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PETER EISENMAN: Fin dOu T Hau S 10 ~ b r u a r y - J M.l1 Ch 198Not to be used for wrapping purposes

I hne had troub le coming to terms with wri t ingabout Eise nman's work . p l r t i ~ u l i r "Io rk und.rreview. a series of models lnd drl ings of l fourstl ge tr.uuformation perfo rmed o n a cu be house.exhibited I t the AA . is more characteristic thln itissignificanl. It h;udly bru ks new ground, but that isnot itself the difficulty . The difficulty is writing.Here am [, writing lbout a work th l t claims for itsdfthe status o f writing, that tells us it cannot bedetOlChed from the writing th:J.llCCo mpanies it ~ y sby Nina Hofer and Jeffrey Kipn is) and ""hich, in sofM;as it IS the work of Peter Eise nman, is prOtected bya great volum e of writing by himself and others.Much of the writing by othcrs has been highl ycri t ical in to ne, i t is true. yet this docs not seem 0matter haJf so much as the tnnsferring into mOSt of ito f the same little zoo of terminologiesand exampleswith wh ic h Eisenman populates hi s o wn architectur.ll wri t ing. More like a process o f bacterialinfection than critical discussion.In these circumstances opposition becomes justano ther species of affi rm ation. adding furthe r to thegreat \'olume o f wr it ing. Ho "" then to escape thisingeniously se t tr.lp of u nwilling co mplicity? Thert'is a strong temptat io n to bring it all down 0 a gesture. In the middle of a rt'Cent lect ure at the RIBA.while Eisenman was d iscoursi ng on the absence ofpresence and the presence o f absence. a nlember ofthe audience. thinking it timt' to leave. stepped infront of the projector, hise lCp.inded shadow eclipsingthe imlgeof the slide for fe"" well


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The si mulunwus ~ of mmifC'st St'nSt' andabstraction. the' ('x ;c$si \'e and the minimal, wasimpl ici t in the' structural ist xcount ofb.nguage. butit is not difficu lt to imoagine a situation in which Ih esu bi t of n udy would bI: ('r rantOusly idemifiedwith the ruson for studying il .Thai is to therewould COfT Ie a time "" hen, bn:aUSt Structure hJd beendwelt on for so long, a suucturc wou ld be assumed tocontain all the propc:rtics of language if t exhibited asysu:mof relallonsso mething like that of langu age.AI which slag


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illusion of mo\'cmem by .l kind of \'cntri Joquism,p c ~ k i n g for the ;lfchileC"ture, though in h el ,h('source is not so u sily determined. One insunce ofthiswill sery(' uan illuSlr21 ion. O l'f the rcm EiSC'nman hu nllde use of ;I number of mal hematin]terms to desc ribe the fo rmal properti es of his projects. Without benefi t of th e5e it might seem that notonly the House series but;also the more f( l;:Cnt. morc'eclt'Ctic works at Btrlin and Ken 511(t' and for theMib,n Biennale arC' subsumw by thrcr-di men sionalgrids made mo re or less visible:. All the House projects are generati from (ubn. subdivided. cut andshifud in vuiou$ W;1 YS. Hefe .....e ha ve twO of themost essenti;al1y ch:angd ess 1l"chitectonic formsbrought toge th er in a manner that accemu,l.(ts theirimmobility. The indefinit e C xtcnsion of the grid conuinfil within the: cube. gestures to the infin itetrimmed and fitted in boxes. But this m b i n ~ t i ofs:lmeness and stability is ac t ivated by aprocedure ofsuccessi \'e devdopment u lled tram/ormauo" byEisenman. Th is term has si nce become so ",'ell established in the in ternational architect ural vocabu

l . ~ r y that a co nscious effort has to be made tosee howthe sense of the .....ord insinuates mO\'ement in to theprocedure to ..... hich it is applied. Not just any oldmovement but a particular kind of movement.Eisenman first used the word with reference toChomsky's tr.lonsformat ion: .l grammar. The Transformational Component in Chomsky's linguisticsprovided the bridge between wh.lI he s:lW as the

hidden Deep Structures of language and theSurfac('Structures of senttnct'$. Eistnman s:lW his own procedure - which generally comm('nced with a si nglea.her.lotion toa cube, ('nding up with something mor('co mplu diverse - as analogous to Chomsky's

T r . I o n s f o m ~ t i o n a l Compol\(nt. Chomsky in turnh1d borrowed the term from mathematics.According to either the lingu istic or the mathema tical usage. a transformation is a syste matic alterationof form, simultaneous and pervasive. Howe \er.the totality and the suddennm are in the history ofthe term. not in the procedure to wh ich Eisenman

applies it. wh ich is piecemul. pmi"l. cumulat i\e.dabontive. and is guided not by the m:lpping ofonegeneral system into another. as in mathematics andby implication in lingu istKs. bu t by acompositionalsensibi lity not unfamili rin the arts.The procedurelooks systemat ic ~ n d mathematically rigorousbecause the drawings are presented in such a wa y asto give that impression. Knowincly. Eisenman dropsin the occasional di.sci.limer. tdling us they Me notreally 10 method ical.Ho"" ever dubious iu nam e, the transformationtC'Chnique asexemplified in the: House series has beenpractiSoCd with tonsummate skill, eath house tarrying along wi th it a gnphic pedigree indi cati ng the

lall S nJ,wr, - It ,r,J"s/om,,Jflon; F :c.y) - (xl. ?)origin and progress of its own de\'dopment. o r -wit h a bl in k of the eyes - presenting a SCt of deniedprojects whose full existence had bC't-n suppressc:d infavour of the one chosen, but ..... hich mai mai n 1ghostly prC':SC'nce in the body of the host. Still. theproducu of this tec hn ique might better be called51ates than tn nsform:i.lions. after the mgraver's practice of printing:l pble in variousst:agcs as the: image isworked. reworked. er;ucd and built up agOli n. Thereis less movement in aSlate than in a transformation.:lnd .....hat mO\'emem it dOl 's bring with it is cirtumstantial, Brownian almost.

In the dc-scription of o u ~ Xb(I980) Eisenmanintroduces topological ftometry. Topology is th ..math .. ma t ical study 0 nonm ..trie surfaces lnuspaces. that is, the in\'estigation of p l i a b l ~ formswithin wh ich measured distances are of no acCOU nt .He knows this and indicates as much, ye t the pro;c...:ti.s to mposcd of the f:lmiliar metric cI ment s in thefam iliar r t h o g o n ~ format.More rccently still, with the Romto and Juliet project fo r Vitenza. his mind has turntd 10 fraetals,which lre of int erest because, in a purely mathematical sense. they d e f i n ~ procedures that seem toexist IOme v.'here be t"" een v.hole-numbe r dimensionality. So. mathem tically spc'ak ing, there couldbe Rid to be some kind of spxe e t w ~ n two dimensions and three. Yet the shined grids and dislocationsof th is p r o ~ t do not immedi tely bring to mindanyth ing so par.lodoxic: .l.The blind totality of the tnnsformation; theplulicity of the topologital sunate; the inconcei\able inbet",,eenish dimensionality of the fractal, ifbrought directly into play. would threaten the mostsl1bk and fun damentill features of archi tect ure as it isnow practised. R:tilinurity. measurement, spacemight all StrC'teh or coll:opse beyond recognitionunder their p T C S 5 u r ~ , or they might be h1\"e thus ifEisenman's lang of mathematical disruptors wer ..allowed to af t'Cl t h i n drastically. But no - theyappear to have been kept In check. Tosuch an extenth:l\'e they been kept in check that it is. at fim. hard toide ntify e\'en faint t Xes of their innuence. or to

discern their metaphorical sh:ldows in his tomposit ions of r:tilinear fr:lm eworks and reClangul:lrplmes ""hose micubt ions arc determined by wholenumber subdivisions (characterist ic.s whith. thoughthey be tr.llced back to nmhematits. ha\'e longsinee bten naturalized wit hin art hitetture). andwhich for the moSt pm remain undinurbed andundeformed.If these foreig n mathcmatit:ll terms had beenallowed to invade the work they would :llmost certainly h1\"e destroyed iu quintesscnti.u architectu ralpropert ies. They may just possibly have replaeedthem e\entu lIy. The question is not ..... ith in ther ~ n g e of cuslO mary intuition to dl..:idc - that is partof the : l s c i n ~ t i in contempl ating it - but, gIventh .. law s of entropy and thance, the greater likelihood ",'ould be their pe rmanent corru pt ion an dobl ite r:u ion. A dangerous business. Eisenm an is inb tl a ju lous guardi:ln of th e stable and fundlmemalfutures of art hit:lure . He is r:ldical in his fundament lism. not in challenging fundamentals(thoughhis ..... riling constantly straim to sugges t the Imer).Yet there w,u one remMkableexteption. Atlhe fina l51:lf;eofthe:development of Hou5C' X. mer the eighthproposal and fter thedient had dec ided nOl 10 goahud and build. e\'en though working drawingshadbn ro nlpletoo. so the story got'S. l model w,u made.It W l not a modelof the house 1$ it would have beenbuilt. howe\er. but a model which .....l panially collapsed. all the uprighu ie:lning fortyfive degrees inthe s:r.me direction. So. although a fullbodied model,it borrowed some of the character ofan u:onometric

p r o ~ i o n and appc'ared to be in 1 sute be tw .....ndnwing (just push a lillie further) and four.square.thn.'t"'-dimension: .l arc hitecture: an intermediate condition. It is allO theon ly true trall5fonnation. in themathematical sense of Ihe word, that he has everperformed on his work. He dOC's not call it a Irans[orm;l\ion. though, for the st ries of what he ca llstransformations for House X had already been produted. Unl ike these, the u:onometric model was athoroughgoing , unified distortion of acomplete andfi nalized Housc design. and th is is why the S10ryabout its bei np made after the protect. was fi nished isof morethan Incidental int .. reJl.A true transformation of this kind is not exaetlydesign bct:luse whatever is subjetl to the transformation must alre:ldy be tomplete in aU its pans. In 1transformat ion only rJauom alter. No ncwekmentsCln be introduced or remo\'ed; bits cannot be addedor taken Away; nothing Cln be elaborated. The differe nee is easy 10 see. In this insunce the correspondence to mathem ticaltnnsformation is suehthat a simple' formula describes it. For an oblique co l

l ~ s t l i k e a t o r the House X model it is: F(x . y,lo) _(Ix yl2].ylli.[lo y/2]).Pr:cdenucan be pointed to from ""ithin architecture. or perhaps it would be fairer to s:ly fro m theperiph ery of architecture, none so dose as JU3nCaramuel l obkowitlo'sA r ml um C C(1l y bliqUilof 1711 in whith thcdassical demenlS were subjectedto similar tnnsform tion so 1$ to fit them on toindi ned stairtaSC' walls ye t maintain to nt inui ty ofline. Ackno .... ledging the si milarity enables us torecogniu also the much greater IOphistiC1t ion nd

s c ~ of Eistnman's u:onomC'tric model . Car:r.muelsoblique architl'Clure. however interesting. was co nf l U S I ~


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crived a WAy of coping with spt.'Cial c;tSe$, or of'correcting' perceptual distonions.it.s p p l i t i o nwere l o c ~ l i z e d and u b o r d i n ~ t e , where;lS the axonometric model for House X plays more effecti\'ciyv ithin the gAp betv.'n technique and th, thing towhich the technique is applit'd. The dra""ing and itSobject (the architecture) arc quite distinct in Canmud. the T . l n s f o r m ~ t i o n into the oblique is anentirely tw-dimensionaIAffair. ln House X, d r ~ ' ing ~ n d object are more neuly conflated ~ n d thetransformation operates in three dimensions.

I do not know why i s e n m ~ n did not eall iti o n . It does not maner that he did not, as.

f o r m ~ l I y speaking, rose by any other n ~ m e willretain identical r e l ~ t i o n s h i p s to other elements inthe e m ~ n t i c field, NevenheleS5. given the theme ofthis anicle. hi s no t doing so affords a sma ll insight ,suggesti\'e nther than conclusive though it may be,into the ksseasily


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If in House X th(' l.argely spurious assignment oflabels such as topological u i li of sy mmetry. t ~logical transformat ion .and Mobius strip were overlooked, it would be possible to loo k instead for themanner in which a train of thought passing throughtopology might ha\'e pbyed upon the object. When.in one of the numerous u pbnatOry modd s. Eisenman shows the pulling of a smaller cube: through aluger one as if fro m a distend.lble mass. it could be:said to resemble t he d i f f e r e m i ~ 1 topologist 's p r ~cedu re of pu ll ing 5urf.lCe$ through e.lch ot hu . Itresembles it without be:ing the ~ m ( . If tM upbn.

i o n wer(' that mattered. one might juSt as ....say that it is like a sock being turned inside out, as sayit is like a partial eversion of a closed surface, thuscbiming p ~ t r o n a g e o f modern mathematics. Thediagrams that accompany the model to illustrate, stepby step. t he pulling ofa through h. because they arepresented as serious l


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p ~ r t icu I; .r source of inspir.u io n.Another in wh ich th is is made mlnifes t inHouse Xla is in the twO torus- like figurt'S at thecrown and bUt of the conStruction. ontglass. one0pUJue, mirror i m ~ g t s of t;ICh other. Tht figure ism;l.deof c u b t from which t w o d i ~ g o n a l l y o p p o s i t ecorners have been remo\'ed (notice how tasy it is forthe vtrb IVIIO Vt to intimidate th


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