Hi everyone, hope you are doing
well, thank you all for attending, joining us here today we have more than 2000 people
attending from all around the world My name is Yazan Nasrallah , graduated
as an architect and I am a member of Arcnode team, we started a series of lectures during this time to inspire students to learn new things. Our
professor of theory at our university introduced us to the idea, that
one's capacity for doing can be developed by rediscovering the power of
the design architecture. Her lecture in the course of "analysis and a criticism"
in architecture and "modern architecture" introduced us to the world of Eisenman, Colin Rowe, Rem Koolhaas, Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, Mimar Sinan, Palladio, Albertiy, and many other great thinkers artists and architects.
She took us by hand to read sections of Eisenman ten canonical buildings
and Terrani, Transformations and the decompositions and critiques. Her lectures made us develop our observation on design as a creative discipline of great theoretical content. On the behalf of the architectural community.
My Colleague Ghayth will read the following introductory speech about Eisenman.
Hello and welcome everyone we're glad to have you here, my name is
Ghayth Awad, I will be reading the introduction of this great seminar and
we'd like to welcome Mr. Peter Eisenman here and you start with the
description. Almost six years ago Peter wrote the following as an ending
to his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University it is not the role
of the contemporary critic to interpret and direct architecture, but rather to
provide some order some point of reference which an understanding of the
world may be evolved Theory should be evolved for the
understanding of the principles and not for the codifying
of them to this end, theory should not be considered as a neatly wrapped
package, but rather as continuously applicable and open-ended
methodology. In that sense Peter opted not to right conclusions to
end his dissertation at that moment in time instead his project from that
moment on is to consider the possibility of logic and logical argument within
modern architecture, With that colossal project of his
Peter enriched our lives with outstanding philosophical arguments
which includes 60 years of groundbreaking text, thank you for that.
In in the last two decades alone his argument had been the subject of tens of
books and catalogs including a very selective list, ten canonical buildings
Palladio virtual, The formal basis of modern architecture Peter Eisenman
inside-out selected writings and giuseppe tartini: Transformations, decompositions and critiques. His realized buildings and unbuilt projects never
arrived silently. they are always taking out difficult and novel architectural domains, and here to
name a few: the city of Galicia in Spain
archaeological museum of and archeo-
park, Wexner center of the arts in Ohio
and the serial string of residential houses of the 1975. The essence of
Peter's lecture today titled: the process of design and inspiration is related to
the ongoing discussion among designers on how to think about an architectural
project so thank you very much again for your coming, and we are really
glad to have you here and we are waiting for your lecture, thank you. well , thank you all Its a great pleasure for me and a great challenge to speak in Amman I've never been to a Amman, but someday
probably, I'm going to do this in three parts, the first part I'm
going to talk about the theoretical evolution of
architecture in the West ,the second part I'm going to show a recently completed
building in Milan Italy and the third part will be questions from you the
audience I want to go back because the gentleman
was saying that his professor of theory when I started architecture in 1950 at
Cornell, there was no professor of theory there was no theory, the only thing that
I had read in 1950 was in Rand's The Fountainhead which was a book of fiction
made into a movie with Gary Cooper and I wanted to be like this architect
in the book a great designer and so when I got out of the army I went to work for
Walter Gropius in Cambridge Massachusetts
and I thought this was the pinnacle of where one could be. I have soon realized that Water Gropius and many other architects of name were no more than commercial
architects and it was not something spiritual or cultural that I wanted so I
went back to graduate school and I met and had dinner with the great English
architect young and unknown at the time Jim sterling and I showed him a housing
project that I was working on and he said you know Peter you're a really
great designer you're really good designer but you don't know anything
about architecture and I thought to myself how can I be a good designer and
not know anything about architecture and I thought I so what didn't mean I don't
know anything about art and so I went to Cambridge England I traveled with Colin
Rowe I did a dissertation which I never expected to do
I didn't ever thought I was going to teach I was going to be a designing architect
the big arcade star and what I realized at Cambridge and what Jim sterling told
me was that there were two sides to architecture, there was the design side
and the theoretical side let's say and if you didn't have an idea you were just
making cartoons bubbles so I realized the importance of ideas I went on to
teach our written books I'm still teaching Indiana I'm still practicing
architecture I'm doing three things that I think an architect should do one is to
think about architecture to read number two to build number three is to teach
and I like all three of those things Jim sterling also said to me at one time he
said if you don't build nobody will care about what you think and that's also
true so there's a balance between thinking and doing I want to go back to
the 1970s and 1960s in the United States the first book of theory that was
written in the Western world let's say in America particular was Bob Venturi's
complexity and contradiction in 1966 it was a really important book because it
talked about the need for history the need for precedent and architecture and
that you had to study certain buildings and of course I had traveled with Colin
Rowe in Italy and seen a lot of these buildings and row the first time I was
in Italy we were standing looking at a lady in villa and he said to me
something again we animated my thinking he said I want you
to stand and look at the facade until you can tell me something on that facade
that you can't see and I thought what's that something I can't see I'm to tell
you about anyway I began solving those issues and I wrote a dissertation which
still animates my work today after venturi
in 1966 there was a second book this time with his wife Denise Scott Brown
called learning from Las Vegas and this was completely different than a
complexity and contradiction which was about the the being of
architecture this was about the image of architecture and the meanings and it was
about what you could see in the Las Vegas Strip and buildings that look like
they're built there meaning a completely different idea and then so in 72 I began
to think differently going back to my doctoral thesis going back to lessons
that I learned from Colin Rowe and I started to work on other things at the
same time in 1972 and this is a key the key 10 years that say of my life
occurred between 72 and 82 let's take, Aldo Rossi was also a very
famous architect was asked to leave the University in Italy because he was a
member of the Communist Party and he was invited to Zurich by a man called
Bernard Hursley and Hursley asked Rossi to be a teacher and he went from 1970 to
72 and he had an exhibition in 72 in Zurich and my friend John Hejduk who
was the Dean at Cooper Union also where important influence on my work said
we've got to bring our OC to New York and so this started a relationship an
international relationship of thinking between New York and Italy and also in
England so there was really the first dialogue between countries and Rossi had
been put in charge of the Milan tree anomaly one of the very famous
exhibitions that happened every three years very similar to the Venice
Biennale which happens every two years and Rossi he decided to invite two
different groups of young architects to this triennially and it to me
was the most important exhibition of the 70s and it was called rationalism and it
invited two groups radical youth which were like superstudio and Archigram, Archizoom the sort of radical Urbanists and the rational architects
which were the New York five young architects like Reinhardt and right men
etc and these two groups were in this exhibition and a magazine by the name of
Condor espacio which means against space edited by Ezio Bonfante and massimo
scolari published an article called latin
donessa the tendency and lots and Enza set out for the next five or six years
what a theoretical way of thinking that could be shared in New York in London
and in Venice in Milan and lots and enter was the tendency
toward a rational architecture is really interesting and then after the 73
exhibition in 76 1976 Vittorio Gregg aunty who is a very famous architect the
Revati said I want to have an international Biennale not a three
Analia better be an ally and it was there actually the first architecture
Biennale and it was called Europa America in other words a dialogue
between what was happening in Europe and what was happening in the United States
and again the I was invited to select the American representation and we had
Bob bantery we had Charles Moore Caesar Pelli all the name people that you could
imagine Bob Stern Stanley Tiger Minh for the American side and in the European
side there was Hans whole line and Sterling and Smithson and Monet oh and
Rosie I'm Annie know the names that if you don't know them you should know them
in any case they were they were known to all of us and there was this dialogue
Europe America which was really interesting and he all the architects
got together 11 from Europe and 11 from the United States in this exhibition
they're really the first architectural Biennale in 1976 the second that's the
second exhibition in 1978 there was an exhibition in Italy called Roma in
Toyota Brown interrupted and what it was was a
way of looking at the city of Rome and by 12 different architects who were
could be said to be postmodern that is supposed to the rationalist opposed to
the radicals a third group which came out of learning from Las Vegas was Rama
in Toyota and that was in 1978 also in 78 as a counter reaction to that and and
you have to understand that most of the theoretical work that was developed in
the West happened in these ten years in the 70s and it happened because people
didn't have much work to build they were we were working on exhibitions and ideas
and so we met in Venice we were invited to Venice myself and Rafael Moneo Aldo
Rossi etc to John Hannah Raymond Abraham who was 10 architects it was called 10
projects for Conrad show and that was in response to Roman Toyota so the
rationalist architects against the postmodern architects and there was
always in the seventies these dialogues which were really important and and very
strongly felt so much so I'll tell you a personal story then when Paolo português
he decided to have the first Biennale he erased Greg out these Biennale and said
now we'll have the real first Biennale in 1980 and he invited postmodern
architects and I received a call from Manfred Okafor II who was a close friend
at the time and said to me Peter you cannot go in this exhibition this is
something we have to stay away from these things of
it was silly not to do it but I listen to before we I didn't go into the
exhibition it was a big success and I always thought why was I doing that in
any case the the period that I'm talking about comes to a closure in 1980 with
the score the exhibition called strata Nova SEMA and these all these things can
find in books and magazines in any case they were all the postmodern architects
a few years later in the United States Philip Johnson who was a kind of
animator of young architects he was a really a person interested in supporting
young architects decided that he wanted to have a show in at the Museum of
Modern Art big architecture show that in fact put the end as it were to
post-modernism and that was what started in 72 ended in 1988 at MoMA and Philip
invited REM koolhaas Frank Gehry Wolfe Prix Danny Lee was can
Peter Eisenman aha the all of what could be considered the fringe postmodern
architects they weren't Modern architects there was something else
it was the generation after the sterling Rossi hungers venturi debt generation in
other words these were people that were 10 15 years younger and it was really an
important exhibition was called constructivism and it was about it was a
combination of Russian constructivist and French deconstruction philosophy and
as you know all of the architects that participated we're doing crazy form
think then not as crazy as going on today but as crazy as the computers
would let you do an 88 show put an end as it were to the sort of Kitsch
graphics post-modernism and since 88 we have been struggling in the Western
world to figure out what to do there are many ideas and one of the things that's
important to understand is the takeover of the digital and there's a professor
in London by the name of Mario carpel who's written two books on the digital
one call the from al-gharafa bet to algorithm was the first book in a second
well the second digital turn and Mario if you haven't read the books they're
really important to read because what he shows is how the digital has taken over
our curtain my critique of the digital and I've written it out someplace I'm I
think Mario is a really good thinker but the thing that is important to
understand is what the digital has done and especially in this second digital
has taken gone from what one would call line modelling to voxel modelling and
that is means that it can process data and enormous quantities as fast as a
small data and so what architecture which used to be that took time and was
difficult a resistant form of thinking now could
be easily done by anybody through big data through the voxel platform and
what's happened is what's happened to resistant architecture and I think this
is the the really key is that we can now produce architecture of intensity any complexity
any difficulty which used to be stand against the easy consumption model of
society architecture was a resistant form to construct to consumption and the
problem with the digital now is that the digital no longer mean that architecture
is resistant and that's a real problem for teachers and architects and so where
is Peter Eisenman today as a teacher well I I'm working right now on a book
on Albert II because I think Albert II is a precedent that's very important for
young architects and I think I wrote a book on Palladio I'm writing a book now
and I'll bear thee because I don't think any of the practicing architects today
and many of their teeth the teachers who go along with this and critics have any
idea of a resistance to consumption and the one thing that architecture has
always been able to do great architecture critical architecture etc
was an exhibit a resistance of consumption one we are no longer able to
do that what is the role of architecture so it's a real question and it's one
that the reason why I teach and I build I think anyway what I'm going to do is
show a building now which is important for me because it deals with the idea of
precedent and I think for young architects you have to know precedents
you have to know Jim sterling you have to know a little
see to know look or PCA and Mies van der Rohe mini and you need to know Palladio
you need to know how Bentley all the way back to Vitruvius so history and theory
that is the ideas of those architects that I named are really important to
understand and then there are more difficult architects like Carlo Rinaldi
and Luigi Moretti and many others who have gone as a sort of second level in
architecture but still very important so I believe that it's important for every
young architect not to just be a great designer but to have a cultural
understanding not only of the West but of the middle east of the East etc and
what's happening in America today in our graduate schools is we have students
from all over from China Japan etc one of my best students is a young
Palestinian Arab who is now teaching in in Jerusalem and architecture today that's why I'm
talking here is really an in a global phenomena and yes we all face global
warming we all face the problem of carbon form with all the force those
things but we're not going to be able to face them as architects if we don't know
our disciplines it's not enough to know about global warming and carbon form but
what we need to know is how can architecture attack these things
so I'm going to show a project that just recently completed in Milan Italy a
housing project as the second part of this discussion
I've run through the theoretical thing pretty quickly but it's there people can
watched it on YouTube or however all of these things somehow managed their way
into YouTube and anyway I'm gonna try and get these slides on the screen so
you guys be patient with me Wow okay I'm gonna try and do this let's
see so I got boink host disabled attendees screen sharing so that's and
then it'll go right okay this is an aerial view of the context our building
is right here the gray building it's halfway between the Momo and the School
of Architecture the circle is where the profits a triangular site the school of
architecture is over here and then Duomo is down on the lower left and this was
the site we were given we wanted in a competition against guru Gaudi and we
looked around at Milan housing types and this is one of the famous projects of
the 1920s by a Milanese architect called tehrani Moochie oh it's called the Cobb
Ruta that is beautiful house I mean brutal house because the Italians didn't
like it at all when it was built it was too radical for 1922
the thing that I liked about it and I thought was really important was the
striation of the different stones there were three different levels confirming
and conforming to the to the ace to the piano nobile a in this darker gray and
to the attic story the Renaissance idea of the tripartite facade and so we
decided we were going to do a similar kind of idea like none of present-day
buildings to anything like this anyway another important thing for us was the
way musio handled the corner site in this very strange and you can see
there's a division between his building and another building on this lower end
of the site and the scale of the window openings the scale and the tripartite
disposition of organization on the facade was very important so muchi au
was a precedent that we thought was really important the the problem was
this is the the mass of the side we did a series of diagrammatic studies there
is a existing building at this lower corner here in the white area where we
couldn't build and there were all sorts of restrictions we needed to get 3585
units in order to make it work for a developer and we couldn't build this it
violated all kinds of light in air restrictions what you're going to see is
a series of diagrams so we have to have this you see the arrows we have to have
this amount of distance so we had to cut this
corner away then we had to move the block on the northeast side in because
we couldn't have that height we were limited and hide in any case because we
were in the flight path of the City Airport Little Italy not day so we
started to get something like this and it was a very rational way of working we
had to set back again for height and mass requirements from the corner we
have to have this dimensional gap here we had to set back over here so we ended
up with a building envelope in number 6 drawing that didn't look like anything
was just nothing and so we decided to join the system and the two pieces and
produce one feet and you can see the form that it took and then we went
through a smooth surface I've never done a curvy building before it's not
something I wanted to do but it was something that was necessary to get the
units in the project the second thing that we decided that we wanted to do in
the organization was to have no corridors and so what we did was have
you can see the dark thickness the dark areas are six elevator cores which go
from the bottom to the top so that you get an apartment on either side on each
floor so we have nine fleurs times two is 18 times five is
ninety possible units and you take out the five that are for the existing
building and you get eighty five units and so because we had no Carter's and
did the elevators yes who are a little more expensive but you had the kind of
privacy with only one other tenant on either side of your elevator corridor so
we were very pleased with that and here you can see the development of
vertically we had the the base was a certain going to be a certain kind of
roman sandstone a sort of yellowish color there was going to be the piano
nobile a which was going to be gray and then there was going to be a top area
which was going to be white marble and so you can see in the layout how it sits
on the site and it receives a a garden a public garden here which extends across
our side into a private garden a public garden on the site another advantage
that we were thinking about in addition to doing architecture was that we wanted
to have through ventilation in other words that we didn't need air
conditioning because we could save on electric power because each each
apartment has room windows on the other side some have the public spaces on the
right side some have been on the left side but the other
compensatory bedrooms and things open so that there's through air on each floor
here you can see a typical floor plan and what you will notice also is here in
the course that you can see 6/6 course an apartment and an apartment and an
apartment and each apartment has not only through air but has a terrace so on
this level of terrace is on the inboard side and then there'll be terraces on
the outboard side so there's the the structure that we came up with to solve
a con housing accommodation and then you can see at the piano nobile a there are
terrorists on the out port side of the project again the plans the section
what's important about the section is I always believe that there are fronts and
backs to buildings if you look at Renaissance buildings the Front's of
buildings are articulated in the backs I mean the Front's are flat the backs
articulated and so what we needed was a way of articulating the project so the
base is three levels here there's a piano Nolen overlay level here which is
set in and has terraces on the backside these terraces on the front side and
then the attic story protrudes on the front so there is a play between the
front back there's a shit of the volume through these structure
and that's why on the top you begin to see the structure appearing steel
aluminum square shapes that take up where the volume has been moved and
that's why you're going to see not only different color stone different location
for the stone but also the structure begins to reveal itself and so here you
see in the rendering you get a what will be a brownish sandstone at the lower
level piano nobile a which is basically a glass and then marble floors on top
which because of its movement reveals this grid and you can see the grid
revealed on the front more than the back it's pushed through the backside onto
the front side so those are the drawings and there you can see from the outboard
corner here is that public open space you can see the Roman sandstone is a
yellowish color here the piano nobile a is more of a open and glazed and then
the white marble is on top with the projection through of the grid so it
peels away because these are urban houses three stories some of them two
stories and single story with large outdoor terraces so actually from the
upper level here you can view out over the rules of Milan see the Duomo etc
because most of Milan is just slightly Oh
lower than our building so you get a building that has a contextual
preparation reverberation let's say with mood Cos Cob ruta but has a quality of
being of today it's not a monk guard but it's
it's thoughtful about architecture and there are a lot of things and one can
see that deal with the idea of architecture so here is the back side of
the building and you'll notice that the grid is set in is pushed into the marble
and you see the reveals in aware of the grid pushes through to the front
so the front is articulated in a different way than the back even though
that the building is the same thickness throughout it has a different quality in
the back than the front there is the existing building which we were allowed
to build on top of as long as we didn't touch it
set our building back and you can see the building as it moves down to the
corner at the other side and here is the existing building and our building that
sits next to it these are modern Milan housing blocks and we're very excited
with this it's a very thoughtful I think a way of putting a building together
trying to pick up precedents from quality building and ideas of building
in on and you can see the the garden and it
clearly is a new building is it modern is it postmodern is it post digital
that's a question but right now it's all the upon the apartments are all rented
and I think that's important and on the basis of this we're doing a another
housing project in Tbilisi and the capital of Georgia were two thousand
units of market housing coming off of this project and we're going to be
starting that in October but it's really exciting to take the challenge of the
next scale this is nine eighty five units and now we're going up to two
thousand units interesting some night shots that were
taken and of course the light reflects differently on a different color stone
and different texture from a soft stone to a hard stone to metal panels so it's
a very complex facade the interior of the apartments of course this is we
furnished this it's not the way they would necessarily end up but you can see
they're very light and there's a a axonometric of the different materials
in the floor and in this wood paneling and shelving you can see how material
also becomes important in the organization of signs in in project here
are some later pictures that were taken by a small drone which is really
interesting you can really get to see a roof scape now with these drone images there's a great shot looking down so the
whole idea of the project is very clear from the drone view it's like a bird's
eye so here you can see the color very clearly playing between the bottom bass
and piano nobile a and Avex story okay I I wanted to do a half hour Theory a half
hour building and we have a half an hour for questions so, thank you, it was a very
interesting presentation thank you very much, we got a lot of questions to ask
about the subject within the first part of the lecture and the second part
so we will start with the question with the from Yazan here, okay my question is
what you had mentioned today the term of architecture of resistance and
resistance of conception, these concepts are not very clear to us yet,
and we need further explanation what exactly they mean,
can you please explain explain this to us, what is the word
if you could explain to us more about what you mentioned
in the sort of this lecture at the term of architecture of
resistance and resistance okay, I think that, alright throughout the history of art whether
it's architecture painting and sculpture music etc has always resisted
commodification that is great art was always outside of the marketplace
whether it was painting music opera etc it was another issue it defines for me
not the market so much but they this the culture, the state of culture so that I
believe if we were come on let's say you would try and make a
building that represented the cultural of the aspirations of the culture of Amman
and those aspirations are not just in mere building but are in architecture
which is another form of resistance to consumption in other words that Amman
wants to or any capital city wants to be known for its resistance to
commodification and culture and I think that's the the idea of the idealist strain in
what I would call democracy in other words democracy has an ideal attitude
which is a resistance through consumption okay and that's what I mean and what I
believe is that while my building solves problems that a developer has to make
money etc it also projects an idea about Milan today and related to Milan in 1920
a hundred years ago and so it relates to the idea of Milan, the ideal of Milan
rather than to consumption of imagery so it resists consumption at the same time
it produces another kind of imagery I hope that answer, In one of your interviews you mentioned that you don't really enjoy designing
houses where the serve to control the progression of the design
and in another you mentioned that you don't enjoy working on elevations, but it is
very interesting how you dealt with this both here in this project. What we can
learn from your experience is it the context or is it the presidents.
Well, first of all at one point in my career going back to when I was just doing
houses I thought that I that's what I wanted to do what I realized was the
house while it solved a lot of architectural ideas culturally and could
be a resistant form was too small a scale you needed to deal with scale that
is with the urban and so what I'm interested in most in, is projects that
deal with the urban but are individual buildings whether it's a concert hall, a
school, a mosque whatever I think those individual buildings affect a larger
scale, the house doesn't do that so I think that culturally the certain
buildings can be resistant and others not and I would have thought that the
project we did in Milan is a perfect in-between scale that you couldn't build
that scale in New York because the cost of the land is so much that you have to
build high what would happen if Peter Eisenman did high-rise I don't know I've
done I projected several high-rises that haven't gotten built because they may
have been too costly or whatever but it's a challenging project
the high-rise but the scale to me there are two things that in
architecture that are not in the other arts the ground in other words you've
got to deal with the the land and you have to deal with the scale and these
are two important issues that affect any architecture whether it's a small cabin
or it's a skyscraper, one has to deal with the context that is the ground, one
has to deal with the scale relation to that Also I want to ask you something but based on comparison between two project of yours this one here and the one you did in Istanbul, the Yenikapi project. In that project I noticed that you used the ordering system
of Hagia Sophia. right the walls inside and the way you
maximize the the scale of the of the element inside and how you created
This order but holds the entire project I understood that you use the traditional
and historical reference as sort of mathematics to organize the project and
then reflect it in a new way with the new scale and new experience, looking
into this project the ordering system that you got your inspiration from is
the is actually the building that exists on the side with the stone in
the main facade on the urban situation, is that right ? first of all, every project has to have
an organizing scale grid etc Le Corbusier had one, Mies van der Rohe had it etc what we wanted to find was one that you wouldn't recognize but is there
in other words we Sofia and there's some beautiful rhythms and the same with this
project we're doing in Georgia we found beautiful symbolic rhythms
and Eastern Orthodox churches and fabrics that we used in Georgia so what
we do every time is take is to study the cultural context to find a grid that's
not obvious it's not a literal translation that no one would know but
it feels very similar to feel in Hagia Sophia, if you're sensitive you can say that Pladio and Le Corbusier did certain things of a
Western organization of space Hagia Sophia is a completely different idea of
space even though originally it was Christian
it wasn't Western and so what we did was study that organization of Hagia Sophia
to produce the grid in Yenikapi and then the project in the Milan project
comes right out of the 20th century early 20th century the grid that we had
and if you go to Georgia to Tbilisi and see the project that we're doing it also
is a grid from another culture and so what's important for young architects
in Amman is to study the range of cultural precedence in the architecture
in Jordan even though it was is a new country it has in a sense new, the
idea of the Arabian Peninsula has a way of building and thinking that has to
come through today in a building in Amman if it's to be what I would call
critical and resistant project we'll work on that,
go a head, you need to do that yes, we will aim at it. It will be a goal.
Yazan has a question. do you believe that when you change the
scale of the rhythm and then to create it, do you believe that people will feel it
Only good people will feel it they may not know what it is or why but they
know something's happening all right that it's not somehow it's not easy it's
more difficult they don't know why it's more difficult so we can't expect the
people to know what architecture is like you can't expect you and I to know what
a virus is you know when you go to a doctor you don't say to the doctor if he
says you've got the virus you don't say no no you're wrong like our president
does you do listen to the doctor we are space doctors for all kinds of
projects people don't have to know why they have to ultimately if they're
sensitive feel the difference that's what why we work so hard is to find
those things if you're doing a project in Jordan or you're doing a project
in Georgia or you're doing a project in Los Angeles you have to feel the being
of those places in order to be able to find resistance non-acceptance but
resistance to that, interesting I'm going to go back to some of the
theoretical parts or to history a little bit one of the interesting papers that
we read during our days in the university I'm a graduate out of university
it was three years ago so I was looking into one of the papers, It's called
mathematics of the ideal villa by Colin Rowe and that we've been
introduced to how to analyze building by by looking at the authoring system the
difference between the Palladian ordinate system and the one that Le Corbusier showed us so I was looking into that and thinking
when it comes to looking into new architecture to create an analytical
point of view if I want to look at my past at the past that we had in Jordan
or in any Arab country so I can understand more of the ideal buildings
that we have already existing in our culture we have the old Syrian houses
that had a court inside similar stuff in Egypt Lebanon somewhere so what are the
tools that I should be using to look at these buildings to get eventually to the
one question that Colin Rowe told you to do look at it for two hours I
think what you don't see so what's I it's a very, look having taught for
50 years teaching is really difficult you know there's no one way to think in
Palladio for example there may be 20 different grid organizations what you
have to be able to do I believe what I would suggest doing and what people have
done for example in Iran which is different it's a different culture than
the Saudi Peninsula let's say the person idea but the idea of the organisation of
spaces is very different let's say than the organization of spaces in a place
like Iraq or Lebanon or I would imagine Jordan I can't speak but I would
imagine that if you took a look carefully at what was Iran and what was
Jordan you begin to understand what those characteristics were that were
indigenous to being in to understanding Jordan and his culture for Jourdain
thank you thank you I think I got that thank you I'm not saying that
it takes time it's taken me 50 years to be able to talk to you so
you know it's not an easy thing this we need to be devoted for it I guess yes
thank you okay there is a question about most of the Deconstruction project are
found in wealthy nations, are these project limited to the wealthy countries
and will we see these kind of projects in countries where limited sources yeah I
think that's a good point first of all Deconstruction is dead it
died a natural death I don't think it was applicable necessarily for
architecture and what I'm saying though is what is replaced it is crazier than
deconstruction I mean what you see going on today and I don't want to name names
but they're all over there in Egypt they're in Jordan they're everywhere
okay and the computer has turned into a crazy monster produces things that are
much crazier than deconstruction I think there has to be an idea of resistance
without craziness okay you don't have to produce craziness to be comfortably
resistant and that's why I go back to Albertiy who was really exciting when
you get down and analyze Albertiy what he was doing and what he was saying and
the same thing goes for Architects in Japan
Architects in China if you go to China which I did recently and look at their
gardens they're not like Persian Gardens they're not like Middle Eastern
gardeners they're not like British Gardens of French Gardens the garden
form is a very telling form and a way of
studying space because the organization of gardens has usually been very much a
local phenomenon is it possible to make a garden today that is of a certain
resistant quality and yet is affordable that's that's the whole thing
can we do these things we made the budget on the project in Monga and I
think that it's important to to be cognizant of these things so yes decon
is a difficult architecture that's why it didn't go what I see today the the
vestiges of digital - or digital three are even stranger
so architecture is not in a good point right now in the West I would say and
what we need to do is to get control look the digital platforms like Rhino
don't really they have a style they don't have a national style they don't
know they're they're mute when it comes to what to do in Jordan or Iran or
Georgia etc they don't know it's the same thing the students take those same
images and roll them around and front another that because there were their
Rhino images so Rhino is a new international language of architecture
that's what we have to change we cannot be doing computer platforms like rhino
and saying that they are indigenous they're not we have a similar problem
here actually in Jordan in education but most of the students are using Revit
everything is trying to be up in Model and they just use what's existing in the
Model whatever it is and having this weird image of something already done
so it kind of took out the soul of architecture and poetry of design that
should be in it look I see it all the time as well I mean the students want to
do crazy things I don't think if my feeling is that if we study precedent
and make sure that the student studies precedent they would change over time I
can't predict I right now I can't teach contemporary architecture I teach Albertiy, I teach Palladio, I teach more emini I think it's important to
understand those kinds of things what the equivalent would be in in the Middle
East I don't know what that is but I think part of it has to do with Persia
and the Persian Empire and I think it had an effect in the Arabian Peninsula
as well I haven't studied that but you guys should know the difference between
an Arabian garden and a Persian Garden you've got to know the difference
between any organization of space in those kinds of places and that's what
you got to teach the students and see if they can come up with something I don't happy I don't have the answers I
just tell you what I was doing I showed you and I think that there's a lot
of room for a lot of young people especially now with the pandemic we
realize that there are other problems beside the virus there are environmental
problems there are sustainability problems there are problems of
environment that are really complex and our students
can't leave architecture and just study environmental complexity first if
they're going to solve environmental problems need to be architects that to
me comes above all other and as a human being you can be interested in
environmental problems but how do I make today a Jordanian environment that is
sustainable as opposed to an Iranian one as opposed to a Georgian one as opposed
to an Italian one how do I do that that's the key to producing a resistant
architecture today I would ask the last question for me and then maybe we can
move to to be okay to the audience questions regarding to the student
you mentioned that the architect does not solve the problems people's problem
because they are not psychologist or economists, can we
stop here and explain if you notice of architectural problems we can teach
students not to starve economic social political we've got to entertain those
problems but we have to do with architecture not with economics because
we don't know economic models but can the architecture somehow contribute
to solve society problems it's not self-sufficient on its own no it cannot
do it by itself I don't know how to solve the problem of carbon form for
example that's a big problem I'm working on it with my students we said it in a
studio exercise but I don't know what the answer is for sure the best thing
you can do today honestly is a young architect ask questions don't provide
answers for ask the right questions and finding out what those are is really
really important I think we need to take selection of what our audience
has asked there is about 2,000 the questions you have any questions from the
audience yes there's a question said you mentioned that you do not really
appreciate or enjoy the Scandinavian approach to phenomenology
however you mentioned phenomenology as phenomenology in your text can you
explain to us what do you mean to you and how you how you apply it in
your projects I believe phenomenology Dan deals
essentially with the substance of things the being of thickness and from
Alberti on and you have to understand why I'm interested in Alberti, Alberti
is the first writer in architecture to use the term space okay
everything else was a column wall roof etc never space space and II phenomena
it is another kind of phenomena phenomenology deals with the physical
object not the space between those things I'm interested in the space
between the physical and therefore I have problem with the phenomenology
branch of architecture I'm not going to mention names but that's one of the
interesting things can we deal with space that is the absence of physical
being and how do we do that today and is a big difference between
phenomenology and let's say spatial organization or the organization of
absence and contemporary philosophy is all about the organization of absence so
that's something I think is international it's not Jordanian or
Arabian it's International you're really interested in phenomena or you're
interested in absence and the two will never come together okay actually we got
a lot of questions from from the people here watching us and I want to ask you
one of the questions most of the questions were about the
digital world how artificial intelligence is going to, the question it
came like that so do you think that AI artificial intelligence will take over the role of architects yes or no and why look, architectural path look when we started doing architecture
in 1982 let's say big scale architecture when I moved from doing houses to big
scale architecture I needed to find a platform that could model surfaces
physical things not absences but physical things and there was a
professor at Ohio State who was working with a platform called formzee which was
a very primitive platform Greg Glen talks all about it in his archaeology a
digital really an important book to read and what we were doing greg was working
for me we were taking computer images from formzee and drawing over them and
sending them back so he could model our drawings because we had no way
of going from a flat surface to a double curved surface whatever a different
kinds of surface modeling and so the early forms were not Peter Eisenman or
Greg Lynn they were form C and slowly we were able to transition from form C to
other platforms what we have to be careful of is what I was saying in my
lecture we have to be careful that these platforms don't overcome and take
architecture and we assume that we're doing architecture we're doing the
bidding of Rhino or 3d studio or any of those current platforms and we have to
be careful that we're doing architecture so AI while it important is also a
difficulty I think still I want my students to learn how to draw drawing is
still a fundamental act of being an architect and you can't have the
computer draw for you you have to learn to draw and then you can use the
computer I think I think you need to add or subtract before you can do quantum
equations and there's no substitute for adding and subtracting this thing there
is no substitute for drawing learn how to draw then use those platforms or in
another sense invent your own algorithms that's what we ultimately are going to
need to do is learn how to manufacture and conceptualize algorithms of our own
ok there's another question I think it says
and one of your talks you said if you have a datum that is ground zero you are
going to begin as a data with homogeneous space because a datum requires homogeneity to be a data you start then in projecting things down into the ground and directing things up to of the ground though the sectional
movement between level mix that makes it heterogeneous
can you explain more to us about the relationship between homogeneous and heterogeneous space in a small-scale and large-scale projects
oh that's a tough question look when Alberti conceived of space
he was conceiving of home base okay where the first conception was that
everything is the same gradually when you get from move from Alberti and
r'mante through to Bramante we start to get heterogeneous space that some spaces that are dense some spaces that are not dense some spaces that are complex some that are not and if you go into let's say carlo right now these church santa
maria in Campitelli in wrong everybody should go see something comfortably
there are different scales but different densities of space way beyond the kind
of homogeneous space that Alberti was thinking about i would argue that Mies
van der Rohe does homogeneous space Corbusier does heterogeneous space it's
not one or the other they're two different kinds of space most of my
projects have a different kind of organization between it uses both
homogeneous and heterogeneous now the question of scale I cannot answer
because I don't know what happens to the differentiation in between homogeneous
and heterogeneous at a larger scale I haven't done that I'm always reverting
back to us because ultimately were at the scale of the human being whether
that's a sufficient answer or not no but I think the question whoever it was to
say what is the difference when you get in scale between homogeneous and heterogeneous
space that's a really good question I can't answer it thank you, we
have actually another question that kept going on repetitively from the audience
most of the people want to know is is architecture going to change
after COVID-19 I've heard your answer in one of the interviews recently, but people here want to know your point of view what is the question what's going to architecture after COVID-19
after the pandemic is it going to follow okay okay there always going to be
viruses and plagues and there have been in the history if you look there are
plagues all the time they're not the cause for architecture necessarily to
change I cannot even I've studied a lot of
history I can't say that the black death causes the change between Renaissance
and Baroque let's say while I think it's time for change and the virus points
that out to us I don't think it suggests what kind of change I don't think
there's any relation between the change that will happen naturally with
the conclusion of the virus I know I don't think so I have lived through
I was born in a depression a great depression of 29 I lived through
that I lived through the HIV I lived through Ebola all of these things so
they've been then and look for people in laboratories all through the world were
telling the political leaders last year before any idea of a corona virus that
there's coming a pandemic you know no one listened and that's what happened
and these things were coming it'll be solved and in another 25 years
there'll be another one or 50 years or hundred years and we need to be more
prepared whether that has to do with architecture or not I haven't got that
answer I don't think so because if I look at past history that hasn't been
the case I don't think we can live less densely I don't think we can live
isolated either like I'm doing right now I don't go out of my house because I'm susceptible to you know I
could gone in a minute but I think we have to be responsive to these things I
don't know how we're going to change architecture because of the corona virus
I can't answer that I don't think so I think architecture will change for
environmental reasons other than the virus the question of carbon form the
question of sustainability are all pre koumei
okay I think I will ask you the last question before we end this interesting
lecture the question is what is the most essential steps an architect should take
after graduation what is the most interesting what, what's the most
essential steps an architect should take after graduation oh gosh look I think
that it's important to get experience in real building to go into an off that's
where there's real production number one for a few years I think it's a good
thing to go to an office in another culture like go to Germany go to France
go to Japan go to China there's so many interesting places to work this building
putting buildings together is the same no matter where you are just the
language has changed but then I would try as a young architect to get into
teaching because the only way you can get out from under working from somebody
else is to teach you're not going to get buildings that sustain your life to be
able to do that so in order to break away from working for x y&z it would be
a good idea to get a teaching job and you know it's getting more and more
difficult to be to get a teaching job let's say in China or Japan or the
United States it really is it's very difficult for my students many of whom
are not American I have at least the third to a half of my students are not
indigenous American but I would say you've got to work and you got to keep
growing and thinking don't have to design so much you can grow up when
you're 30 you can start 35 side you are not necessarily
want to get married at 20, better you get married at 35 when you understand what's
at stake then to get married too young the same thing with designing clean
everybody gets their chance if they're patient
there's always another generation of people you people will all get your
chance get ready that's all I would say and
this will be the last one yes people wanted to know about the book that you
mentioned during lecture the one from Mario from alpha we didn't get the book
by Mario carpo CARPO from alphabet to algorithm "From Alphabet to Algorithm" and the second book is "The second digital turn" they are really really good books I have a book if they want to know I can show you
it's called "LATENESS" it's just out and it's what Peter Eisenman thinks today
it's you have to get it from Amazon
it's a pre-order but I think it's a small book but worthwhile
I hope one day I have the ability to buy it and come take a autograph from you directly it will be my pleasure thank you very much you guys, good questions, great audience thank you thank you very much thank you we would like to thank you mr.
Peter EIseman for this time we are pretty sure that this experience will broaden thinking and understanding of architecture so thank
you again thank you someday we get together in Amman, I hope so, we are waiting for you for sure yeah
thank you thanks thanks for everyone for being with us here thank you, we have more than two thousand people they are watching watching us now
and we hope that you keep in touch for more event for more events yes thank you
everyone and have a good night thank you thank you everyone for all the efforts
to make this happen everyone thank you very much thank you thank you
