Sporene efter Peter Eisenman - den dekonstruktive arkitekturs filosof og teoretiker

Peter Eisenman: City of Culture of Galicia, Spain (under opbygning 2011)

Jeg fortsætter lidt ud af sporet 'dekonstruktivistisk arkitektur' fra foregående indlæg.

   Min unge arkitektstuderende har nemlig i en mail fremhævet amerikaneren Peter Eisenman som særlig bemærkelsesværdig blandt de arkitekter som forbindes med dekonstruktivismen som tænkningen bag koncepterne for deres bygninger.

  

Hvem er Peter Eisenman? Hvad tænker han, og hvad har han lavet?

Jeg kender ham først og fremmest fra det berømte og kontroversielle mindesmærke i Berlin for de millioner af jøder der døde i nazisternes koncentrationslejre:

Peter Eismann: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

Ingen tvivl om det! Det gjorde indtryk da jeg så det i Berlin for 3-4 år siden: 

   En kæmpe plads med flere tusinde forskellige, men alle rektangulære 'kister' af beton, på engelsk benævnt 'stelea'.

   Provokerende fremmedgørende. Og fascinerende.

   I tal:

The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 m (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in).[2] They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew.

Mindesmærket er dog ikke et helt typisk eksempel på den arkitekturretning som forbindes med dekonstruktivismen.

   Man plejer nemlig at identificere dekonstruktivistisk arkitektur med en protest - et oprør - mod de  firkantede former og rette vinkler der er altdominerende i den traditionelle arkitektur.

   Det er en arkitektur-retning der er udtryksmæssigt i opposition - en arkitektur der dyrker "non-rectilinear shapes", som Wikipedia kalder det. Og den giver egnetlig først betydning og kan 'aflæses' i kraft af den arkitektur den opponerer imod.

   Og selv om  mindesmærket i Berlin godt nok er 'rectilneært' så det basker, så giver det jo god mening som et oprør mode traditionelle mindesmærkers opulent figurative stil.

   Man føler sig berørt, men ikke velkommen, oplever jeg.

Når man læser hvad der er skrevet om Peter Eisenmann, så bliver man klar over at hans betydning nok er mere teoretisk end i mængden af realiserede byggerier inden for dekonstruktiv arkitektur.

   Og googler man hans navn og går til billedoversigten, så er der flere modeller end fotos af faktiske bygningsværker.

   Hans tætte forbindelse med dekonstruktivismens filosofiske ophavsmand, franskmanden Derrida, fremhæves mange steder.

   Her fortæller Wikipedia om oprindelseshistorien:

Deconstructivism came to public notice with the 1982 Parc de la Villette architectural design competition (especially the entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman[1] 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 Center for the Arts in Columbus, designed by Peter Eisenman.

   The New York exhibition featured works by Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Bernard Tschumi.

   Since the exhibition, some architects associated with Deconstructivism have distanced themselves from it. Nonetheless, the term has stuck and has come to embrace a general trend within contemporary architecture.

Peter Eisman: Wexner Center for Arts, in Columbus, 1983...

Derridas teori om betydningen af 'dekonstruktion' var i sit udgangspunkt en semiotisk teori som kunne fundere en særlig kritisk form for tekstanalyse af litteratur. ('semiotik' = læren om tegnenes liv i samfundet).

   Wikipedia:

Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point.

Det er ikke helt indlysende hvordan denne filosofisk-lingvistiske-teoribygning lader sig transformere ind i en tænkning om arkitektur som skabes af stål, glas og beton.

   Men denne 'konceptuelle blending' af beton og lingvistisk analyse leverer altså som resultat en slagkraftig ide om at 'arkitektur er et sprog' - og kan aflæses som et sprog - med indbyggede modsigelser.

   Og det kom der byggerier ud af som gør indtryk og bliver ikoner.

 

Senere i Wikipedai-artiklen får vi en mere detaljeret beskrivelse af hvad Derrida har betydet for Peter Eisenman, og hvordan flere af de dekonstruktive arkitekter ser deres bygningsværker som en form for sprog eller skrift:

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[5] were concerned with the "metaphysics of presence," and this is the main subject of deconstructivist philosophy in architecture theory. The presupposition is that architecture is a language capable of communicating meaning and of receiving treatments by methods of linguistic philosophy.[6]

Centralt i Eisenmans arkitekturfilosofi står den dialektiske modsætning mellem nærvær ("precense") og fravær ("absence") - massiv ("solid") og ugyldig ("void"):

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 deconstructivism.[7]

Vi springer lige til en af de andre guruer inden for traditionen: Frank Gehry.

   En af de tidligste eksempler på konsekvent brug af 'non-recitlinære' (='skæve') former er Frank Gehrys eget hjem i Snata Monica, Californien, som er en ombygning af et oprindeligt traditionelt hus fra 1920.

Frank Gehrys eget hus fra 1978 (1920)

Wikipedia-artiklen fortæller om baggrunden for dette hus´ arkitektoniske udtryk set gennem Derridas filosofiske briller:

According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural deconstructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal construction, a strongly-established conventional expectation to play flexibly against.[8]

   The design of Frank Gehry’s own Santa Monica residence, (from 1978), has been cited as a prototypical deconstructivist building. His starting point was a prototypical suburban house embodied with a typical set of intended social meanings. Gehry altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and other expectations in a playful subversion, an act of "de"construction"[9]

Derridas begreber om spor ("trace") og udviskning/sletning ("erasure") er en vigtig del af filosofien bag den destruktivistiske arkitektur.

   Pointen er at når man (magthavere, samfundet, autoriteter) prøver at udviske eller slette noget fra historien, så vil der altid være spor tilbage.

   Og de spor af det der er slettet, er det arkitektens konceptuelle opgave at bygge på gennem udtrykket i sine bygninger:

In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and deconstructivism, his notions of trace and erasure, embodied in his philosophy of writing and arche-writing[10] 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 are also said to reflect themes of trace and erasure.

Peter Weisenman har lavet mange modeller af dekonstruktive bygningsværker, men kun relativt få er blevet realiseret.

Her nogle af dem han har fået realiseret:

Peter Eisnman: Aronoff Center for Design and Art, Cincinnati, OH. 1988-1999

Busshelter in Aachen, by Peter Eisenman architect in 1996

En kilde gør opmærksom på at Eisenman er inspireret af den japanske papir-folde-kunst-tradition origami:

Japansk origami-svane

Peter Eisenman: Model, 'The Max Reinhardt House, Berlin1992

Peter Eisenman: Model: Til konkurrence om en kirke i Rom, 1996

Et af de (delvist) realiserede projekter er dette kulturcenter-kompleks i  Santiago de Compostella i Spanien  hvor der mere er tale om bløde former end om skarpe origami-trekanter:

Peter Eisenman: City of Culture of Galicia, Spain (luftfoto)

Peter Eisenman: City of Culture of Galicia, Spain (set i øjenhøjde)

Nærbilleder fra City of Culture-komplekset

Konkurrencemodel til City of Culture-komplekset, 1999

Peter Eisenman har fået stor indflydelse som arkitektonisk filosof, teoretiker og underviser, men er også samtidig berygtet for at hans bygninger i praksis er dårligt funderet når det gælder brugen af materialer.

   De overskrider også budgetterne - og kræver omkostningstunge renoveringer efter få år, går kritikken på.

Projektet City of Culture of Galicia er ikke gjort færdigt efter projektetplanen, man har stoppet byggeriet af de to sidste sektioner 2013. 

   Wikipedia:

The City of Culture of Galicia (Galician: Cidade da Cultura de Galicia or simply Cidade da Cultura) is a complex of cultural buildings in Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Galicia,Spain, designed by a group of architects led by Peter Eisenman.

   Construction is challenging and expensive as the design of the buildings involves high degree contours, meant to make the buildings look like rolling hills.

   Nearly every window of the thousands that are part of the external façade has its own custom shape.[1]

   In 2013 it was announced that after more than a decade, construction of the project would be halted. The International Art Center and Music and Scenic Arts Center will not be built.[2]

   (...)

  The project has more than doubled its original budget and has not attracted significant numbers of visitors (becoming a white elephant for subsequent governments and taxpayers).[3] Construction of the final two planned buildings was stopped in 2012 and terminated definitively in March 2013 due to the high cost overruns.[4]

I Wikipedias portrætartikel om Peter Eisenman får han også med krabasken: menneskefjendsk og dårlig byggeri i praksis.

His focus on "liberating" architectural form was notable from an academic and theoretical standpoint but resulted in structures that were both badly built and hostile to users. 

   The Wexner Center, hotly anticipated as the first major public deconstructivist building, has required extensive and expensive retrofitting because of elementary design flaws (such as incompetent material specifications, and fine art exhibition space exposed to direct sunlight). 

   It was frequently repeated that the Wexner's colliding planes tended to make its users disoriented to the point of physical nausea; in 1997 researcher Michael Pollan tracked the source of this rumor back to Eisenman himself. In the words of Andrew Ballantyne, "By some scale of values he was actually enhancing the reputation of his building by letting it be known that it was hostile to humanity."

Så tilsyneladende har Weisenman selv ønsket "dårlig omtale". 

   Det har han også fået når det gælder et meget tidligt byggeri: House VI fra midten af 70´erne, et projekt som endte med en alvorlig økonomisk øretæve for 'klienterne', ægteparret Frank :

Peter Eisenman: Hous VI, 1970

His House VI, designed for clients Richard and Suzanne Frank in the mid 1970s, confounds expectations of structure and function. Suzanne Frank was initially sympathetic and patient with Eisenman's theories and demands. But after years of fixes to the badly specified and misbegotten House VI (which had first broken the Franks' budget then consumed their life savings), Suzanne Frank was prompted to strike back with Peter Eisenman's House VI: The Client's Response, in which she admitted both the problems of the building, as much as its virtues.

Jeg har fundet en interessant artikel hvor Peter Eisenmans arkitekturtænkning konfronteres med en anden international kendt arkitekts ideologi, Peter Zumthors - under rubrikken: "Peter Versus Peter: Eisenman And Zumthor's Theoretical Throwdown".

   
I artiklens terminologi er der tale om et modsætningsforhold mellem konceptuel arkitektur og fænomenologisk arkitektur. Og de to arkitekter med samme fornavn som mig, udveksler verbale slagserier:

In architecture, the conceptual model sees architecture as a practice to be undertaken for its own sake whether as drawings or built work, whereas many phenomenologists, Zumthor included, see buildings as things that interact with and participate in human sensory experience. 

   In the aforementioned interview, Eisenman states, “If there is a debate in architecture today, the lasting debate is between architecture as a conceptual, cultural, and intellectual enterprise and architecture as a phenomenological enterprise–that is, the experience of the subject in architecture, the experience of materiality, of light, of color, of space, and etc. I have always been on the side opposed to phenomenology.”

   Zumthor, for his part, is equally dismissive of conceptual architecture. “Architecture is something for living, not a language. My mother wants a house for living, not a language. It isn’t possible to live in a language,” he writes in an interview with Marco Masetti. “In Italy, but also in the United States, there are academic architects who remain out of the market. Professors that maybe haven’t built more than a garage, but they talk very well.”

Læse mere om konfrontationen mellem de to arkitektur-syn her:

http://architizer.com/blog/peter-versus-peter/

Og her fotos af en række af Peter Zumthors byggerier, som godt nok er i en anden arkitektonisk boldgade end Weisenmans: 

Kolumba, erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Köln, 2007

Bregenz kunsthaus, 2002

Therme Vals facade, Vals, Graubünden, Switzerland, 2005

St Benedict Chapel, Switzerland, 1988

Wachendorf-Feldkapelle-Bruder-Klaus, 2007

Peter Zumtor er i hvert fald ikke bange for rette vinkler i sine byggerier.

Den kreative Asger Jorn - tre holds-fodbold på en sekskantet fodboldbane

Den internationalt kendte danske maler Asger Jorn, er også kendt for at være iderig på andre områder. Han skrev bla. flere bøger om filosofi, historie, politik og æstetik. Han var medstifter af Cobra-bevægelsen og senere af Situationisternes Interantionale.

  Han havde, som min teori om den kreative personligheds opkomst forudsiger, en konfliktfyldt barndom med et restriktivt miljø og en far som forsvandt - som Asger gjorde oprør mod. 

  Wikipedia fortæller:

He was the second oldest of six children, an elder brother to Jørgen Nash. Both his parents were teachers. His father, Lars Peter Jørgensen, was a fundamentalist Christian who died when Asger was 12 years old in a car crash. His mother, Maren, née Nielsen, was more liberal but nevertheless a deeply committed Christian. This early heavy Christian influence had a negative effect on Asger who began progressively to inwardly rebel against it, and more generally against other forms of authority

Anledningen til at nævne Asger Jorn er en artikel i Politiken fra onsdag den 27. juli, forsiden af Kultursektionen, journalist Erik Jensen.
  En mærkelig grafik af en sekskantet fodboldbane - og en rubrik som også fanger opmærksomheden: "En kort, en lang, en trekant ... en bold".

   Her er grafikken som straks "tændte" min nysgerrighed:

En sekskantet fodboldbane! Et fodboldspil med tre hold og tre mål.

Artiklen i Politiken fortæller om et "fodboldspil" som Asger Jorn en gang har opfundet: TRIOLEKTISK FODBOLD, og som er beskrevet i hans bog fra 1961: "Naturens Orden".
   Det bliver lige i artiklen nævnt at Asger Jorns opfindelse af dette fodboldspil ikke er tænkt som noget der skulle realiseres i praksis, men som et anskueligt udtryk for en filosofi som bygger på en anden logik end den "binære" som vores traditionelle tænkning og ideologi ellers er domineret af, en tænkning som filosofisk  kommer til udtryk i Hegels og Marx´dialektiske systemer.
   Jorn gav sin filosofi navnet "Triolektik", og grundideen var et tankekoncept som ikke indebærer en simpel og stabil "løsning" - fx i form af en mental tvekamp med en enkelt vindertanke - men som er dynamisk  og hele tiden inviterer til uro og ny kreativ usikkerhed.

Søger man "triolectic" på den engelske Wikipedia, så bliver man henvist til en form for logik som har flere navne som alle går på 3-tallet, og som er kendetegnet ved at den opererer med tre værdier: sand, falsk og ubestemt - i stedet for de noramle to: sand, falsk:

In logic, a three-valued logic (also trivalent, ternary, or trinary logic, sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is any of several many-valued logic systems in which there are three truth values indicating true, false and some indeterminate third value. This is contrasted with the more commonly known bivalent logics (such as classical sentential or boolean logic) which provide only for true and false. Conceptual form and basic ideas were initially created by Łukasiewicz, Lewis and Sulski. These were then re-formulated by Grigore Moisil in an axiomatic algebraic form, and also extended to n-valued logics in 1945.

Ifølge Politiken skal det trielektriske fodboldspil nu alligevl forsøges realiseret af den spanske fodboldklub Athletic Bilbao til efteråret. Det sker i sammenhæng med at det berømte Guggenheim museum i byen vil vise en Asger Jorn særudstilling. Og der skal optages en dokumentarfilm om Jorn med tre-holds-fodboldspillet som visuel og dramaturgisk "motor". Der bliver også afviklet en konference "Thinking Football" med internationale kunstnere og fodboldeksperter som deltagere.
   Konceptuel og kreativ blending så det basker - på mange niveauer.

På nettet finder jeg følgende beskrivelse af spillet og hvad det indebærer af revolutionære kreative forestillinger:

The key to the game is that it does not foster aggression or competitiveness. Unlike two-sided football, no team keeps a record of the number of goals they score. However they do keep a tally of the goals they concede, and the winner is determined as the team which concedes least goals. The game deconstructs the mythic bi-polar strcuture of conventional football, where an us-and-them struggle mediated by the referee mimics the way the media and the state pose themselves as "neutral" elements in the class struggle. Likewise, it is no psycho-sexual drama of the fuckers and fucked - the possibilities are greatly expanded! The pitch is hexagonal each team being assigned two opposite sides for bureaucratical purposes should the ball be kicked out of the play. The blank side is called the front side. The side containing the orifice is called the backside, and the orifice is called a goal. Should the ball be thrust through a team's orifice, the team is deemed to have conceded a goal - so in an emblematic fashion this perpetuates the anal-retentive homophobic techniques of conventional football whereby homo-erotic tension is built up, only to be sublimated and repressed.

   However the trialectic appropriation of this technique dissolves the homo-erotic/homo-phobic bipolarity as a successful attack will generally imply co-operation with the third team. This should overcome the prominent resistance to women taking their full part in football. Meanwhile the penetration of the defence by two opposing teams imposes upon the defence the task of counterbalancing their disadvantage through sowing the seeds of discord in an alliance which can only be temporary. This will be achieved through exhortation, body language, and an ability to manoeuvre the ball and players into such a position that one opposing team will realise that its interests are better served by breaking off the attack and allying themselves with the defending team.Bearing in mind that such a decision will not necessarily be immediate, a team may well find itself split between two alliances. Such a situation opens them up to the possibility of their enemies uniting, making maximum use of this confusion.

   3-sided football is a game of skill, persuasion and psychogeography. When the ball goes out of the play on the frontside, a throw-in is conceded. This is carried out by the team whose frontside it is, unless they had last touch. In that case the throw in is taken by the team whose goal is the nearest. When the ball goes out of the play at the backside, the defening team has a goal kick, unless they had last touch, in which case a corner is taken by the team whose goal is nearest. The semicircle around the goal functions as a penalty area and it may be necessary to use it for some sort of offside rule which has yet to be developed. http://anarchistsoccer.org/node/75.

At det ikke er en tilfældighed at det netop er i Bilbao at man vil forsøge at realisere spillet, får man en klar forestilling om når man ser et billede af den relativt nye Guggenheim-museum i byen:

Sådan en arkitektonisk vision kan meget vel være resultatet af at arkitekten med sin tegnestue har spillet triolektisk fodbold i hjernen i nogle måneder. Arkitektens navn er Frank Gehry.

   Når jeg forfølger sporet fra billedet af dette museum, kommer jeg ind på en hjemmeside der definerer "entertainment design" som noget særligt:

Entertainment design is the art of creating experiences which excite the mind: theme parks and rides, special events, shows, exhibits, galleries, and themed restaurants. What we call "entertainment" is orchestrated by a talented group of people known as entertainment designers (or sometimes "experiential designers"), and represents a combination of imagination and technical know-how.  

http://entertainmentdesigner.com/entertainmentdesign.html