1. PETER EISENMAN
LIFE | WORKS | THEORIES
http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2012/02/29/peter-eisenman-speaks-on-
deconstruction-and-architecture-at-the-deutsches-haus/

2. BORN : AUG 11 1932, New Jersey, us
Columbia high school New jersey
Went to cornell university to study b.arch
(batch of ‘54)
Masters in design, columbia university
Willian Trantman – First inspiration.
Nobody in his region took arts & architecture
Trantman introduced him to architecture, a study where one
could ‘Draw and make models’!
Was extremely good in swimming. Left swimming for
Architecture.
Wasn’t the conventional student. Never gave to attention
To the ‘standard’ way of learning. (books, etc)
Always interested in other activities in Cornell.
Got a gold medal for his thesis. This was a breakthrough
moment for him as it got him intrigued in architecture.
Korea war. (1956-1957). He served as a Lieutenant and
While at the war, he realized how passionate he was for
Architecture.
Came back and worked for Percival Goodman at Columbia and
Later for Walter Gropius at Boston

3. Michael Mckinnell his roommate once told him “ You got all great
Ideas but you need to have the knowledge of architecture!”
Went to Cambridge - PhD
Met Colin Rowe, his mentor and major influence in his life.
Summer of 1962, went to Princeton, met Michael Graves, Arthur
Drexler (Director at MoMA. Started CASE : Conference of Architects
for the Study of the Environment at MoMA.
Foundation of NEW YORK FIVE.
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=88,5

4. Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmay, John Hejduk, Michael Graves and Richard Meier
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=88,5
“Five on Five” appeared in the May
1973Architectural Forum, rejecting the “black
and white” worldview of the New York Five – and
the abstraction, formalism, and purity of
modernist principles.
Summing up the position of the “Grays,” as they
were known, Robert A.M. Stern later wrote,
“‘Gray’ buildings have facades which tell stories.
These facades are not the diaphanous veil of
orthodox Modern architecture, nor are they the
affirmation of deep structural secrets.” This was
in opposition to the ideas of the “Whites,” as the
modernists were called.
Romaldo Giurgola, Allan Greenberg,
Charles Moore, Jaquelin T. Robertson, and
Robert A. M. Stern

5. 1967 Founded “Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies” with Arthur Drexler and
Jack Robertson.
Peter as Director.
Started a magazine and a newspaper here. OPPOSITIONS and SKYLINE

6. 1960s-1970s : single family houses
1982 left the institute and started a partnership with Jack Robertson
ROBERSTON/EISENMAN ARCHITECTS
http://archinect.com/features/article/4618/peter-eisenman-
liberal-views-have-never-built-anything-of-any-value
They participated in major
Competitions.
Won the CROSS POINT
CHARLIE
And
WEXNER CENTER competition

7. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0847830489/ref=as_li_qf_sp
_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=arch05-
20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0847
830489

8. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=95cYe1q8xrQC&printsec=
frontcover&dq=peter+eisenman&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sFwZU7_4K
MWGrge4zoD4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=fals
e

9. Jacques Derrida
• Founder of Deconstruction .
• Peter Eisenman followed Derrida’s
principles in architecture
• He shakes up concepts like ‘text’.
• Questions about the borders, the
frontiers, the limits that have been
drawn.
• Impossibility of setting up a perfect
or ideal structure. That which cannot
be presented for conception or
perception.

10. http://www.amazon.com/Chora-Works-Jacques-Derrida-
Eisenman/dp/1885254407

11. “The “real architecture” only exists
in the drawings. The “real building”
exists outside the drawings. The
difference here is that “architecture”
and “building” are not the same.”
-Peter Eisenman

12. HOUSE IV

13. • Situated on a flat site in Cornwall, Connecticut
• The design emerged from a conceptual
process that began with a grid.
• Eisenman manipulated the grid in a way so
that the house was divided into four sections
and when completed the building itself could
be a “record of the design process.”
• Therefore structural elements, were revealed
so that the construction process was evident,
but not always understood.

14. Architecture as a piece of art- Forces users of the building to
question and critically examine architecture, as they would
with a painting.
Deconstructing norms in architecture to create
something “unconventional” out of the same
“text”.

15. The structure was incorporated into
Eisenman’s grid to convey the module that
created the interior spaces with a series of
planes that slipped through each other.

16. He made it difficult for the users so that they would have to
grow accustom to the architecture and constantly be aware
of it. For instance, in the bedroom there is a glass slot in the
center of the wall continuing through the floor that divides
the room in half, forcing there to be separate beds on either
side of the room.

18. WEXNER CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

19. Buildings are not simply physical objects, but artefacts with meaning, or signs
dispersed across some larger social text.

20. Memorial for the Murdered Jews, Berlin
20

21. 21
Inside
the info
centre
•Breaks the notion of comfort
•His scheme for architectural design
drawn from philosophy and linguistics
•He suggests a psychological void
which provokes individual and cultural
anxiety and dislocation
•induces destabilization and rupture in
the very structures so long associated
with comfort and shelter

22. WEXNER CENTER OF ARTS

23. Design process
• The literal use of the
rotated grid is used by
Eisenman as an extensive
method of giving the
architecture its own voice.
• The identification of the
dialectic grids stems from
conditions that exist at the
boundary of the site,
Eisenman then grafts one
grid on top of the other
and seeks potential
connections or ‘event sites’
at the urban, local, and
interior scales.

24. • The gride is the primary circuit or pathway of
the building.
• The scaffolding is scaled to represent the
module of the grid that is interpretable at a
human scale.
• The scaffold is reduced to its raw type, to the
essential condition that signifies the essence of
its existence that being an impermanent
accessory to architecture that allows its
construction, but does not necessarily shelter.
• This architecture of non-shelter is aligned
directly adjacent to an interior pathway within
the building that does enclose and protect.

25. The figure of the armoury Eisenman has presented along the south
pedestrian access (the most visually accessible elevation of the building)
has been reduced to a series of fragments of armoury-like forms that
indicate the ‘essence’ of the armoury without reproducing any of the
original intricate detail.

27. The lack of historical fidelity
in the reconstruction of the
armoury, the fragmentation
of the form, and the insertion
of dark glass into the voids
left between these fragments
seems to speak of the
disjointed manner in which
we reflect the past, and in
turn, it serves to remind us of
a past we have lost and can
never return to.

28. Eisenman
produces three
very distinctive
extensive and
intensive
operations of
shifting, figuring,
fragmenting that
coalesce into an
engaging ecology
for the
celebration of
creative thought.

29. Cannaregio Town Square, Venice
29
- Derived from an
architecture that
invents its own site
and program.
- Grid of Corbusier’s
Venice Hospital is
continued as a
structure over the site.
- This grid marks a series
of voids which act as
metaphors for man’s
displacement from
his position as the
centered instrument of
measure.

31. References
• http://www.davetenhoope.com/downloads/Peter_Eisenman_-_Between_method_and_madness.pdf
• http://www.arch.uic.edu/pdfs/portfolios/kalina.pdf
• http://www.architectural-review.com/view/interviews/interview-peter-eisenman/8646893.article
• http://bombmagazine.org/article/5991/
• http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2012/02/29/peter-eisenman-speaks-on-deconstruction-and-architecture-at-the-
deutsches-haus/
• http://books.google.co.in/books?id=95cYe1q8xrQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=peter+eisenman&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s
FwZU7_4KMWGrge4zoD4Ag&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=peter%20eisenman&f=false
• http://spaghettionastick.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eisenman-peter-diagram-an-original-scene-of-writing.pdf
• http://www.slideshare.net/vikashsaini78/peter-eisenman-30129612
• http://www.slideshare.net/saniyanalband/peter-eisenman-saniya-nalband-sybarch40
• http://archinect.com/features/article/4618/peter-eisenman-liberal-views-have-never-built-anything-of-any-value