Clashes and Intersections Interview Series: Peter Eisenman

I'll muster here in read instead I'd like to start with action called tracing Hazen copying him isn't an option no matter how hard you try he drawing him as difficult as here is where complexity lies mapping him might have worked if metaphor metaphors didn't blur the way designing like him was a thought but a forger has no sway patterning his past doesn't signal the future marking his animate position will get you sutured nerves take over as I take a seat tracing Eisenman is no easy feat thank you so much Peter for making the time to sit down with me today it's an absolute honor what would you consider was your first architectural project well my architectural project I became aware of the idea of a project in Europe I had gone to Cornell as an undergraduate I won the thesis prize as an undergraduate I was a very good designer I thought that power as an architect came from design I was trained to think that I got back I spent two years in the Army in Korea I came back in 57 and I wanted to go to work for us but worst our architect at the time a design architect in quotes and so I went to work I got a job working with Walter Gropius who was a big hero and what I realized the beginning to get to the project that Gropius was just another commercial architect and there was no ideology that was operative and so I went back to graduate school at Columbia and while I was at graduate school I was rooming with two English architects and one of them had studied with Jim sterling and this was sterling in 1959 his first year IDL and so they invited Jim to come and have dinner with us we were all living together so Jim came down and had dinner and we showed Jim one of the projects that we were working on Jim was a tough guy and he said to me which was really important he said Peter you're a really good designer I can tell that and he said but you don't know about architecture and you've got to learn about architecture because you'll never go anywhere he said you should go and be with Colin Rowe I went to Cambridge and I started teaching Colin was in second year I taught first year and then he said let's go and look at architecture go on a trip and Leslie Martin who was the Dean the head of school wanted me to stay and teach a second year and I said well I wanted to do architecture I was still a design architect he said well you can't do that I said but you could do a dissertation that wasn't my so Colin and I went on this trip and about halfway through the trip we got to Italy we'd come down we saw this tile and we saw the vison of seed long and we saw the long houses and then we saw Corbeau in zurich and then I saw Ronnie and was really blown away by the cazador flash row and then we got to see our first Palladian villas montagnana and at montagnana Colin said to me you go out there and look at that facade and tell me something that you cannot see and I thought what's she talking about what how can I tell him something I can't see he said there's a lot of things in that facade that you can't see you tell me what it is and you know I began to realize that there was an idea in architecture that I had not previously understood or that hadn't been clearly explained in what I knew from Siegfried Gideon Reyner Banham it said it wasn't much out there and so when I went back to Cambridge I said to Leslie Martin I have an idea for a dissertation I want to work on the formal basis of modern architecture to show how the formal basis operated and in different architects from coreboot Orani Alto and right and I realized as I was working on this dissertation that my project had changed from a design architect or what I thought I was to be was a designer because I had won all the design prizes etc that I was now going to be a thinking architect a and that my power could equally come from thinking and conceptualizing and writing as it could from writing buildings and so that's where my project became for the first time in the year of our Lord 1961-62 when I changed from wanting to be a designer or needing to be a design hero to be a conceptualising what you have clearly differentiated between projects and practice is a project something you can aspire to or is it something that might or not my my might or might not happen while you're practicing no I don't think project is accidental I think I mean people who have a project what history records project okay if you don't have a project you're not going to be in history I believe that my history is taken care of because my project has developed and evolved over the last 50 years so that I know I don't think it's accidental I don't think Bob venturi is accidental I don't think although Rossi is actually don't you may not be conscious of what you're doing all the time can't be that conscious but project look I am pay chose to be a practicing architect he didn't have an idea one in his head about project okay Manfredo Toffler II chose to be a project even though he wasn't an architect any longer he gave up practicing to theorise architecture I believe that the ones that interest me the ones that I teach are Rossi venturi ungar's manao sees our project two architects I don't know about Jim sterling I see terrific argument I don't know if he had a project he comes close Frank Gehry terrific architect I don't know if he has a project I know it's somewhere between project and practice those two Johnson was actually a practicing architect and I believe history doesn't treat practice as as generously and as fully as it does project and I still have yet to write my book about my project I mean even though my dissertation stands and don't forget I wrote the dissertation before Venturi's complexity and contradiction before - for ease architecture of the city I mean they were serious and histories before Ross sees the architecture of the day there was nothing out there was no literature etc when I wrote the dissertation so I was writing in a vacuum really and to me that's really important to know that the role that I played in a as a sort of outsider let's say in the world of project - 4ec then told me something when I was close to Vaughn fredo and he said Peter you cannot think about being remembered in history for your writing and your thinking and your teaching if you don't build so you have to build as part of a project not as part of a practice and so I have what went on from 1982 to the present let's say 35 years I mean from I built buildings and I've built some for me important buildings which are part of my project but before II said you cannot just be thinking architect can you clarify what you mean when you say something like I'm not convinced well I mean style is I wanna I don't know how to do facades and I think style has something to do with the vertical surface common road talks about the difference between the plan and the vertical surface I can I mean for example when Michael Graves and I used to work together I did the plans Michael did this the vertical surfaces I've always not been very good at I hate the facade on the Columbus Convention Center I like the plan and the idea of the project and I wanted in a competition but I don't like the vertical so so style I think comes about mainly I mean in the vertical surface I don't know if people have style in their plans so I'm not sure that my work is either developed enough to say that it's just it's a style if it is I'm not sure I know what it is I mean it was very important I mean certain conversations inform my conversation with Chris Alexander at Harvard really important it was canonical moment my conversation with Leone career another very important conversation my conversation with Richard Serra another important conversation I mean I've spent a lot of time doing those kinds of conversations I can't tell you why each one is important for different reasons it's basically I would have thought the clash of ideology so it's very clear look I wrote my dissertation against Chris Alexander's the I forget what the first book that he wrote but it was against his notion of form and and the conversation we had at Harvard was really really important I think ideologically I even know I'm very fond of Leon much so we had a very strong ideological disagreement what he and I were disagreeing about was different than when Chris and I were disagreeing about what Charles Jencks and I would disagree about was different than what Leon queer Richard Serra etc so the people that I have disagreements with and had these recorded conversations like this have all been about a different subject I'm not sure that I know what the subject of your work on this and in other words are there just to record it for history I don't know if you have a polemical point of view that you wish to articulate in contrast to my polemical point of view I don't know that but the the more the most didactic and canonical interviews were with important clashes of disagreement so that's what I would label the the differences and each one had a very specific difference I mean Chris Alexander is not Leone queer is not Richard Serra is not Charles Jencks they are all very very different and dedicated interviews toward a certain and the ones that are unimportant have no philosophical or ideological thrust to them they're just you know well what role it plays in architecture today is very different than maybe what it should play to me you can't go into a curriculum in architecture a first-year studio and say okay design a house if you don't have precedence I mean design a house so they think designing a house or student thanks designing a house well it's putting a bathroom next to a bedroom or the kitchen next to the garage so you can unload the car and of course that's not what designing houses so first of all they have to understand that they're very different types of houses there is a 19th century house where the individual house was became important and the difference between a Norman Shaw house and take any number of people is is very different the difference between an English house and a French house a French house has an exterior periphery that is containing a very ordered condition and the movement is interior the English then the movement is on the perimeter and the interior is very static so those are two precedents so you can do an English house French house you can do a 19th century house or you can do then you go and do a free plan house like liqueur BC or do an open-plan house like Mies or do a prairie style house like Frank Lloyd Wright which was more like an English country house and so that the student has some background as to what he or she is doing you can't just say do a house because there are precedents and there are important precedents if you are agreeing with the precedent or going against the precedent then that's really very important and what does it mean to design a house what is the house house is a symbol of the people who lived there and are you going to do a modern house or a classical house and what what is the difference because everybody has to have a bathroom and you know whether it's next to the bedroom or how big the bedroom is I'm not interested in the functional iconography of a house or the structural iconography of house or the material iconography or house I'm interested in the architectural iconography of a house and so if if that's what the teacher of me is interested in they can't start the students without precedent they have to have something to work with or against so when you ask me what about today they're not many teachers who teach precedent because they don't know precedent and they don't know how to use it so most first year is just messing about maybe a little song geometry solid geometry or descriptive geometry which is in itself would be good casting shades and shadows knowing how to project the three-dimensional spatial organizations is something that very few people teach but so I think precedent is absolutely important I mean we're working on this competition in Budapest and what I'm looking at are what are the evolutionary aspects of Budapest from the 18th century to the 20th century is that the plaid grid is a universal grid is it a notion of serving and served and his perimeter block I'm in other words you have to go through the evolution of the precedence that make Budapest what it is because you just can't say I'm just gonna throw something in and see what happens because there's no meaning so even in when we're doing a competition or practice we're always dealing with precedents I can't work without precedent architects if you were to be critical of your own work who or what would you trace it back to whoa and I want trace it back to you if you were to pick a building well I have several possibilities there's Palladio there's Piranesi there's tonyi there's Corbeau I I would say here's the thing I I make a distinction I don't do modern post modern classical I think that those kind of categories are not useful my idea the the dialectic that exists in architecture is between abstraction and phenomena that's why I'm against triple' oh because they're only interested in phenomena that's why I'm interested not interested in Peter um Thor or norburg Schultz or neither because they're interested they're all phenomenologist I'm an abstraction astride and I take my energy from Albert the Bramante Pallavi Oberon AZ I would say Corbeau tehrani those are my energies and they are all what I would call abstractionist are nothing to do with no no you try and expand the consciousness of what constitutes the natural tendencies that you are involved in Scandinavian architects Otto Norbert rules palace mine are all phenomenologist northern England phenomenology I mean it's when you get to French and Italian and even a little bit German that you get into to action but that's their philosophy that's in their tastes their culture their their history so I I don't spend much time in Denmark Sweden Norway Finland I spent a lot of time in Italy and southern France and Germany Austria because there's different connotations in the work I can't say that I compare my work to there but the influence is that I'm always searching for have to do with depends on what the context is if I'm doing an urban project piranesi is really important Palladio less so we're I'm looking at precedence to work on this project I think hungers is green archipelago is a very potent idea I think common ROS call ours City is also very interesting and that's with respect I think certain of REMS projects have a certain urban interest for me too because you can't just put buildings down you have to put down an idea the only way you win a competition and all of my bill work has come from winning competitions not the way you win a competition is you have to have an idea you have to the minute they look at the project they have to say hey here's an idea and you know we're up against in this thing un studio I think that somehow maybe in the competition there are two or three people that produce ideas and so we need to situate ourselves between these people and that's the way you do a competition but you've got to find precedents that are understandable to the jury does approaching the urban require a completely separate skill than approaching a building well it requires a different attitude toward context I think because the scale is really really different and you can't I mean what you can't do is just blow up a house project and make it an urban project you're right there there you have to operate in an entirely different Sensibility I'm more and more thinking that I'm interested in that kind of Sensibility I have very little interest today and doing a house let's say what would I do but there are things in an urban project that I think are interesting I'm not I've done I Prague I've done projects for six or seven high-rise buildings but I'd like to actually have the task of building one we're building a condominium building in Milan right now that's 10 or 11 stories what's not a high-rise it's a slab block but it moves but it has to do with context and the kind of projects that I give in school we're doing an urban context project in my studio we're doing this kind of I mean we were tracted to this competition as opposed to an individual building design what I don't know if I have anything to say about the individual building and I'm not sure I have enough to say about context so I'm interested in interested in doing this project I don't want for example I done a stadium doing I mean stadiums are boring and they're not projects they are pure practice there's so many requirements I mean because people have to see you can't put a column in front of their face but you can put columns in front of people's faces in an urban project so I'm more interested I think in today no question well I mean I I think both are important let's say but I think that at the level of occupation you spend more time looking at interior corners and being involved in interior corners than you do exterior because that exterior corners are projective and interior corners are involuted so the thing is there's more spatial condition of the interior corner than the X you're probing space and space is reacting in the exterior corner the interior corner is where you have to deal with the space not the exterior you can't do much about that you have its projective so to me the concern for the interior corner is I think slightly more problematic and difficult than it is the exterior because the extra you've this house you know does it come like this does it come like this does it come like that I mean there's only three ways it to be but on the interior there's a lot more difference that it's possible you've previously said I don't know if I said that if I said that I don't know what that means and I can't tell you if I know the origin of diagrams yes I do I know who that the plaid grid for example begins sometime after Pilate Oh the servant and served spaces of the 18th and 19th century is not operative we have an ensuite plan with Palladian villas that as you walk from room to room there's no car door you don't go out of a room and they work harder and etc so we know that the the corridor as a plan in other words servant and served the plaid grid comes in probably in the late 18th century as a phenomenon that's a diagram the modern nine squares is a diagram that comes more or less out of Pilate oh but Pilate was basically 25 squares it's a different organization a Palazzo type is different than the villa type but that's I mean I've explained all this in my Palladio book I'm writing a book right now on Albert II which is important for me right now in terms of the relationship of how you build around existing buildings how Betty is very interesting because he rebuilds context in order to show difference between the context and what he's doing so he purposely recreates things that he is against so that he can show that dialectic between now and then and that interests me about Albert it's something that I've been doing recently and it's being this book but to me the the diagrams are already there they're all present and you just have to go search them out depends on a good teacher I mean literally you could see it there on the table okay right there you can see paranasal literally literally is really great because it's all of the fabulous plans of Rome of the 17th and 18th century and they're all plans that have diagrams and I would say that's one of the most important books that should be in anybody's desk if you're a design is literally because all the ideas of the evolution of the classical from the Renaissance to the modern is charted in literally the only big BA have the little volume but I have the big literraly over there by Cynthia's office and it's important to have around first I'm not worried about the culture continuing I think it will continue it will always be there I don't have advice I live my life a certain way I'm still in the struggle for the evolution of architecture I think like I tell my students like yesterday I gave a lecture I said if you want to become cultured you got to read American literature you've got to read Hawthorne you've got to read Melville you've got to read Poe you got to read Faulkner and you've got to read pension so those are six authors that are educated an American you have to have read those they have nothing to do with architecture I have to do with culture and so those are the great American writers you have to then read the great architectural books you've got to read tough for we you've got to read Rossi you've got to read venturi you've got to read 'lose you've got to read Corbeau they're just certain things you've got to read and you got to digest you got a nut B it's got to be second nature you've got to be able to draw a free plant you've got to be able to draw striated plaid grid you got to be know what that is and where mistakes are so that a student when he's got a bathroom he puts it in the sir the the servant space rather than the serve space I mean it's there's certain things which lead to a diagram that students have to know it has become second nature I still teach because I still believe in the power of ideas to change the world in a certain way so that's that's what I'm doing that's what I do I teach in this office I teach at school I read I'm not I mean I also look at painting I look at literature they're all very important to me I have a collection of books that I've built up over time I mean you won't find an office with more books in it then this off we're just part of it so hey it's all one my teaching my practice my theory let's say my project are all my project so that's it Peter thank you so much it's been an absolute and omnipresent figure in everyone's education very good thank you

Channel: House of ZKA

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Keywords: houseofzka, sciarc, interview, architect, architecture, architectureschool, architecturestuden, architecturelovers, superarchitects, archdaily, clashesandintersections, house of zka, peter eisenman, eisenmann, eisenman, eisenman architects, yale, harvard, princeton, sci-arc, ysoa, architecture school, starchitect

Id: XlWhdVberc8

Length: 37min 0sec (2220 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019