hi Michael, thanks for sharing your thoughts. it comes at
an opportune time for me, as I have just started and finished
an essay by Peter Eisenman on these very points. [from the book
anthology Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, ed. Kate
Nesbitt, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996]:
The End of the Classical
The End of the Beginning, The End of the End
Peter Eisenman, 1984 Perspecta, Yale Architectural Journal 21
in your post you delineate the threads of Eisenman's article.
starting with the difference between 'image and language', the
role of 'simulation' in representation, the difference between
an object and an action (language versue writing).. on all of
these counts your response is in harmony with Eisenman's.
the End of the Classical is an amazing work of thought. i once
heard Eisenman lecture and found it to be something i disliked
immensely because of his philosophy, which i feel is (too) a-
moral, in the extreme. i think that is the flaw in the text
and philosophy itself, but, before making that a conclusion,
throughout the reading i was impressed and in awe of his
grasp of the architectural story. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze
& Guattari amongst others are weaved together in an archi-
tectural thought experiment of philosophical magnitude. it
is an essay well-worth reading, but for myself difficult
reading because of the density of thought. so dense that
my attempt to make a brief of it may be inadequate to
summarize the points made. but i'll try:
Eisenman attempts and succeeds in outlining the role of
'The Classical' in architecture, from the Renaissance to
the present day, in terms of 3 "fictions", ~representation,
~reason, and ~history.
each of these, he contends, is really an arbitrary construct,
feigning scientific and enlightened objectivity in built form.
the architecture that results is what he calls The Classical,
that is, an architecture that represents something else out-
side itself, a representation of 'The Classic' in another
form, but not 'Classic', an architecture ~as~is, itself.
the point of harmony between this Design-L discourse and
The End of the Classical is in the definition of Simulcra
as being "a representation of a representation". to me this
definition is what you addressed in the comparision of, say,
the real White House with a televised White House on a tv
screen. the latter is a representation of a representation,
and may fuction more in terms of 'messaging than meaning.'
this televised architectural White House, may, then, function
in new ways as: "A sign begins to replicate or, is no longer
a distinction between representation and reality, when reality
is only simulation, then representation loses its ~a~priori
source of significance, and it, too, becomes a simulation."
i think it could be said that the neoclassical, enlightenment
era American White House could have had an architectural death
in traditional terms (does it have meaning as an object itself,
or, does it instead refer to an other meaning, The Classic, by
which it sends out its message, a simulation of the real...)
Thus, could the e-sign of the building instead be the 'real'
architecture, and the old reading, a simulated architecture,
now dead, with God, in an existential vacuum of objectivity?
Eisenman defines The Not-Classical as an Architecture of
Fiction: "what is being proposed is an expansion beyond the
limitations presented by the classical model to the realization
of ~architecture~as~an~independent~discourse, free of external
values- classical or any other; that is, the intersection of
the ~meaning-free, the ~arbitrary, and the ~timeless in the
artificial." the defining continues:
"a "not-calssical" architecture is not the inverse, negative,
or opposite of classical architecture; it is merely different
from or other than. A "not-classical" architecture is no longer
a certification of experience or a simulation of history, reason,
or reality in the present. Instead, it may more appropriately be
described as an ~other manifestation, an architecture as is, now
as a fiction. It is a representation of itself, of its own values
and internal experience.
.. The "not-classical" merely proposes an
end to the dominance of classical values in order to reveal other
values. It proposes, not a new value or a new zeitgeist, but
merely another condition- one of reading architecture as a text."
all this, for me, helps make sense to an architecture such as
his experimental houses, Parc de la Villette, or Wexner Center,
where 'architectural form is revealed as a "place of invention"'.
a tactic is introduced; "To invent an architecture is to allow
architecture to be a cause; in order to be a cause, it must arise
from something outside a directed strategy of composition"...
"the internal process itself can generate a kind of non-represent-
ational figuration in the object. This is an appeal, not to the
classical aesthetic of the object, but to the potential ~poetic
of an architectural text. The problem, then, is to distinguish
texts from representations, to convey the idea that what one is
seeing, the material object, is a text rather than a series of
image references to other objects or values."
this jibes with Michael's difference inbetween image and word,
or writing. [the assumption is given that the word is not an
object, that letters are abstract, not concrete. on this point
i disagree, and have developed a thesis surrounding the object-
ness of letters of the alphabet]. the connection continues:
"This suggests the idea of architecture as "writing" as opposed
to architecture as image.. It then signals its reading through
an other system of signs, called ~traces. .. trace signals the
idea to read. Thus a trace is a partial or fragmentary sign; it
has no objecthood. It signifies an action that is in process..
it is a dissimulation.. represents and records the action in-
herent in a former or future reality.. it is concerned with
the marking- literally the figuration- of its own internal
processes. Thus the trace is the record of motivation, the
record of an action, not an image of another object-origin."
taking this into account, say, the televised White House as
architecture, i think that this fragmentary sign of the real
(simulated) White House is just as concrete in terms of the
micro/nano physics. i think it gets down to the level of the
photon/electron/molecule as a materiality, one a building,
one an image, but still materialized, physical, and concrete,
just in a different way than we are used to.
the article concludes with a future scenario of this impact:
"In this case a "not-classical" architecture begins actively
to involve an idea of a reader conscious of [his|her] own
identity as a reader rather than as a user or observer. It
proposes a new reader distinguished from any external value
system (particularly an architectural-historical system).
Such a reader brings no ~a~priori competence to the act of
reading other than an identity as a reader. That is, such a
reader has no preconceived knowledge of what architecture
should be (in terms of its proportions, textures, scale,
and the like); nor does a "not-classical" architecture
aspire to make itself understandable through these
preconceptions."
and in giving a final analysis of the subject, Eisenmen
outlines how architecture will be read as a text:
"The competence of the reader (of architecture) may be
defined as the capacity to distinguish ~a~sense~of~knowing-
~from~a~sense~of~believing. At any given time the conditions
for "knowledge" are "deeper" than philosophic conditions; in
fact, they provide the possibility of distinguishing philo-
sophy from literature, science from magic, and religion from
myth. The new competence comes from the capacity to read
per se, to know how to read, and more importantly, to know
how to ead (but not necessarily decode) architecture as a
text. Thus the new "object" must have the capacity to reveal
itself first of all as a text, as a reading event.
The architectural fiction proposed here differs from the
classical fiction in its primary condition as a text and in
the way it is read: the new reader is no longer presumed to
know the nature of truth in the object, either as a represent-
ation or a rational origin or as a manifestation of a universal
set of rules governing proportion, harmony, and ordering. But
further, knowing how to decode is no longer important; simply,
language in this context is no longer a code to assing meanings
(that ~this means ~that). The activity of reading is first and
foremost in the recognition of something as a language (that
~it~is). Reading, in this sense, makes available a level of
~indication rather than a level of meaning or expression.
Therefore, to propose the end of the beginning and the end of
the end is to propose an end of beginnings and ends of value-
to propose an ~other "timeless" space of invention. It is a
"timeless" space in the present without a determining relation
to an ideal future or an ideal past. Architeture in the present
is seen as a process of inventing an artificial past and a
futureless present. It remembers a no-longer future." [end]
i think this means that there might be a thing or issue called-
architectural "literacy" -about which the reading of buildings
consists of a knoweldge system of material culture. that is
why, architectural and culturally, i think it is significant
to focus on the mundane buildings- in order to read the built
environment. places like fast-food restaurants, gas stations,
powerplants, ports, industrial ruins, in opposition to what is
considered "great Architecture" and great Architects.
reading architecture, what i dub 'semiotecture' will be put in
the glossy. so, what does writing architecture consist of? does
one need to be an architect to do so? and what of those $29.00
drafting programs in terms of creating architectural texts..?
[my contention, contrary to Eisenman's, is that these new texts
or electronic signs/representations are indeed material, by
their very physics, but then again, does the photon have any
mass when at rest, or is it an illusion of materialty due to
action and movement, an elan vital?]
>
>Other 'ways of the architect' I discern in your post, and
>which have relevance to the design of 'real' buildings:
>
>1.The physical manifestation of 'Platonic Ideal'+ADs- the
>expression of abstract concept.
>2.The analysis and assembly of functional parts and volumes.
>3.The interconnectedness of buildings in a wider whole:
>context, distributed design, collaborative design. This
>implies that there is indeed reality outside of our
>subjective selves.
it could even be a pyschoanalysis of architecture as text...
Jungian archtypes as Platonic solids in the collective
architectural image bank of i-maginations..
>
>I believe that these methods and approaches may also be
>valid in the creation of architecture.
>Michael Mullins
bc
___________________________________________________________
a r c h i t e x t u r e z : an online community for hacking
and cracking the architectural code - www.architexturez.com
g l o s s a l a l i a : the design-l architectural glossary
submit your word-concepts www.architexturez.com/glossalalia
s i t e : visit bc's portfolio - www.architexturez.com/site
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
an opportune time for me, as I have just started and finished
an essay by Peter Eisenman on these very points. [from the book
anthology Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, ed. Kate
Nesbitt, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996]:
The End of the Classical
The End of the Beginning, The End of the End
Peter Eisenman, 1984 Perspecta, Yale Architectural Journal 21
in your post you delineate the threads of Eisenman's article.
starting with the difference between 'image and language', the
role of 'simulation' in representation, the difference between
an object and an action (language versue writing).. on all of
these counts your response is in harmony with Eisenman's.
the End of the Classical is an amazing work of thought. i once
heard Eisenman lecture and found it to be something i disliked
immensely because of his philosophy, which i feel is (too) a-
moral, in the extreme. i think that is the flaw in the text
and philosophy itself, but, before making that a conclusion,
throughout the reading i was impressed and in awe of his
grasp of the architectural story. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze
& Guattari amongst others are weaved together in an archi-
tectural thought experiment of philosophical magnitude. it
is an essay well-worth reading, but for myself difficult
reading because of the density of thought. so dense that
my attempt to make a brief of it may be inadequate to
summarize the points made. but i'll try:
Eisenman attempts and succeeds in outlining the role of
'The Classical' in architecture, from the Renaissance to
the present day, in terms of 3 "fictions", ~representation,
~reason, and ~history.
each of these, he contends, is really an arbitrary construct,
feigning scientific and enlightened objectivity in built form.
the architecture that results is what he calls The Classical,
that is, an architecture that represents something else out-
side itself, a representation of 'The Classic' in another
form, but not 'Classic', an architecture ~as~is, itself.
the point of harmony between this Design-L discourse and
The End of the Classical is in the definition of Simulcra
as being "a representation of a representation". to me this
definition is what you addressed in the comparision of, say,
the real White House with a televised White House on a tv
screen. the latter is a representation of a representation,
and may fuction more in terms of 'messaging than meaning.'
this televised architectural White House, may, then, function
in new ways as: "A sign begins to replicate or, is no longer
a distinction between representation and reality, when reality
is only simulation, then representation loses its ~a~priori
source of significance, and it, too, becomes a simulation."
i think it could be said that the neoclassical, enlightenment
era American White House could have had an architectural death
in traditional terms (does it have meaning as an object itself,
or, does it instead refer to an other meaning, The Classic, by
which it sends out its message, a simulation of the real...)
Thus, could the e-sign of the building instead be the 'real'
architecture, and the old reading, a simulated architecture,
now dead, with God, in an existential vacuum of objectivity?
Eisenman defines The Not-Classical as an Architecture of
Fiction: "what is being proposed is an expansion beyond the
limitations presented by the classical model to the realization
of ~architecture~as~an~independent~discourse, free of external
values- classical or any other; that is, the intersection of
the ~meaning-free, the ~arbitrary, and the ~timeless in the
artificial." the defining continues:
"a "not-calssical" architecture is not the inverse, negative,
or opposite of classical architecture; it is merely different
from or other than. A "not-classical" architecture is no longer
a certification of experience or a simulation of history, reason,
or reality in the present. Instead, it may more appropriately be
described as an ~other manifestation, an architecture as is, now
as a fiction. It is a representation of itself, of its own values
and internal experience.
.. The "not-classical" merely proposes an
end to the dominance of classical values in order to reveal other
values. It proposes, not a new value or a new zeitgeist, but
merely another condition- one of reading architecture as a text."
all this, for me, helps make sense to an architecture such as
his experimental houses, Parc de la Villette, or Wexner Center,
where 'architectural form is revealed as a "place of invention"'.
a tactic is introduced; "To invent an architecture is to allow
architecture to be a cause; in order to be a cause, it must arise
from something outside a directed strategy of composition"...
"the internal process itself can generate a kind of non-represent-
ational figuration in the object. This is an appeal, not to the
classical aesthetic of the object, but to the potential ~poetic
of an architectural text. The problem, then, is to distinguish
texts from representations, to convey the idea that what one is
seeing, the material object, is a text rather than a series of
image references to other objects or values."
this jibes with Michael's difference inbetween image and word,
or writing. [the assumption is given that the word is not an
object, that letters are abstract, not concrete. on this point
i disagree, and have developed a thesis surrounding the object-
ness of letters of the alphabet]. the connection continues:
"This suggests the idea of architecture as "writing" as opposed
to architecture as image.. It then signals its reading through
an other system of signs, called ~traces. .. trace signals the
idea to read. Thus a trace is a partial or fragmentary sign; it
has no objecthood. It signifies an action that is in process..
it is a dissimulation.. represents and records the action in-
herent in a former or future reality.. it is concerned with
the marking- literally the figuration- of its own internal
processes. Thus the trace is the record of motivation, the
record of an action, not an image of another object-origin."
taking this into account, say, the televised White House as
architecture, i think that this fragmentary sign of the real
(simulated) White House is just as concrete in terms of the
micro/nano physics. i think it gets down to the level of the
photon/electron/molecule as a materiality, one a building,
one an image, but still materialized, physical, and concrete,
just in a different way than we are used to.
the article concludes with a future scenario of this impact:
"In this case a "not-classical" architecture begins actively
to involve an idea of a reader conscious of [his|her] own
identity as a reader rather than as a user or observer. It
proposes a new reader distinguished from any external value
system (particularly an architectural-historical system).
Such a reader brings no ~a~priori competence to the act of
reading other than an identity as a reader. That is, such a
reader has no preconceived knowledge of what architecture
should be (in terms of its proportions, textures, scale,
and the like); nor does a "not-classical" architecture
aspire to make itself understandable through these
preconceptions."
and in giving a final analysis of the subject, Eisenmen
outlines how architecture will be read as a text:
"The competence of the reader (of architecture) may be
defined as the capacity to distinguish ~a~sense~of~knowing-
~from~a~sense~of~believing. At any given time the conditions
for "knowledge" are "deeper" than philosophic conditions; in
fact, they provide the possibility of distinguishing philo-
sophy from literature, science from magic, and religion from
myth. The new competence comes from the capacity to read
per se, to know how to read, and more importantly, to know
how to ead (but not necessarily decode) architecture as a
text. Thus the new "object" must have the capacity to reveal
itself first of all as a text, as a reading event.
The architectural fiction proposed here differs from the
classical fiction in its primary condition as a text and in
the way it is read: the new reader is no longer presumed to
know the nature of truth in the object, either as a represent-
ation or a rational origin or as a manifestation of a universal
set of rules governing proportion, harmony, and ordering. But
further, knowing how to decode is no longer important; simply,
language in this context is no longer a code to assing meanings
(that ~this means ~that). The activity of reading is first and
foremost in the recognition of something as a language (that
~it~is). Reading, in this sense, makes available a level of
~indication rather than a level of meaning or expression.
Therefore, to propose the end of the beginning and the end of
the end is to propose an end of beginnings and ends of value-
to propose an ~other "timeless" space of invention. It is a
"timeless" space in the present without a determining relation
to an ideal future or an ideal past. Architeture in the present
is seen as a process of inventing an artificial past and a
futureless present. It remembers a no-longer future." [end]
i think this means that there might be a thing or issue called-
architectural "literacy" -about which the reading of buildings
consists of a knoweldge system of material culture. that is
why, architectural and culturally, i think it is significant
to focus on the mundane buildings- in order to read the built
environment. places like fast-food restaurants, gas stations,
powerplants, ports, industrial ruins, in opposition to what is
considered "great Architecture" and great Architects.
reading architecture, what i dub 'semiotecture' will be put in
the glossy. so, what does writing architecture consist of? does
one need to be an architect to do so? and what of those $29.00
drafting programs in terms of creating architectural texts..?
[my contention, contrary to Eisenman's, is that these new texts
or electronic signs/representations are indeed material, by
their very physics, but then again, does the photon have any
mass when at rest, or is it an illusion of materialty due to
action and movement, an elan vital?]
>
>Other 'ways of the architect' I discern in your post, and
>which have relevance to the design of 'real' buildings:
>
>1.The physical manifestation of 'Platonic Ideal'+ADs- the
>expression of abstract concept.
>2.The analysis and assembly of functional parts and volumes.
>3.The interconnectedness of buildings in a wider whole:
>context, distributed design, collaborative design. This
>implies that there is indeed reality outside of our
>subjective selves.
it could even be a pyschoanalysis of architecture as text...
Jungian archtypes as Platonic solids in the collective
architectural image bank of i-maginations..
>
>I believe that these methods and approaches may also be
>valid in the creation of architecture.
>Michael Mullins
bc
___________________________________________________________
a r c h i t e x t u r e z : an online community for hacking
and cracking the architectural code - www.architexturez.com
g l o s s a l a l i a : the design-l architectural glossary
submit your word-concepts www.architexturez.com/glossalalia
s i t e : visit bc's portfolio - www.architexturez.com/site
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////