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possibilities, and in pursuit of this new discourse of the possibilities is the use of
diagrams.
The writer-architects Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas
Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas chose to begin his architectural career
through writing. For them, the words became an architectural site for invention.
Eisenmans first work of architecture is his a doctoral thesis entitled The Formal
Basis for Modern Architecture (1963). Koolhaass thesis in the next decade (1978),
Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, is not dedicated
to the study of architectural form, but the numerical and exponential values of
a metropolis like New York City. Eisenman and Koolhaas critical and conceptual
architecture grasped the potential of language as a model for architecture as text.
The process that generates their architectural form would not be very different from
that linguists described to establish standards of immanent generational grammar
in language (Moneo, 2008, p. 143).
Both refuse to teach architectural design in the conventional sense, but use
education as a way to analyze the architecture through diagrams - Eisenmans
students make diagrams from the works of canonical Terragni and other buildings,
while Koolhaas compile data about everyday irregularities.
According to Somol (2007), in the way the diagram has become instrumentalized
in architecture over the last few decades, Koolhaas and Eisenman have much
more in common with each other than architects in the same period. Working
diagrammatically (not to be confused with simply working with diagrams) implies
a particular orientation and cannot be accounted by reapplying the conventional
categories of formal or functional, critical or complicit, but by subverting dominant
oppositions and hierarchies currently constitutive of the discourse.
According to Montaner (2009, p.148) fragmentation is the most genuine form of
postmodern condition, and when the starting point becomes this hybrid condition,
it resists the temptation of unity, identity, metaphysics and refers to mechanisms
that recompose the multiple and fragmentary reality, through mosaic, collages,
superpositions and other strategies that potentiates both the complexity and
individualization of each part. In this sense, for him, Koolhaas and Eisemans design
process reflects this reality characterized by dispersion and difference, additions,
superpositions and the clash between parts, which is a work of recomposition.
In fact, both understand the design process through the sequence in time and
the architectural representation as not only the definition of a final object, but
a discourse. It is an analogical relationship between language and architecture,
generated through diagrammatic operations. Despite all differences, Koolhaas and
Eisenman are both interested in text and in built form. They built and written in all
the phases of their work and the diagram is the graphic approach.
Peter Eisenman: folding and unfolding diagrammatic operations
Peter Eisenman is an architect and educator. After years of practice in teaching,
research and theoretical work he established his practice focused on the scale of
the building. His first projects include prototype large-scale housing, single family
houses and institutional facilities for education which resulted in dozens of awards
for the relevant architectural production.
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ground projects and it reinforces the idea of the trace, a figure-figure urbanism
diagram which portrays different layers related to the city.
In the City of Culture of Galicia (1999 - ongoing), the undulating form of all the
six buildings is evolved from the layering of three sets of information: the plan of
the medieval center of Santiago de Compostela, a cartesian grid that represents
the modern city and the topography of the hilltop, which distorts the preview
flat geometries. The superposition of the old and new layers are combined in a
simultaneous matrix which creates the topological surface and the fluid movement
of the ground and rooftops. The figure-figure urbanism diagram emerge as a
parametric junction of the patterns of different layers. Once again the concept is
strongest connected to the shape, but the geometry resulted is unexpected and
totally different to the context. The struggle over seemingly disparate paths also
represents a search for an internal disciplinary logic for architecture. This reflection
would be an amalgam of projects and their critical reflections, an excessive
hipertext, as it were combining text and objects beyond their limits of their former
textuality (Davidson, 2006).
More recently, this archaeological path discourse is also reflected on the Yenikapi
Project, in Istambul, designed in partnership with Ayta architects. Eisenmans
proposal deals with the site at different scales: the architectural, the site and the
urban scales. The design is based on analysis of the context, identified through
two grid systems which, after rotated, built up a different framework. The same
matrix and logic were re-proposed to the interior of the architecture and connects
virtual and real spaces to different contexts. In fact, this fragmentary approach of
the project pieces, a random collage of seemingly disparate layers of information,
confronts to the nature of the site, but at the same time proposes a transformation
of the place itself. It is a generative operation through the overlapping fragments
from the context and the final result is as geometrically complex as the site, despite
it does not represent it figuratively.
Although Eisenmans work changed from the first Cartesian experimentations
to a second phase of the crossing layers of the context, the diagrammatic thinking
explores the networking of superposing paths, in which the time becomes a part of
the process. The record of several stages of the design allows it to exist in time, as
precisely a map of the event, a method for architectural generation as a text.
Rem Koolhaas: the diagram as infographics
Rem Koolhaas is one of the most significant contemporary architects who best
theorized and consolidated the culture of the fragment - with influences of Peter
Eisenman (who systematically questions the certainty of a place), ingredients of
pop culture references and also the architect Robert Venturi. His journalist initial
training, before the completion of studies in architecture, has great influence on
his career, which begins, coincidentally, at the time the criticism of Modernism
strengthens (1960). Similar to Peter Eisenman, his professional practice matured
through theoretical foundation and dedication to the academic career. Currently
he has an office for the production of architecture (OMA), parallel to a theoretical
knowledge production (AMO).
His work as a whole has great influence of poststructuralist philosophers,
particularly those gathered in the exhibition entitled deconstructivist. His
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diagrams of the project show four layers of functions, each one corresponding
to a tower of an specific activity: a tower of a laboratory (thinking), an elevator
core (circulation), a stack of meeting rooms (community), a tower of accountants
(money). The sections combine graphics and words in an architectural discourse of
assembly of information through the shape.
In the same programmatic logic, the project for LACMA Museum Competition
shows how the scale shifts from architecture to urbanism. Simple diagrams
demonstrate layer-by-layer numeric solutions for the architectural problem.
LACMAs collection planes illustrate significant connections between the old
buildings and also the paths into the exhibition. Colorful pieces split different
programs, cultures, departments and ages and the diagrammatic sections are able
to reflect, in the shape, the historic convergence and rupture through time.
In the Seattle library project, the sections illustrate platforms as programmatic
clusters and the spaces in between function as trading floors, interfaces where the
different platforms are organized (spaces for work, interaction and play). These
schemes helps to understand the complexity of a mass-building, to split and
combine different layers of contents. For Koolhaas, the iconography is an important
tool for the design process.
But, besides this creative intent, some critics argue that the diagrams do not
have logical relationship to the final architectural object. For them, the content is
not related to the generated form and the process is an autonomous entity, later
illustrated by these graphs.
Despite all discussions about the validity of these graphics to the design
process, the ideograms of Rem Koolhaas are indeed interesting narratives related
to the project. They are creative approaches to communicate the concept and for
the comprehension of the complexities of mass-buildings related to contemporary
cities.
Conclusion
The practice of the diagram as graphic notation method to generate form
is different in Koolhaas and Eisenmans practice. But, despite of all difference
between the architects design process, the inspiring force of the diagrams, reflects
not only their descriptive or explanatory capacity, but their generative architectural
possibilities and also the multiple associations of ideas they allow. More than
expose, the diagram stimulates creativity; more than explain situations, it
presents possibilities.
But, despite the operation through layers of contents or geometric notations
reveals unexpected situations, in some cases, the final object may be similar to
each other. The design of Peter Eisenmans Max Reinhardt Haus Project, in Berlim,
and Rem Koolhaas CCTV Headquarter, in Beijing, for example, are very similar in
form, scale and in their relation to the city. Maybe, the result of the diagrammatic
process is somewhat predictable in both, or their reciprocal influences are deeper
than the use of this diagrammatic language.
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References
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DAVIDSON, C., 2006. Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works. New
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KOOLHAAS, R., 2004. Content. Kln: Taschen.
MONEO, R., 2008. Inquietao terica e estratgia projetual na obra de oito
arquitetos contemporneos. So Paulo: Cosac Naify.
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__________________ 2013. Arquitetura e Crtica. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
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download/44701/48329> [Accessed 05 October 2014].
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