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Deconstructivism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Architecture

   Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North in Manchester comprises three
   apparently intersecting curved volumes.
   Enlarge
   Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North in Manchester comprises three
   apparently intersecting curved volumes.

   Deconstructivism in architecture, also called deconstruction, is a
   development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It
   is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, non-linear processes of
   design, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or
   skin, and apparent non-Euclidean geometry, (i.e., non- rectilinear
   shapes) which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of
   architecture, such as structure and envelope. The finished visual
   appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist "styles"
   is characterised by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled
   chaos.

   Important events in the history of the deconstructivist movement
   include the 1982 Parc de la Villette architectural design competition
   (especially the entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman and
   Bernard Tschumi's winning entry), the Museum of Modern Art’s 1988
   Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in New York, organized by
   Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, and the 1989 opening of the Wexner
   Centre for the Arts in Columbus, designed by Peter Eisenman. The
   Deconstructivist Exhibtion festured works by Frank Gehry, Daniel
   Liebeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau,
   and Bernard Tschumi. Since the exhibition, many of the architects who
   were associated with Deconstructivism have distanced themselves from
   the term. Nonetheless, the term has stuck and has now, in fact, come to
   embrace a general trend within contemporary architecture.

   Originally, some of the architects known as Deconstructivists were
   influenced by the ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
   Eisenman, developed a personal relationship with Derrida, but even so,
   his approach to architectural design was developed long before he
   became a Deconstructivist. For him Deconstructivism should be
   considered an extension of his interest in radical formalism.
   Deconstructivism was also influenced by the formal experimentation and
   geometric imbalances of Russian constructivist. There are additional
   references in deconstructivism to 20th-century movements: the
   modernism/ postmodernism interplay, expressionism, cubism, minimalism
   and contemporary art. The attempt in deconstructivism throughout is to
   move architecture away from what its practitioners see as the
   constricting 'rules' of modernism such as " form follows function", "
   purity of form", " truth to materials".

History, context & influences

Modernism and postmodernism

   Seattle Central Library by Rem Koolhaas and OMA
   Enlarge
   Seattle Central Library by Rem Koolhaas and OMA

   Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture stands in opposition to
   the ordered rationality of Modernism. Its relationship with
   Postmodernism is also decidedly contrary. Though postmodernist and
   nascent deconstructivist architects published theories alongside each
   other in the journal Oppositions (published 1973–84), that journal's
   contents mark the beginning of a decisive break between the two
   movements. Deconstruction took a confrontational stance toward much of
   architecture and architectural history, wanting to disjoin and
   disassemble architecture. While postmodernism returned to embrace—
   often slyly or ironically—the historical references that modernism had
   shunned, deconstructivism rejects the postmodern acceptance of such
   references. It also rejects the idea of ornament as a after-thought or
   decoration. These principles have meant that deconstructivism aligns
   itself somewhat with the sensibilitites of modernist anti-historicism.

   In addition to Oppositions, another text that separated
   deconstructivism from the fray of modernism and postmodernism was the
   publication of Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in
   architecture (1966). A defining point for both postmodernism and for
   deconstructivism, Complexity and Contradiction argues against the
   purity, clarity and simplicity of modernism. With its publication,
   functionalism and rationalism, the two main branches of modernism, were
   overturned as paradigms according to postmodernist and deconstructivist
   readings, with differing readings. The postmodern reading of Venturi
   was that ornament and historical allusion added a richness to
   architecture that modernism had foregone. Some Postmodern architects
   endeavored to reapply ornaments even to economical and minimal
   buildings, an effort best illustrated by Venturi's concept of "the
   decorated shed". Rationalism of design was dismissed but the
   functionalism of the building was still somewhat intact. This is close
   to the thesis of Venturi's next major work, that signs and ornament can
   be applied to a pragmatic architecture, and instill the philosophic
   complexities of semiology.
   Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, Weil am Rhein
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   Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, Weil am Rhein

   The deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is quite
   different. The basic building was the subject of problematics and
   intricacies in deconstructivism, with no detachment for ornament.
   Rather than separating ornament and function, like postmodernists such
   as Venturi, the functional aspects of buildings were called into
   question. Geometry was to deconstructivists what ornament was to
   postmodernists, the subject of complication, and this complication of
   geometry was in turn, applied to the functional, structural, and
   spacial aspects of deconstructivist buildings. One example of
   deconstructivist complexity is Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum in
   Weil-am-Rhein, which takes the typical unadorned white cube of
   modernist art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries
   reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism. This subverts the
   functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism,
   particularly the international style, of which its white stucco skin is
   reminiscent, as a starting point. Another example of the
   deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is Peter
   Eisenman's Wexner Center for the Arts. The Wexner Centre takes the
   archetypal form of the castle, which it then imbues with complexity in
   a series of cuts and fragmentations. A three-dimensional grid, runs
   somewhat arbitrarily through the building . The grid, as a reference to
   modernism, of which it is an accoutrement, collides with the medieval
   antiquity of a castle. Some of the grid's columns intentionally don't
   reach the ground, hovering over stairways creating a sense of neurotic
   unease and contradicting the structural purpose of the column. The
   Wexner Centre deconstructs the archetype of the castle and renders its
   spaces and structure with conflict and difference.

Deconstructivist philosophy

   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 Parc de la Villette
   competition, documented in Chora l 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 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 deconstruction.

   According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when
   working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural
   deconstruction requires the existence of a particular archetypal
   construction, a strongly-established conventional expectation to play
   flexibly against. The design of Frank Gehry’s own Santa Monica
   residence, (from 1978), has been cited as a prototypical variation on a
   standard theme: beginning with an ordinary house in an ordinary
   neighbourhood, Gehry altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and
   other expectations in a playful subversion. The result is an example of
   Deconstruction.

   In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and
   deconstruction, 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 a 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 also reflect themes of trace
   and erasure.

Constructivism and Russian Futurism

   Wolkenbügel ("Cloud-hanger"): photomontage of an unbuilt building
   designed by El Lissitzky in 1924.
   Enlarge
   Wolkenbügel ("Cloud-hanger"): photomontage of an unbuilt building
   designed by El Lissitzky in 1924.

   Another major current in deconstructivist architecture takes
   inspiration from the Russian Constructivist and Futurist movements of
   the early twentieth century, both in their graphics and in their
   visionary architecture, little of which was actually constructed.

   Artists Naum Gabo, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and Alexander
   Rodchenko, have influenced the graphic sense of geometric forms of
   deconstructivist architects such as Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
   Both Deconstructivism and Constructivism have been concerned with the
   tectonics of making an abstract assemblage. Both were concerned with
   the radical simplicity of geometric forms as the primary artistic
   content, expressed in graphics, sculpture and architecture. The
   Constructivist tendency toward purism, though, is absent in
   Deconstructivism: form is often deformed when construction is
   deconstructed. Also lessened or absent is the advocacy of socialist and
   collectivist causes, propaganda for which informed constructivism.

   The primary graphic motifs of constructivism were the rectangular bar
   and the triangular wedge, others were the more basic geometries of the
   square and the circle. In his series Prouns, El Lizzitsky assembled
   collections of geometries at various angles floating free in space.
   They evoke basic structural units such as bars of steel or sawn lumber
   loosely attached, piled, or scattered. They were also often drafted and
   share aspects with technical drawing and engineering drawing. Similar
   in composition is the more recent deconstructivist series Micromegas by
   Daniel Libeskind.

     The symbolic breakdown of the wall effected by introducing the
     Constructivist motifs of tilted and crossed bars sets up a
     subversion of the walls that define the bar itself. ...This apparent
     chaos actually constructs the walls that define the bar; it is the
     structure. The internal disorder produces the bar while splitting it
     even as gashes open up along its length.

     —Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley, Deconstructive Architecture, p.34

   The raw structuralism of constructivist architects Ivan Leonidov,
   Konstantin Melnikov, Alexander Vesnin and Vladimir Tatlin have also had
   an impact on deconstructivist architects, notably Rem Koolhaas. Their
   work, in final form, seems to embody the process of construction. They
   finalize the temporary and transitional aspects of building sites, the
   scaffolds and cranes necessary for buildings of large scope. El
   Lissitzky's Das Wolkenbügel (illustration), resembling cranes connected
   and made habitable, is a good precedent for Koolhaas' China Central
   Television tower. Koolhaas also takes after Ivan Leonidov in an
   architecture that seems like a perennial construction site.

Contemporary art

   Two strains of modern art, minimalism and cubism, have had an influence
   on deconstructivism. Analytical cubism had a sure effect on
   deconstructivism, as forms and content are dissected and viewed from
   different perspectives simultaneously. A synchronicity of disjoined
   space is evident in many of the works of Frank Gehry and Bernard
   Tschumi. Synthetic cubism, with its application of found art, is not as
   great an influence on deconstructivism as Analytical cubism, but is
   still found in the earlier and more vernacular works of Frank Gehry.
   Deconstructivism also shares with minimalism a disconnection from
   cultural references. It also often shares with minimalism notions of
   conceptual art.
   UFA-Palast in Dresden by Coop Himmelb(l)au
   Enlarge
   UFA-Palast in Dresden by Coop Himmelb(l)au

   With its tendency toward deformation and dislocation, there is also an
   aspect of expressionism and expressionist architecture associated with
   deconstructivism. At times deconstructivism mirrors varieties of
   expressionism, neo-expressionism, and abstract expressionism as well.
   The angular forms of the Ufa Cinema Centre by Coop Himmelb(l)au recall
   the abstract geometries of the numbered paintings of Franz Kline, in
   their unadorned masses. The UFA Cinema Centre also would make a likely
   setting for the angular figures depicted in urban German street scenes
   by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The work of Wassily Kandinsky also bears
   similarities to deconstructivist architecture. His movement into
   abstract expressionism and away from figurative work, is in the same
   spirit as the deconstructivist rejection of ornament for geometries.

   Several artists in the 1980s and 1990s contributed work that influenced
   or took part in deconstructivism. Maya Lin and Rachel Whiteread are two
   examples. Lin's 1982 project for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with
   its granite slabs severing the ground plane, is one. Its shard-like
   form and reduction of content to a minimalist text influenced
   deconstructivism, with its sense of fragmentation and emphasis on
   reading the monument. Lin also contributed work for Eisenman's Wexner
   Centre. Rachel Whiteread's cast architectural spaces are another
   instance where contemporary art is confluent with architecture. Ghost
   (1990), an entire living space cast in plaster, solidifying the void,
   alludes to Derrida's notion of architectural presence. Gordon
   Matta-Clark's Building cuts were deconstructed sections of buildings
   exhibited in art galleries.

1988 MOMA exhibition

   Dancing House in Prague by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry
   Enlarge
   Dancing House in Prague by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry

   Mark Wigley and Phillip Johnson curated the 1988 Museum of Modern Art
   exhibition Deconstructivist architecture, which crystalized the
   movement, and brought fame and notoriety to its key practitioners. The
   architects presented at the exhibition were Peter Eisenman, Frank
   Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and
   Bernard Tschumi. Mark Wigley wrote the accompanying essay and tried to
   show a common thread among the various architects whose work was
   usually more noted for their differences.

     The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in
     which the dream of pure form has been disturbed. It is the ability
     to disturb our thinking about form that makes these projects
     deconstructive. The show examines an episode, a point of
     intersection between several architects where each constructs an
     unsettling building by exploiting the hidden potential of modernism.

     —Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley, Excerpts from Deconstructivist
     Architecture

Computer-aided design

   MIT's Stata Center, opened March 16, 2004.
   Enlarge
   MIT's Stata Centre, opened March 16, 2004.

   Computer aided design is now an essential tool in most aspects of
   contemporary architecture, but the particular nature of deconstrucivism
   makes the use of computers especially pertinent. Three-dimensional
   modelling and animation (virtual and physical) assists in the
   conception of very complex spaces, while the ability to link computer
   models to manufacturing jigs (CAM - Computer-aided manufacturing)
   allows the mass production of subtly different modular elements to be
   achieved at affordable costs. In retrospect many early deconstructivist
   works appear to have been conceived with the aid of a computer, but
   were not; Zaha Hadid's sketches for instance. Also, Gehry is noted for
   producing many physical models as well as computer models as part of
   his design process. Though the computer has made the designing of
   complex shapes much easier, not everything that looks odd is
   "deconstructivist."

Critical responses

   Since the publication of Kenneth Frampton's Modern Architecture: A
   Critical History (first edition 1980) there has been a keen
   consciousness of the role of criticism within architectural theory.
   Whilst referencing Derrida as a philosophical influence,
   deconstructivism can also be seen as having as much a basis in critical
   theory as the other major offshoot of postmodernism, critical
   regionalism. The two aspects of critical theory, urgency and analysis,
   are found in deconstructivism. There is a tendency to re-examine and
   critique other works or precedents in deconstructivism, and also a
   tendency to set esthetic issues in the foreground. An example of this
   is the Wexner Centre. Critical Theory, however, had at its core a
   critique of capitalism and its excess, and from that respect many of
   the works of the Deconstructivists would fail in that regard if only
   they are made for an elite and are, as objects, highly expensive,
   despite whatever critique they may claim to impart on the conventions
   of design.

   The Wexner Centre brings vital architectural topics such as function
   and precedent to prominence and displays their urgency in architectural
   discourse, in an analytical and critical way. The difference between
   criticality in deconstructivism and criticality in critical
   regionalism, is that critical regionalism reduces the overall level of
   complexity involved and maintains a clearer analysis while attempting
   to reconcile modernist architecture with local differences. In effect,
   this leads to a modernist "vernacular". Critical regionalism displays a
   lack of self-criticism and a utopianism of place. Deconstructivism,
   meanwhile, maintains a level of self-criticism, as well as external
   criticism and tends towards maintaining a level of complexity. Some
   architects identified with the movement, notably Frank Gehry, who often
   takes an anti-philosophical stance, have actively rejected the
   classification of their work as deconstructivist. Others remain
   critical as much of their own work as that of precedents and
   contemporaries.
   The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, on the Nervión River in
   downtown Bilbao, Spain.
   Enlarge
   The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, on the Nervión River in
   downtown Bilbao, Spain.

   Critics of deconstructivism see it as a purely formal exercise with
   little social significance. Kenneth Frampton finds it "elitist and
   detached." Other criticisms are similar to those of deconstructivist
   philosophy—that since the act of deconstruction is not an empirical
   process, it can result in whatever an architect wishes, and it thus
   suffers from a lack of consistency. Today there is a sense that the
   philosophical underpinnings of the beginning of the movement have been
   lost, and all that is left is the aesthetic of deconstruction.

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