2. PETER EISENMAN
• Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932) is an
American architect. He is known for his writing and
speaking about architecture as well as his designs,
which have been called high modernist or
deconstructive
• He first rose to prominence as a member of the New
York Five. Five architects (Eisenman, Charles
Gwathmey, John Hejduk, Richard Meier, and Michael
Graves) some of whose work was presented at a
CASE Studies conference in 1969. Eisenman received
a number of grants from the Graham Foundation for
work done in this period. These architects' work at
the time was often considered a reworking of the
ideas of Le Corbusier.
• Subsequently, the five architects each developed
unique styles and ideologies, with Eisenman
becoming more affiliated with Deconstructivism.
3. PETER EISENMAN
Buildings and works:
1. House II / Falk House
• House II, located in Vermont’s rural and scenic Northeast
Kingdom, is the first freestanding building designed by
renowned architect Peter Eisenman (b. 1932). Today,
Eisenman’s designs for buildings such as the Wexner Centre
for the Arts in Ohio, the City of Culture of Galacia in Spain,
and the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona have
cemented his reputation as one of architecture’s foremost
designers and theoreticians. House II in Hardwick is where it
all began, and today this icon of 20th century architecture is
for sale and in need of a new owner willing to commit to its
long-term preservation. This is a rare opportunity to own
and experience firsthand a residential work of architecture
by Peter Eisenman and understand the theories behind his
designs and the deconstructivist movement.
4. PETER EISENMAN
• Much of Eisenman’s early work was purely
conceptual in nature and existed only in
diagrams and text as opposed to actual built
structures. In the late 1960s he began
designing a series of ten houses and
became associated with fellow architects
Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Charles
Gwathmey and John Hejduk, known
collectively as the “New York Five.” Only
four of the ten houses in the series were
actually built, including House II. It is known
worldwide as one of the earliest
expressions of deconstructivist architecture,
in which a building’s structure and envelope
are fragmented and manipulated according
to the theory behind its design.
5. PETER EISENMAN
• House II challenges our conventional
thoughts about the role and meaning of
domestic architecture by using a
deconstructive approach to reveal its
underlying geometry, often at the
expense of traditional notions of
functional space. The result is a structure
in which interior spaces flow not only
from room to room but between floor
levels and from interior to exterior.
Perched at the top of a hill overlooking a
rolling landscape of fields, trees and
mountains, House II would make a
wonderful vacation retreat or summer
home.
6. PETER EISENMAN
• 2.Wexner Centre for the Arts
• Before it was even completed, New York Times
critic Paul Goldberger dubbed the Wexner Center for
the Arts “The Museum That Theory Built.” Given its
architect, this epithet came as no surprise; Peter
Eisenman, the museum’s designer, had spent the
better part of his career distilling architectural form
down to a theoretical science. It was with tremendous
anticipation that this building, the first major public
work of Eisenman’s career, opened in 1989. For some,
it heralded a validation of deconstructivism and theory,
while its problems provided ammunition for others
who saw theory and practice as complimentary but
ultimately divergent pursuits. The building’s popular
reception has been equally mixed, but its influence and
intrigue in the academic community is as pronounced
and unmistakeable as the design itself.
7. PETER EISENMAN
• Located on the eastern edge of The Ohio State
University’s campus, the Wexner Center was built to
accommodate a multidisciplinary space for the
exploration and exhibition of contemporary art. The
$43 million commission was the object of a high-profile
1983 competition that featured Eisenman, Michael
Graves, Cesar Pelli, Kallmann McKinnell & Wood,
and Arthur Erickson as finalists. To the surprise of
many, Eisenman won the competition despite his
relative inexperience with large-scale buildings, though
his selection resulted in no less publicity for the
museum. His widely respected name alone carried the
museum’s opening, which didn’t even feature artwork
so as to not distract from the architecture.
8. PETER EISENMAN
• Running through the core of the building is the
Wexner Canters' most recognizable feature: a
540-foot long “scaffolding” structure that
extrudes the planar grid systems into a three-
dimensional matrix. Exposed and partially
unenclosed, it is meant to look deliberately
incomplete, repudiating preconceptions of solid
and void as fixed properties of architecture.
While this seam in the building functions as an
axis of circulation, it plays a more important
spatial role by delineating and projecting
organization throughout the site. The resulting
interrelationships find expression in the
contours of the surrounding structures and
landscaping, strikingly recalling the
diagrammatic constructions of the
contemporaneous Getty Center in Los Angeles
by Eisenman’s geometry-driven cousin, Richard
Meier.
