentionally bad or crazy just to make a point and teach students "how not to design", or you just combine the good and the bad to serve as a strong comparison. Architecture students are the ones who appreciate or are most opinionated about radical ideas in building design...so why not provide them with a building to debate about.
ReplyDeleteSome buildings are proposed best on drawings or theory, some present best proposal in great user experience. So it is hard to judge Eisenman's projects. In my undergrads, my professor also mentioned several times of his projects and his contribution of deconstruction theory. Personally, I feel that most of his project are his experiments of his theory, which could detach users'consideration from design itself and regardless of users' experience. I regarded him as one of the best architectural theorist instead of good architect in practice
ReplyDeleteI would love to see how crazy some architects could get if we were allowed to think this way for a project. At my undergrad there was a studio that viewed Eisenman as a role model. All their projects were beautiful pieces of art, but looked nothing like a building, nor did they have potential to even be built. This view of architecture that focuses more on the art and visual experiences does have a place, with constant discussion about when and where it is appropriate and to what extent.
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