Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, usually things like art, books,

poems and other writing. Deconstruction is breaking something down into smaller parts.
Deconstruction looks at the smaller parts that were used to create an object. The smaller parts are
usually ideas.
Sometimes deconstruction looks at how an author can imply things he does not mean. It says that
because words are not precise, we can never know what an author meant. Sometimes
deconstruction looks at the things the author did not say because he made assumptions.
One thing it pays attention to is how opposites work. (It calls them "binary oppositions.") It says that
two opposites like "good" and "bad" are not really different things. "Good" only makes sense when
someone compares it to "bad," and "bad" only makes sense when someone compares it to "good."
And so even when someone talks about "good," they are still talking about "bad." But this is just one
thing it does.
Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never just mean what we
think they mean at first. Other meanings are always there too, and the book or poem works because
all of those meanings work together. The closer we look at the writing, the more we find about how it
works, and how meaning works for all things. If we deconstructed everything, we might never be
able to talk or write at all. But that does not mean deconstruction is useless. If we deconstruct some
things, we can learn more about them and about how talking and writing work.
 Some practitioners of deconstructivism were
also influenced by the formal experimentation
and geometric imbalances of Russian
constructivism.

However, the concept of deconstructionism to

be understood explicitly (as the concept of
constructivism) with the proviso that the two
concepts have nothing to do with the structure
a component architecture.
It was completely anti-
functionalist, utopian
ideology, anti-logic, anti-
rationalist and anti-functional
Total functional nonsense.
structure of works of art.
There are additional references in deconstructivism
to 20th-century movements:the
modernism/postmodernism interplay,
expressionism, cubism, minimalism and
contemporary art.
 Deconstructivists are opposed to the
idea that a building needs to look and
feel consistent and organized. Instead,
they strive to create structures that are
broken into basic components that do
not seem connected.
 Deconstruction is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late
1980s.
It views architecture in bits and pieces, have no visual logic,
buildings made up of abstract free flow forms.

It is influenced by the theory of "Deconstruction", which is a form of semiotic

analysis.(the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.)

It is characterized by fragmentation, an interest in manipulating a structure's surface

or skin, non- rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of
architecture, such as structure and envelope.

The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit deconstructivist "styles" is

characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos.
Deconstructivist architects were influenced by the French philosopher Jacques
Derrida.
Seattle Central Library, Seattle

Its characteristic feature is the idea of

fragmentation. It also manipulates the
surface and the cover of the
construction. It is dominated by
curvilinear shapes, which are supposed
to disturb and dislocate the skeleton of
the object. The structure of the building
has a feeling of controlled chaos and
stimulating unpredictability.
Libeskind's Imperial
War Museum North
in Manchester.
A prime example of
deconstructivist
architecture
comprising three
fragmented,
intersecting curved
volumes which
symbolise the
destruction of war.
Jewish Museum,
Berlin, Germany
Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, Weil am Rhein, Germany
Deconstructivist architects want to create buildings that
challenge traditional ideas about harmony in structure, and
they do so by disorienting the view. There are three basic ways to do
this. First is by juxtaposition, or creating a clear contrast between
forms that are near each other. If two things generally would not
belong together, deconstructivists like to place them as close as
possible to each other.
The next characteristic is the use of non-rectilinear shapes. A
rectilinear shape is one with straight lines that meet at right angles. If
you look through the history of architecture, you'll notice a lot of
squares and rectangles. Deconstructivists try to subvert those
expectations by refusing to use normal squares and rectangles.
Circles, triangles, or unequal polygons are used instead.
The third characteristic of deconstructivism is the manipulation of
surface. Basically, through juxtaposition and irregular shapes,
architects try to make the exteriors of buildings look disjointed,
chaotic, and caught between hectic motion and extreme stasis.
Think of a gigantic explosion, frozen in time. That's sort of the
experience that deconstructivists are trying to capture. In order to
keep all focus on the shapes of the building, and the surface in
particular, deconstructivist structures tend to have very low amounts
of extra ornamentation. With nothing to distract the viewer, all
attention can stay on the structure itself.
Deconstructivism attempts to move away from the supposedly constricting 'rules'
of modernism such as "form follows function," "purity of form," and "truth to
materials."

The main channel from deconstructivist philosophy to architectural

theory was through the philosopher Jacques Derrida's influence with
Peter Eisenman.

Eisenman drew some philosophical bases from the literary movement

Deconstruction, and collaborated directly with Derrida on projects including an
entry for the Pare de la Villette competition, documented in Chora I
Works.

Both Derrida and Eisenman, as well as Daniel Libeskind were concerned with
the "metaphysics of presence," and this is the main subject of deconstructivist
philosophy in architecture theory.
 The presupposition is that architecture is a language capable of
communicating meaning and of receiving treatments by methods of
linguistic philosophy.

The dialectic of presence and absence, or solid and void occurs in

much of Eisenman's projects, both built and unbuilt. Both Derrida and
Eisenman believe that the locus, or place of presence, is architecture, and
the same dialectic of presence and absence is found in construction and
deconstructivism.

According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when

working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural
deconstructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal
construction, a strongly-established conventional expectation to play
flexibly against.
 In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and
deconstructivism (the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including
abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.), his notions of trace and
erasure, embodied in his philosophy of writing and arche-writing found their way
into deconstructivist memorials.

Daniel Libeskind envisioned many of his early projects as form of writing or

discourse on writing and often works with 'a form of concrete poetry.

He made architectural sculptures out of books and often coated the models
in texts, openly making his architecture refer to writing. The notions of trace and
erasure were taken up by Libeskind in essays and in his project for the Jewish
Museum Berlin.

The museum is conceived as a trace of the erasure of the Holocaust, intended

to make its subject legible and poignant. Memorials such as Maya Lin's Vietnam
Veterans Memorial and Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe are also said to reflect themes of trace and erasure.
formalism, de-composition, deconstruction, and weak form.
Architecture requires the
displacement of conventions; the
history of any discipline is about
displacing conventions
Architecture displaces in order to
create what will be. Creation does
not repeat what is.
Eisenman has explored different territories:
first, structuralism and Chomskys linguistic
theory; successively, Derrida and Deluezes
post-structuralism, passing through the
influence of Colin Rowes formalism, and his
recent interest in the return to autonomy as
theorized by Pier Vittorio Aureli.
NEW YORK FIVE
Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his writing
and speaking about architecture as well as his designs, which have
been called high modernist or deconstructive.
The New York Five refers to a group of five New York City architects
(Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and
Richard Meier) whose photographed work was the subject of a CASE
(Committee of Architects for the Study of the Environment) meeting at
the Museum of Modern Art, organized by Arthur Drexler and Colin Rowe
in 1969, and featured in the subsequent book Five Architects, published
by Wittenborn in 1972, then more famously by Oxford Press in 1975.
These five had a common allegiance to a pure form of
architectural modernism, harking back to the work of Le
Corbusier in the 1920s and 1930s, although on closer
examination their work was far more individual. The grouping
may have had more to do with social and academic allegiances,
particularly the mentoring role of Philip Johnson.
The book evoked a stinging rebuke in the May 1973 issue
of Architectural Forum, a group of essays called "Five on Five",
written by architects Romaldo Giurgola, Allan Greenberg, Charles
Moore,Jaquelin T. Robertson, and Robert A. M. Stern. These five
architects [Guirgola et al.], known as the "Greys", attacked the
"Whites" [Eisenmann et al.] on the grounds that this pursuit of
the pure modernist aesthetic resulted in unworkable buildings that
were indifferent to site, indifferent to users, and divorced from daily
life.
These "Grays" were aligned with Philadelphia architect Robert
Venturi and the emerging interest in vernacular architecture, New
Classical Architecture and early postmodernism.
Subsequently, the five architects each developed unique styles and
ideologies, with Eisenman becoming more affiliated with
Deconstructivism.
His professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-
garde, late or high modernist, etc.

His focus on "liberating" architectural form was notable from an academic and
theoretical standpoint but resulted in structures that were both badly built and
hostile to users.

Peter Eisenman: "Architecture manifests how the society at any

one time feels about itself, the same with music, literature, or
poetry. It is a very broad view of the built environment. It is not
just a shelter, nor function. It does not solve functions; it
problematizes and thus creates functions. It does not answer
questions; it asks questions. It does not solve problems; it
creates problems."
 Peter Eisenman was born in 1932 in Newark, New Jersey. He studied architecture from
1951 to 1955 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and later at Columbia University in
New York City, and concluded his academic training in 1963 with a doctoral thesis on
design theory.

He worked together with Charles Gwathmay, John Hejduk, Michael Graves and Richard
Meier in the architects group The New York Five. At this time, Eisenman developed his
principles for design theory in a number of key publications.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Eisenman established his own architectural practice in
New York, and since that time has created a number of important and diverse
structures.

A recurrent topic is his thesis about an architecture of memory, from which he derives
the postulate of a place-oriented architecture, which affords the observer a unique
experience, difficult to express adequately, of space and time.
His House VI, designed for clients Richard and
Suzanne Frank in the mid 1970s, confounds
expectations of structure and function.
Suzanne Frank was initially sympathetic and patient
with Eisenman's theories and demands.
But after years of fixes to the badly specified and
misbegotten House VI (which had first broken the
Franks' budget then consumed their life savings),
Suzanne Frank was prompted to strike back
with Peter Eisenman's House VI: The Client's
Response, in which she admitted both the problems
of the building, as much as its virtues.
 In the earlier stage of his career he designed a series of houses, named as house I to
house X. His House II, VI and X are most famous projects of his initial ones.

Eisenman, one of the New York Five, designed the house for Mr. and Mrs. Richard
Frank between 1972-1975 who found great admiration for the architects work despite
previously being known as a paper architect and theorist.

By giving Eisenman a chance to put his theories to practice, one of the most famous,
and difficult, houses emerged in the United States.
 Situated on a flat site in Cornwall, House VI stands its own ground as a
sculpture in its surroundings.

The design emerged from a conceptual process that began with a grid.
Eisenman manipulated the grid in a way so that the house was divided
into four sections and when completed the building itself could be a
record of the design process.

Therefore structural elements, were revealed so that the construction

process was evident, but not always understood.

Thus, the house became a study between the actual structure and
architectural theory. The house was effeciently constructed using a
simple post and beam system.

However some columns or beams play no structural role and are

incorporated to enhance the conceptual design. For example one
column in the kitchen hovers over the kitchen table, not even touching
the ground! In other spaces, beams meet but do not intersect, creating
a cluster of supports.
ELEVATION
SECTION
 The structure was incorporated into Eisenmans grid to
convey the module that created the interior spaces with a
series of planes that slipped through each other.

Purposely ignoring the idea of form following function,

Eisenman created spaces that were quirky and well-lit, but
rather unconventional to live with.
 Another curious aspect is an
upside down staircase, the
element which portrays the axis
of the house and is painted red to
draw attention.

There are also many other

difficult aspects that disrupt
conventional living, such as the
column hanging over the dinner
table that separates diners and
the single bathroom that is only
accessible through a bedroom.

Eisenman was able to constantly

remind the users of the
architecture around them and
how it affects their lives.
 He succeeded in building a
structure that functioned both as
a house and a work of art, but
changing the priority of both so
that function followed the art.

He built a home where man

was forced to live in a work of
art, a sculpture, and according
to the clients who enjoyed
inhabiting Eisenmans artwork
and poetry, the house was very
successful.
he Wexner Center, hotly anticipated as the first major public
deconstructivist building, has required extensive and expensive
retrofitting because of elementary design flaws (such as
incompetent material specifications, and fine art exhibition
space exposed to direct sunlight). It was frequently repeated
that the Wexner's colliding planes tended to make its users
disoriented to the point of physical nausea; in 1997
researcherMichael Pollan tracked the source of this rumor back
to Eisenman himself. In the words of Andrew Ballantyne, "By
some scale of values he was actually enhancing the reputation
of his building by letting it be known that it was hostile to
humanity."
The Wexner Center's 108,000 square feet (10,000 m2), three-story building was designed by architects
Peter Eisenman of New York and the late Richard Trott of Columbus with landscape architect Laurie Olin
of Philadelphia.
It was the first major public building to be designed by Eisenman, previously known primarily as a
teacher and theorist. He has gone on to design and build a number of other major projects including
the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
The design includes a large, white metal grid meant to suggest scaffolding, to give the building a
sense of incompleteness in tune with the architect's deconstructivist tastes. Eisenman also
took note of the mismatched street grids of the OSU campus and the city of Columbus, which vary by
12.25 degrees, and designed the Wexner Center to alternate which grids it followed. The result was a
building of sometimes questionable functionality, but admitted architectural interest. The 12-degree
angle, and the ubiquitous multiples thereof that occur throughout the building, refers to the divergence
between the city planning grid and the campus planning grid. The centers brick turrets make reference
to the medieval-like armory building that occupied the site until the 1958.
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 2005 renovation originally enlisted the help of a local firm, then switched to Arup. In addition to the
building envelope, the scope of renovation includes HVAC, lighting, electrical, plumbing, fire protection
systems. The renovation works had a minimum impact on the original architectural design while
improving environmental, daylight and climate control. With the restoration of the center as a whole,
the bookstore, film and video theater, and caf sections were all revamped, equipment and layout-
wise.
The real architecture only
exists in the drawings. The real
building exists outside the
drawings. The difference here is
that architecture and
building are not the same.
 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust
Memorial, is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

The Berlin Holocaust memorial was the outcome of a process which

extended over a period of 17 years, moving from a grass-roots initiative to a
government resolution and eventually a multi-stage competition.

Peter Eisenman won the competition and construction of project started in

April 2003. It was inaugurated on May 10 2005, sixty years after the end of
World War II.
SITE PLAN
 Generally, while experiencing a building a person walks through the
building perceiving columns on the left and moving around and again
there are columns on the right, so there can be a sort of conclusion
about the building being symmetric, axial etc. So understanding of a
buildings comes from being presence in the experience.

But in the holocaust memorial, experiencing the building does not give
you understanding of the monument. In this project, when we move, we
do not learn anything, there is no specific path to follow, any point within
the memorial is no different than any other point.

The underlying idea behind the memorial was to reduce the meaning of
experience because this relates to what happened in camps. The
memorial intends to show the absence of meaning in the executions
carried out in camps.

The memorial is an analogy to experience of the camps but also an

analogy to the idea of breaking down the relationship between
experience and understanding.
 Often referred to as a field of stelae, the
memorial consists of 2711 concrete stelae (95
cm x 2.37 m), with heights varying from less
than a meter to 4 meters.

The stelae are separated by a space equal to

the width of an individual stele, or enough
room for a single individual to pass through.

The memorial is traditional in the sense of using

material such as concrete, which is a common
means for the construction of memorials, but it
is innovative in its form and design.

There is a quality of indeterminacy to the entire

field, despite what appears to be a regularly
spaced grid. Regularity is only perceived when
standing on top of one of the lower pillars at the
perimeter or in an aerial photograph.
 Upon approaching the site, one might assume that the stelae are evenly
spaced but the undulating ground surface defeats the sense of a grid, as
does the actual experience of walking through the relatively confined
spaces and the existence of varying views framed and obstructed by the
stelae.

Eisenman relates this monument to a living memory rather than a

sentimental memory as the holocaust cannot be remembered in the first,
nostalgic mode, as its horror forever ruptured the link between nostalgia
and memory. Remembering the Holocaust can, therefore, only be a living
condition in which the past remains active in the present.
 The space of the memorial is not overwhelming in scale, the instability of
the ground and unpredictability of the heights of the stelae interact to
frustrate understanding of the space.

One is further confused or disoriented by the narrow alleys which are not
truly perceived as straight lines, due to the varying heights of the
concrete slabs and the uneven ground plane.

Perhaps even more disorienting is the fact that there are no written cues
or symbols of any sort. Immediately discounting the notion that one
should read the pillars as tombstones is the absence of any language
and any apparent right or wrong direction or ending point.
 During the painful debates about erecting such a memorial, a
major aspect of criticism was the danger of authentic sites of the
holocaust losing their importance. Thus, it is vital to distinguish the
different roles of authentic sites from the artificially created
monument.

The more specified function was read in the resolution by the

German bundestag (a legislative body) of June 1999.

With the memorial we intend to honour the murdered victims,

keep alive the memory of these inconceivable events in
German history ,admonish all future generations never again to
violate human rights, to defend the democratic constitutional
state at all times, to secure equality before the law for all people
and to resist all forms of dictatorship and regimes based on
violence.
 Peter Eisenman, the architect of the memorial says about its intention
that

The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any
attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ...
Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from
nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in
the present.

The design is to turn the visit of the memorial into an individual

experience that causes the visitor to reflect about the genocide.

Each individual entering the field of stelae will find him- or herself
wandering alone, because the paths in between the concrete slabs are
not wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. Thus, the
visitation turns into an individual experience.

Lea Rosh, the initiator of the memorial stated that this meant to raise the
murdered above their murderers and to raise the victims above the
perpetrators.
 Looking at the historical significance of the claimed area, the memorial
gains a layer of authenticity, but what is almost of more importance is
the setting of the memorial in the government quarter and in the heart
of the capital.

Time will show if the memorial will live up to the definition of authenticity
in the sense of heritage conservation where it is understood as the
ability of a property to convey its cultural significance over time.

For one thing is sure, that the memorials cultural significance is complex
for being a monument to honour the Jewish victims of the holocaust
and at the same time a testimony of Germanys accounting with the
past.
 The Information Centre beneath the Field of Stelae
documents the persecution and destruction of the Jews of
Europe and the historical sites of the crimes.

The focus of the exhibition lies on the personalisation of the

victims and on the geographical dimension of the Holocaust.

ROOM OF DIMENSIONS ROOM OF FAMILIES

 A major section of the information centre that supplements
the memorial is dedicated to informing the visitor about
authentic sites even about the ones that do not exist any
more for reasons of concealment during the Third Reich.

The information centre stresses the importance of authentic

sites and encourages the visitation thereof.

ROOM OF NAMES ROOM OF SITES

remembrance

FLOOR PLAN OF INFORMATION CENTRE

1999
City of Culture of Galicia
Santiago de Compostela
Galicia, Spain
2006
University of Phoenix Stadium
Glendale, Arizona