Diagram Diaries

 

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First pubLished in the United States of America in 1999 by UNIVERSE PUBLISHING A Division of Rizzoli International Publications. Inc. 300 Park Avenue South New York. NY 10010 @

1999 Universe Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this pUblication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system. or transmitted in any form or by any

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99000102 10987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eisenman. Peter. Diagram diaries / Peter Eisenman; introduction by R E Somol. p. cm. ISBN 9-7893-0264-0 (alk. paper) 1 Eisenman. Peter-Contributions in architectural design. I Title. II Title: Diagram diaries. NA787 E33A4 1999 720.92-DC21 99-10846

Printed in Italy

Design by Juliette Cezzar

\

 

6

Dummy Text or The Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture R E Somol

 

Peter Eisenman has often remarked that his Ph.D.

practices. practice s. Just as Robert Venturi summarized the

thesis o f 1963, The Formal Basis o f Modern

effect of his 1950 M.A. thesis as one great dia

Architecture;' was a critical response to Christopher

gram,, Lawrence gram Lawrence Halprin Halpr in published a book o f dia

Alexander's earlier Cambridge dissertation, which

grams in 197G--which he referred to as scores 

would be published as Notes on the ynthesis o Form. 1 Whil e the architectural architectural age agend ndas as announce a nnounced d

intended to form the foundation o f a renewed design discipline. Significantly, even Klaus Herdeg's

by these projects could not be more dissimilar

critique o f the Bauhaus-inspired diagram o f peda

determining determi ning the fitness fitness o f form as a problem of

gogy and design at the Harvard Graduate School o f

set theory versus releasing the potential for forms to

Design proceeded simply through an alternative

notate the forces o f their emergence-it shoul should d not

form of diagrammatic analysis.

be overlooked that the techniques o f diagramming

It should not be surprising that the discourse o f

are central to each. In fact, Alexander begins the

the. diagram at this moment has become so con

1971 preface to Notes by baldly stating that the most

fused 'given its near-universal use and abuse, its

significant contribution o f his book is the idea o f

simultaneous promotion and denigration. This was

the d diagram iagrams. s. In some some ways, the present collection, Diagram Diaries, advances a related assertion, a post

less true with the previous trait o f disciplinary iden tity, the act o f drawing disegno), which, as Reyner

facto preface to an unpublished dissertation, though

Banham Banha m writes, ha had d such a crucial value value for for archi

one that now addresses (and is demonstrated by) a

tects that being unable to think without drawing

career-long body o f intervening work.

became the true mark o f one fully socialized into

In general, the fundamental technique and proce

the profession o f architecture. 2 With the increasing

dure o f architectural knowledge has seemingly shifted,

inability after the war to link convincingly the for

over the second half o f the twentieth century, from

mal and functional ambitions o f modernism, the

the drawing to the th e diagram. diagram. This is not to suggest

first appearances o f the diagram solidify around two

that a diagram of one form o r another was not

possible axes, which Colin Rowe would later iden

always constitutive o f architecture at various points

tify as paradigm (the embrace o f a priori ideals)

in its history, but simply that it has only been in the

and program progr am (the empirical solicitation solicitation o f facts).

last thirty years or so that the diagram has become

While Rowe significantly notes that both positions

fully fully actualized, that it has become bec ome almost almost com

condemn us to no more th,an simple repetition,

pletely the matter o f architecture. Proceeding with

he ultimately endorses the side o f paradigm (or

halting steps through serial obsessions with form,

type)) and sugge type suggests sts,, true tru e to t o his predilection predilec tion for a

language, and representation-though, as will be

Renaissance humanism, that it is precisely the draw

seen, equally with program, force, and perfor

ing that will overcome the diagrammatic alternatives

mance-the diagram has seemingly emerged as the

he so ably identifies but too quickly dismisses. 3 In

final tool, in both its millennial and desperate guises,

lieu o f a return to drawing and modified types,

for architectural production and discourse. Relatively

however, an alternative version o f repetition a

impervious to the specific ideology being promoted, the diagram has instigated a range o f contemporary

potentially non-linear mode of repetition) has more recently been pursued by rethinking and extending

7

 

RE

omol

the logic o f the diagram. Thus , the ris risee o f the dia

repetition (one which deviates from the work o f the

gram, a more polemical device than the drawing,

modernist avant-gardes and envisions repetition as

accompanies a breakdown o f the post-Renaissance

the production o f difference rather than identity);

consensus on the role o f the architect, and achieves

and that it is a performative rather than a represen

its apotheosis with the emergence o f the informa

tational device (i.e., it is a tool o f the virtual rather

tion architects (or architect-critics) after 1960. This

than the real). For an early version o f this new dis

latter association begins to suggest that not all recent uses o f the diagram diagram are are equally diagrammatic.

ciplinary role inscribed in a project, one can look, for example, to Robert Venturi's National Football

As the dominant device within the hybrid prac

tices o f the architect-critics architect-critics o f the neo-avant-garde,

8

Hall o f Fame Competition entry (or so-called Billdingboard, 1967), which consists o f a tripartite

this more specific use o f the diagram promises to

division o f the billb oard entra nce facade facade,, a vaulted

elide Rowe's postwar opposition between physique-

exhibition shed, and a sloped grandstand in the rear.

form and morale word. Whereas Rowe would elevate

What one reads in section-from the slightly

the former pair over the latter in his attempt to

inclined seating, seating, through the arc o f the shed's roof,

extend the legacy o f modernism (in contrast to his

to the armature o f the upright facade-is the 90

alter ego, Banham, who would elaborate the impli

degree rotation o f a horizontal surface a table or

cations o f the second pair), the architects o f the

drafting board) into a vertical object. As with John

neo-avant-garde are drawn to the diagram be c a us e 

Hejduk's Wall Wall Houses, Venturi's Venturi's com peti tio n e ntry

unlike drawing or text, partis pris o r bubble nota

describes the transformation o f the horizontal space

t i on- i t appears in the first instance to operate pre

o f writing into the vertical surface o f the visual,

cisely between form and word. For the purposes o f

Rowe's morale word becoming physique:flesh a

this brief introduction, this attitude toward the dia

process that diagrams a new professional identifica

gram has several implications: that it is fundamentally

tion which collapses writing and design.   Venturi's

a disciplinary device in that it situates itself on and

appropriation o f this swinging tabletop-a drafting

undoes specific institutional and discursive opposi

room appliance that evinces the documentary status

tions (and that it provides a projective discipline for

o f the discipline-recalls Corbusier's similar use o f

new work); that it suggests an alternative mode o f

industrial ready-mades (e.g., the fi file le cabi net, bottle

 

Dummy Text. or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary rchitecture

rack, ocean liner, liner, briar bri ar pipe, etc.) as the basis for

other with the constructive swerves, or misreadings,

new organizing systems in the Unites and other

o f the neo-avant-garde. The first model o f repeti

projects. The drafting board itself (and here Venturi

tion can be identified with icons, resemblances, and

refers

copies, while the second is aligned with simulacra

t ?

the front elevation as a hig h easel easel )

becomes used as a diagram one which mobilizes a series o f relations and forces. Moreover, by proceed

or phantasms. 5 The fust repetition relies o n an ideal o f the origin or model, an economy o f iden

ing through a misreading o f Corbusier's proto

tity, and can be thought o f as typologica typologically lly dr iven

machinic or diagrammatic disposition, the project

(the vertical imitation o f timeless precedents). In

also suggests that an alternative mode o f repetition

contrast, the second sets in motion divergent series

might be available to architecture, one distinct from

and exists as a continual process o f differentiating.

the equal but opposite functional and formal recon

One points back to a static moment o f being,

structions o f modernism after the war.

while the other advances through modes o f

The history o f architectural production over the

9

becomin bec oming. g. Again, this this has has a direct relation relati on to wh at

last forty years can broadly be characterized as the

Gilles Deleuze also distinguishes as the factitious

desire to establish an architecture at once autonomous

(or artificial) and the simulacrum:

and heterogeneous in contrast to the anonymous and homogenous building associated with the interwar

It is at the core o f modernity, at the point where

rhetoric and postwar experience o f the modern

modernism settles its accounts, tha t the factitious and

movement. This quest for autonomy and hetero

the simulacrum stand in opposition as two modes o f

geneity with its fundamental antinomy in the call

destruction may: the two nihilisffiS. For between the

for both identity and multiplicity has taken several

destruction which conse conserves rves and perpetuates the

forms in this period, one o f which is a continual

established order o f representations, models and

misreading or repetition o f the modernist avant

copies, and the destruction o f models and copies

gardes, though now in a significantly transformed

which sets up a creative chaos, there is a great differ

postwar context. Briefly, then, it might be useful to

ence; that chaos. which sets in motion the simul simulacra acra

distinguish between two kinds o f repetition, one associated with postmodern historicism and the

and raises a phantasm, is the most innocent o f all destructions, destructio ns, that o f Platonism.6

House II  

RE

Somol

It is now possible to differentiate the repetition o f

1

the neo-avant-garde (that o f the simulacrum) from

site forces and movement via inflections in generic

the larger trajectory o f postm oder n historicism, historicism,

form, Eisenman's transformational diagramming

which idealizes the work, stabilizes the referent, and

techniques anticipate the need for (and predict the

banks on its resemblance. Historicism in this

possibilities of the later development o f 3D model

account has little to do with style, but is more a

ing and animation software. Even in this nascent

mode o f operating, since historicist work can equally include the modern, as evident in the projects o f

dynamic construction o f the diagram (and non-linear model o f repetition), Eisenman imagined that the

Richard Meier. A particular kind o f repetition is at

gri d itself could move from an analytic tool o f

the heart o f modernity, however-that o f the mis

description-the invisible infrastructure o f postwar

reading o f the avant-garde-and it is this form o f

formalism-to a material to be manipulated itself.

practice that relies on the diagram in its fullest sense.

This approach, o f course, was in direct contrast to

Finally this distinction between modes o f repetition

that o f Rowe, who filtered out the wild element o f

provides competing views o f   autonomy as w e l l 

time in favor o f timeless resemblance vouchsafed by

i.e., there is the disciplinary autonomy that relies on

the stabilizing stabilizing substrate o f an ideal grid.

typology and the alternative call associated with the

Rowe's first published essay is a virtuoso perfor

neo-avant-garde that understands autonomy as a

mance in formal architectural criticism; it provides

process o f self-generation or self-organization, a

a subtle comparison and differentiation o f

model that allows for formal-material emergence or

Corbusie r's Villa Villa Garches and Palladio's Palladio's Villa

transformation withQut authorial intervention, where

Malcontenta, an analysis that remains both striking

time is an active rather than a passive element.

and unsettling even now, almost fifty years after its

As early as his dissertation, Eisenman had implied

 

irrelevant). Advancing the potential o f registering

original appearance. Certainly, one can discern the

that the diagrams o f Rowe and Alexander Alexander (which

influence on Rowe o f RudolfWittkower's geometric

are more accurately paradigms and patterns, p atterns,

analysis ofPalladio's villas, work which would achieve

respectively) were insufficiently diagrammatic in

its definitive statement in Wittkower's Architectural

that they attempt to represent or identify a static

Principles in the Age o Humanism published two t wo years years

truth condition (whether formal or operational is

after Rowe's essay. Still, Rowe's lasting contribution,

Dummy Text or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture

against all previous understandings, was to cross his

on an ideal o f   originals. original s. Perhaps more signi significan ficantly, tly,

torical periods and locate a mannerist-humanist pro

he alludes here to a legal grounding, the adher

ject at the center o f the mo der n movement, thus thus

ence to rules, to adjudicate cases cases o f repetition, the

establishing a discursive frame through which archi

first o f many such invocations o f the rule o f the law

tectural polemics have been projected ever since-an act that might be described as one o f sheer ideolog

in Rowe's liberal reconstruction o f modernism. Also, though critical o f the immediate postwar ver

ical hubris. Moreover, even at this early date, the

sion o f

primary issue revolved around the propriety or

Rowe would write a brief in support o f the New

appropriateness o f   repetition, as suggested in the

York Five's repetition o f Le Corbusier, even i f it is

final two lines o f the essay:

as he confesses, a largely negative introduction

e s t y

~

Corbu twenty-seven ye year arss later

an attack upon a poten tial attack, a prime speci The neo-Palladian villa, at its best, became the pic

men o f a slippery-slope logic issued issued with the sole

turesque object in the English park and Le Corbusier

intention o f get tin ting g his clients off off:: For, in terms o f

has become the source o f innumerable pastiches and

a general theory o f pluralism, how can any faults in

tediously usly amusing exhibition techniques; but it is o f tedio

principle be imputed? S And if one equates

the magnificently realized quality o f the origin originals als

Palladio and Le Corbusier, as Rowe's analysis has,

which one rarely finds in the works o f neo-Palladians

then it is logical that he remarks-demonstrating

and exponents oful e style Corb u. These distinctions

in yet another manner his obsessive attachment to

scarcely require insistence; and no doubt it should

analogical reasoning-that the Five place them

only be sententiously suggested that, in the case o f

selves in the role, the secondary role, o f Scamozzi

derivative works, it is perhaps an adherence to rules

to Palladio.

which has lapsed.7

In the same year that he issued his somewhat reluctant defense o f the New York Five, Rowe

Though Rowe seems to be distinguishi distinguishing ng

wrote an adde ndum to his his Mathema tics essay that

between two forms o f repetition-since the repeti

further clarifies his position on repetition. Here, he

tion between Pallad Palladio io and Corbusier is apparently endorsed-· the model he defends is still founded

describes his mode o f criticism as Wolf1inian in origin and says that it begins with approximate

House II  

R E Somol

configurations and

12

then the n proceeds to identify dif

ferences. 9 This approach derives from an understand

allow modern architecture to refound itself exclu

ing o f repetition in the first sense described above,

sively on the twin bases o f structure and space had

the one Deleuze assoc associat iates es with the axiom ax iom only that

existed for almost a hundred years, the aesthetic,

wbich

philosophical, philosop hical, and intellectual sources-Le. the

is

alike differs. This mode o f identifying differ-

ences relies on an existing langue, or ideal armature,

unique combination o f cubism, liberalism, gestalt

against which seemingly disparate instances like

psychology, and the new criticism, with a renewed

Garches and Malcontenta can be related and distin

understanding o f mannerist organizing geometries

guished---such that LeCorbusier's emphasis on disper

would not be consolidated

sion and Palladio's on centrality can be defined

blage until the 1950s. when it would provide a new

as

as

an articulate assem

viable and coherent options within a larger para

disciplinary foundation for high modern (or man

digm-and by which derivative bad copies can be

nerist modern) architectural design and pedagogy.

dismissed

As

as

falling too

far

from the proper model.

Such an extension o f this model o f repetition

as

a

an educational device, the nine-square problem

emerged from a collapse o f two modern diagrams

pedagogical project-the intellectu intellectual al under pinnings

Le

o f which were largel largely y provided by the Chicago

axonometrics (space)-filtered through the reductive

Frame and Transparency essays-would become

planimetric logic hypostatized by Wittkower

officially instituted at the University o f Texas in Austin in 1954 with a memorandum ghost-written

Palladio's twelfth Palladio's twe lfth villa villa.. Wha Whatt tthis his proble pro blem m lJrovided lJrovided was a discipline for modern architecture, a perverse

for

Dean Harwell Hamilton Harris by Rowe and

Corbusier's domino structure) with van Doesburg's as

and clever argument for a rhetorical capacity against

Bernard Hoesli.lO Hoesli.lO And  And it is from this curricular

those who would understand modern architecture

framework that, initially in the studios o f John

simply the literal addition o f constructional systems

Hejduk, the nine-square problem would emerge

 

Thus, while the technical preconditions that would

as

as

and programmatic requirements. Further, it assumed

perhaps the most durable and widespread beginning

a language o f architecture founded on the articulation

desig des ign n problem in the postwar period.

o f a series o f dialectics (center and periphery, vertical

The ele

gance and ingenuity o f this problem lay in the way

and horizontal, inside and outside, frontality and

it consolidated a series o f discourses and demands.

rotation, solid and void, point and plane, etc.), a logic

Dummy Text or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary rchitecture

o f contradiction

and ambiguity. And it is largely to

tradition represent a sustained reflection

on

the

the lessons issuing from Analytic and Synthetic

form and content

Cubism (and the compositional models

arrangements and an investigation into varied

emanating from the latter) that

of

collage

continues to

Rowe

of

of

part-to-whole. In their dispute

his assessment

o f postwar

work

of

the Five:

individual and collective

positional and associative laws in the relation

return in his pictorial rendering the language modern architecture, an optical bias present even in o f the

of

with

com-

of

this formalist reconstruction

modernism, the subject

o f Hejduk's

and

Eisenman's Eisenma n's anxious anxiou s influence, to bor row Harold [I]t might be more reasonable and more modest to

Bloom's model, was first and foremost a strong critic

recognize that, in the opening years

rather than a strong poet.

of

this century,

n

othe r words, all

o f their

great revolutions in thought occurred and that then

productive misreadings

profound visual discoveries resulted, that these are

decessors can be understood as a swerve within

still unexplained. and that rather than assume intrinsic

and against the production

change to be the prerogative

and it is this swerve that allows

might be more useful

to

of

every generation. it

modernist European pre of

Rowe's formalism, t hem

to develop

other possibilities suppressed within that tradition.

recognize that certain

changes are so enormous as to impose a directive which cannot be resolved in any individual life span. It concerns the plastic and spatial inventions

of

of

In this way

one

ladivostok or

can read characters from Hejduk's

Eisenman's typological field studies

from the Rebstockpark Competition as perverse

Cubism and the proposition that, whatever may be

extensions

said about these, they possess an eloquence and a

used use d in their thei r second Transparency Transpa rency article from

flexibility which continues

1956. While Whil e m iming imi ng R Rowe owe's 's sources, however, however, the

now

to be as overwhelm

ing as it was then. 12

projects

of

of

the gestalt diagrams

of

Cubism and collage provides

and Slutzky

Hejd uk and Eisenman simultane simultaneousl ously y

subvert the values This flexibility

Rowe

of

transparency, verticality; opti

cality, and figure-ground definition that the dia

an institutional and disciplinary basis for architecture

grams were initially rostered to support.

beginning with Rowe , while th e divers diversee series series o f ideal villas and collage cities that derive from this

Whereas the separation o f space and structure in the nine-square problem enabled one to articulate

House  

3

R E Somol

14

 

formal-plastic relations, the disengagement o f the

mechanisms outside form); process (the active pro

sign sign from the box in Venturi's Venturi's decorated deco rated shed ulti

cedures within formation); and usage (form's rela

mately suggested that these manipulations were

tion to a subject). With the neo-avant-garde neo-avant-garde,, then,

unnecessary, as all such relations would be con

form would be precisely subjected to the functions

sumed by surface noise. While Rowe and company

o f its linguistic descendants: informing traniforming,

attempted to replace the neutral, homogenous con

and performing.

ception of modernist space with the positive figura

For his part, Eisenman develops one o f his earli

tion ofform the neo-avant-garde began to question

est and most extensive analyses o f form by rewrit

the stability o f form through understanding it as a

ing two structures by the Italian architect Giuseppe

fictional construct, a sign This semiotic critique

d el Fascio and the Casa Terragni-the Casa del

would register that form was not a purely visual visual

Giuliani-Frigerio-having first encountered this

optic opt ical al pheno menon, not neutral, but constructed

work in the summer o f 1961 when he traveled to

by linguistic and institutional relations. Assuming

Como with Rowe. Previous to Eisenman's writings

multiple directions, this agenda was first broached in

on Terragni, in the late 1950s and early 1960s,

Venturi Ven turi's 's particular deployment deploym ent o f a collage practice

Rowe had already developed the terms for a high

that was not merely compositional but which would

formalist interpretation o f mod ern architec architecture ture,, pri

include both text as well as low or base references

marily through his elaborate readings o f Le Corbusier.

(specific iconic representations). Subsequently, move no t to Eisenman's deviation o f form would move

Eisenman's contribution to that discourse would be to suspend formal analysis on a structuralist base, a

information o r the sign as did Venturi's), Venturi's), bu t to the

seemingly slight shift in emphasis that would ulti

trace, the missing index o f formal processes (thus

mately undermine the way American formalism

stressing absence and the conceptual). At the same

had institutionalized modernism in the postwar

time, tim e, Hejduk would wo uld investi investigat gatee the theatrical con con 

context. In other words, Eisenman was able to

struction o f form through highly orchestrated rela

transform the discourse from within by appropriat

tions and instructions, both linguistic and contractual

ing the term formalism and deploying deploying it to rregis egis

(i.e., the symbolic). Thus, this three-pronged critique

ter the more polemical idea o f   work on language

would variously variously foreground context (the framing

in the Russian formalist sense. This move began to

Dummy Text or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Arc hitedure

displace the aestheticization o f the unique art work

By 1970 Eisenman would distinguish the prac

that accompanied the Anglo-American version o f

tices o f Corbusier and Terragni (and, indirectly,

formalism present in the work o f the New Critics,

Rowe's formalism from his own) by incorporating

Clement Greenberg, and even Rowe. More gener

terminology from the structural linguistics o f Noam

ally Eisenman's project has always entail entailed ed a retur n to the critical aspects o f the historical avant-garde, avant-garde,

Chomsky. While Corbusier's architecture remains committed to creating new meaning through

aspects that had been repressed in theory and prac

iconography, through the semantics o f the object,

tice precisely through the formalist reconstruction

Eisenman claims that Terragni's work is concerned

o f modernism after the war. As Eisenman wrote in

with revealing a syntactics o f the architectural lan

one o f his early essays on Terragni-indicating his

guage. This shift represents a move away from a con

intent to use these strategies as prescriptive design

cern with the perceptual aesthetic qualities o f the

tools- while formal analysis is a valuable art-histor

object toward an attempt to mark the conceptual rela-

ical method, in itself it can become merely descrip

tionships that underlie and make possible any (and

t i ve- an exercise in intellectual gymnastics. 13

ev every ery)) particular formal arrangement. Thus,

Not only was the history o f form rewritten, but

Terragni's work is said to mark the relationship

Eisenman would subject form itself to perpetual

between betwe en surface surface stru'cture and deep structure

revision through an exhaustive sequence o f opera

through transformational methods that Eisenman

tions: transformation, decomposition, grafting, scaling,

attempts to disclose via a series ofaxonometric dia

rotation, inversion, superposition, shifting, folding,

grams and projections.

etc.. And i t is the catalogue o f these procedures that etc

the axonometric technique (or parallel projection)

becomes the subject matter o f architecture, a disci

was one o f the historical avant-garde devices recu

plinary precondition to a diagrammatic approach.

perated by this generation, especially Eisenman and

Through an extreme logic, Eisenman engaged in a

Hejduk.14  In contrast to the other dominant mode Hejduk.14

critique both through and if calculation (or mathe

o f three-dimensional drawing, the central projection

matics) in the alternate senses o f both Rowe's ideal

or perspective o f Renaissance humanism, the

geometries and Christ opher Alexand Alexander's er's goodness

axonometric favors the autonomy o f the object by conveying measurable or objective information informatio n ov over er

o f fit.

t

should be noted here that·

Frankfurt Rebstockpark  

5

R E Somol

the distortion created by a vanishing point oriented

templation o f the high-art object. In this way

to the viewing subject.Where Rowe's analyses were

Eisenman's drawing on modernism, the diagram

undertaken separately in plan and elevation, the

matic supplements o f his American graffiti, places

axonometric simultaneously renders plan, section,

the architectural architectural objec t under erasure and initiates

and elevation, thus again collapsing the vertical and

the process o f its disappearance.

horizontal-an act that has been noted earlier, for

 6

on

example, as one aspiration o f Venturi's Billdingboard. Moreover, More over, unlike Corbusier's regulating l i n e s 

work Terragni, Eisenman was beginning a series architectura ecturall projects that w ould develop develop many o f o f archit

geometric descriptions appended to their objects

the transformational strategies strategies he wa wass fin din g in his

after construction-the three-dimensional device o f

analysis o f the modern canon. The ser seriall ially y n umber ed

the axonometric enables analysis and object to

transformational diagrams for Houses I and II, like

become congruent.

the retrospective diagrams created for Terragni's

Through hisaxonometric diagrams, Eisenman

work, sugge suggest st that the final built structures are are

argues that Terragni develops a conceptual ambiguity

merely indexical signs that point to a larger process

by superimposing two conceptions o f space-addi

o f which they are only a part. Not only is movement

tive/layered and subtractive/volumetric-neither o f

generated across the series o f individual frames-for

which ts dominant, but each o f which oscillates with

the whole process most resembles a cinematic opera

the other indefinitely. The effect o f this dual reading

tion with its montage of stills-but, given the nature

is not primarily aesthetic, but operates as an index o f

ofaxonometric projection (exaggerated here by

a deep structure: that is it investigates and makes

being rendered transparen transparently tly or as a wire frame),

apparent the possibilities and limitations o f the archi

there is also constant oscillation and reversible move

tecturallanguage itself. Eisenman's attention to form,

ment within each diagram: the observer is now

then, can be seen as a means to advance this transfor

inside, now outside; now under, now over over.. Recalling

mational method as both an analytic and synthetic

the new hybrid role o f the architect-critic, this effect

design tool.

suggests the coincidence and complicity between

t

is an attempt to fulfill the historical

avant-garde program o f a temporal and spatial move ment or dislocation that precludes any static con

 

Contemporaneously with the critical-historical

ihternal formal formal condition and external construc tion o f subjectivity. In addition to the transforma

l

1  

Dummy Text or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Arc hitedure

tional process effacing the object, this process also

somewhat less neutrally) designated as a nine-square.

begins to displace the subject as both designer and

Unlike the initial premises o f the nine-square prob

client) since the remaining architectural index is no

lem as articulated in Austin (and as continued in

longer dependent on the iconography or functions

Hejduk's private research into the theme through

relate atess to Eisenman's Eisenman's argumen a rgumentt that o f man. This rel

his seven Texas Houses from 1954-63), Eisenman

modern architecture architecture was never sufficiently

does not privilege "space" (of the van Doesberg

mo ernist

due to its func functio tionali nalism, sm, that it amo unted to nothing more than "a late phase ofhumanism."15 Shifting

variety) as the dominant dynamic element to be . read against the stasis o f structure (of the Dom-ino

architecture from a formal to a structuralist base, or

type). Instead, in House II (1969), for example, mul

from an iconic or semantic to an indexical or syntactic

tiple traces o f column and wall systems are regis

one, would enable architecture to finally register the

tered, traces which provide the overall spatial effects

insights o f the modernist avant-gardes, an account

o f the project. p roject. Thus, Thus , the activation o f the structural

which suspends classical-humanism's centrality o f the

grid o r frame engenders the spatial event o f the

subject and proposes architecture as "the abstract

o b je c t-a kind o f objectification o f the structure,

mediation between pre-existent sign systems:,16 or,

similar to Eisenman's association o f architecture

as he would write later o f Corbusier's domino, as a

more with the stu y o f n g u g e than with language its itself elf.. This tactic will reappear rea ppear in th e later work .

"self-referential sign." In displacing the author-subject (and, ultimately, the static object), Eisenman's early "cardboard" or "concept ual" architecture was designed "to shift

t h ~

when there is a becoming-figure o f the structure

see, for example, the Aronoff Center) or a

~

ism o f the grid which will finally manifest itself

primary focus from the sensual aspects o f obje