'WINTER' AND MAYBE 'SPRING' IN BERLIN
"Duration is experienced by a descent into self. Each instant is there; nothing is definitive since each instant remakes the past." --Emmanuel Lévinas, God, Death, and Time (c.1975)
Ernst Bloch opened The Spirit of Utopia with a panegyric regarding architecture as a cipher for the human condition. In describing the “life-negating, macrocosmic cubism” of the world of stones (in reference to Egyptian sacral architecture), Bloch brought a prescience for the psychological nature of form to bear on the crisis of architectural and artistic representation abroad in 1923, the date of the first German edition of this famous book.Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe does just the same. It also brings to bear two forms of time, duration or the long now and diachrony or linear time, terms implicit in Bloch’s utopian project, entombed in the very form of the field of 2700 concrete pillars to occupy the Franzoesische Strasse, in Berlin, between the Potsdamer Platz and the refurbished Reichstag.
Eisenman prefers Adolf Loos as a touchstone for discussing the symbolic dimension of monumentality and tombs. Loos, according to Eisenman, was impressed by the singular nature of these forms rather than the collective. Bloch is concerned with the ‘we’ of cultural presence and the diminished options for such a presence in post-revolutionary Germany. Regardless, the underlying concern for both Bloch and Loos is the contamination of the long now (the utopian principle) with the denatured and stylistic effervescence of diachronic, historical time.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe utilizes two fields, as it were, to represent and problematize these two forms of time that haunt Western rationality. The pillars are spaced 92 centimeters apart and range in height from zero to 4.0 meters. Contained with the dimensional parameters of this field is the trace of a first, totalizing field of 4,000 pillars of a generic 7-meter height, a system Eisenman derived from an elemental, a priori grid that has, in the subsequent iteration, begun to disintegrate. This ‘monstrous’, archetypal grid has been destabilized as a ‘sigilistic’ gesture indicating the inherent inhumanity of totalizing systems, a signature Eisenman obsession regarding the diabolical nature of meta-narratives and authorized realities tempered by his forays into deconstructivist literary theory. The two types of time -- duration and chronology -- are suggested in the very real ground plane of the site and in the hypothetical undulating plane partly articulated by the variable top surfaces of the pillars.
The grid lines of greater Berlin come into play in the disposition of the two planes through a series of displacements that also allows for human interaction and for the oppressive nature of the total system to entertain unformed space or indeterminacy. In a nod perhaps toward the organic, Eisenman (with Laurie Olin) has proposed trees to connect the Memorial to the neighboring streets and to -- ostensibly -- naturalize the edges of this wintry and spectral architectural scene. This elastic, indeterminate realm between abstract time and contingency is, in Eisenman’s rhetoric, the place of Memory (Mnemosyne). That is, memory as duration or as Muse.
In Bloch’s utopian exegesis the organic excrescences of Gothic architecture compensate for the emphatic echo and emptiness of the inorganic and monolithic forms -- the stones themselves. He refers to the architecture of ancient Egypt as a spiritual 'winter'. This seems to imply a requirement that the Contingent operate in dialectical tension with the Absolute -- that anorganic gestures supplement the expressive void of symbolic, abstract architectures perhaps signifying a 'thaw' or 'spring'. Bloch extends this to the lowly artifact, the pitcher, and makes the sweeping, uncompromising analysis of modern civilization a critique of form itself. Eisenman has produced on the sly both a memorial and a temporal ‘landscape’ -- the obverse and physical negation of the romantic echoing green. In fact, he has given Bloch’s ‘we’ an echoing tableau of signifiers consistent with the egregious duplicity of modern rationality in the twentieth century.
Image - Eisenman/Serra model
Eisenman's methodology famously involves the intersection of various fields and forces in generating the apparatus of building and ground. Perhaps it is then appropriate that his original concept is only a trace within the final proposal, an evolutionary trajectory conditioned by both political and public critiques of the Eisenman-Richard Serra first scheme. Serra dropped out in a characteristic fit of uncompromising artistic pique, whereas Eisenman stayed engaged and brought the Memorial into line with critics, most notably by adding a Hall of Remembrance. The original field of 4,000 slabs of concrete problematized above as a totalizing grid was, in fact, the first Eisenman-Serra version of the Memorial. Curiously, Eisenman has distanced himself from his own uncompromising first take and reconfigured this early monumentality as an oppressive Big Other operating within the subsequent schemes. The Memorial was finally approved by the German parliament, in 1999, after key formal compromises were put into play. These political-critical forces have come to rest in the final disposition of the project and more than compensate for the initial scepticism of the German public. Eisenman has benefited from this process -- a de facto version of his own design process -- as the Memorial is shaped by the very forces of contrition and public perception that are notably absent from the formalistic, abstract methodologies that usually influence deconstructivist works of art, literature and architecture. In some ways this project resembles a deconstruction of deconstruction -- a meta-critique. Collective subjectivity, the 'we' of Ernst Bloch, is, after all, factored back into the Memorial through the agonistic process of critique, counter-critique, amendation, virtuoso fiddling, and, finally, compromise.
Gavin Keeney (New York, 2001)
For post-construction photography of the project, etcetera, see Peter Eisenman, Hélène Binet, Peter Eisenman: Holocaust Memorial Berlin (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2005) - "Inescapably controversial, the Holocaust Memorial Berlin (or, as it’s formally known, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) is now finished, some 16 years after it was first proposed. Architect Peter Eisenman’s design, which filled a four-football-field-size parcel of land in the middle of Berlin with more than 2,700 concrete slabs, or stelae, was itself hotly debated, with some complaining that its abstractness, Eisenman’s trademark, made it a monument that evoked no memories. As the debates give way to accounts of the experience of the space, the readers of this book, produced with Eisenman’s cooperation, will be able to compare how successfully the architect’s conception matches the reality. This volume offers a full picture of the process from conceptual and architectural drawings and digital plans to photographs of construction. It holds the narrative of a difficult task, turning 'the place of no meaning,' as Eisenman once referred to the site in the hopes of dispelling fears that he was trying to symbolize the deaths that took place during the Holocaust, into a confrontation with the past." (Lars Müller) - Cloth, 160 pages, ISBN 3-037-78059-2 (English, 3-037-78056-8) ...
MISCELLANEOUS TEXTS (AFTER THE FACT) - Heinrich Wefing (text), Klaus Frahm (photography), Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas [Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe] (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2005) - Paper, 127 pages, ISBN 3-894-79225-6 - See especially “Goodbye Forever”, pp. 5-17 / Joachim Schlor (text), Jürgen Hohmuth (photography), Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas [Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe] (Munich: Prestel, 2005) - Paper, 64 pages, ISBN 3-791-33516-2 (English), 3-791-33484-0 (German) / Eröffnung, Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas [Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe], 10 May 2005 (Reden und fotos/Speeches and photos) (Berlin: Stiftung-Denkmal für […], 2005) - Paper, 55 pages, No ISBN / Stiftung-Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas ...
MISCELLANEOUS PERSPECTIVES / OUTTAKES (UPDATED 03/22/06)
MORE EISENMAN (2005-2006) - The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture [Die formale Grundlegung der modernen Architektur] (Baden: Lars Müller, 2006) - Cloth, ISBN 3-037-78071-1 / Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990-2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) - Paper, 248 pages, ISBN 0-300-11111-8
See also, Esther da Costa Meyer, "Speak, Memory", Artforum (January 2006), pp. 47-48
MADNESS ITSELF - "The theme is madness. The theme is Reason that becomes madness, that grows to the point of folly." PE commenting on the Memorial as Madness in and of Itself, in Casabella 735 (July-August 2005) ... The issue includes a seventeen-page spread on the Memorial, including site plan, sections (showing the relationship of the undulating ground plane and stelae), study models, and photographs of the completed project ... The edition also shows the underground Hall of Remembrance (rarely presented) ... See "Senza Nome", pp. 4-21 ...
THE TOPOLOGICAL SUPPLEMENT - “So in what, exactly, does the difference between Lacan and deconstruction reside? Let me elaborate this crucial point apropos [of] the Derridean couple, ‘supplement/centre’. In a way reminiscent of the Foucauldian endless variations on the complex of heterogeneity of power relations (they run upwards, downwards, laterally), Derrida also likes to indulge heavily in exuberant variations on the paradoxical character of the supplement (the excessive element which is neither inside nor outside; it sticks out of the series it belongs to and simultaneously completes it, etc.). Lacan, on the contrary -- by means of a gesture which, of course, for Derrida would undoubtably signal reinscription into traditional philosophical discourse -- directly offers a concept of this element, namely the concept of the Master-Signifier, S1, in relation to S2, the ‘ordinary’ chain of knowledge. This concept is not a simple unambiguous concept, but the concept of the structural [topological] ambiguity itself. That is to say, Lacan reunites in one and the same concept what Derrida keeps apart [splits]. In Lacan, S1 stands for the supplement -- the trait which sticks out, but is as such, in its very excess, unavoidable; and, simultaneously, for the totalizing Master-Signifier. Therein, in this ‘speculative identity’ of the supplement and the Centre, resides the implicit ‘Hegelian’ move of Lacan: the Centre which Derrida endeavours to ‘deconstruct’ is ultimately the very supplement which threatens to disrupt its totalizing power, or, to put it in Kierkegaardese, supplement to the Centre itself ‘in its becoming’. In this precise sense, supplement is the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of the Centre.” Slavoj Zizek, “The Eclipse of Meaning” (1994), Interrogating the Real (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 209-210
/LU/, NO THANKS - What ‘sticks out’ of urban systems (architectural and landscape-architectural) is the Real Itself (as it always already supplements constructed systems). In the case of the city, this Something Else (often a telluric something else) is always suppressed for structural reasons. It appears spectral as it pulls further and further away (further from Truth). This ‘Real’ is not simply ‘nature’ (whatever that is); it is also the irreal or spectral thing-in-itself (a post-Kantian thing-in-itself), insofar as the topological knot that all cities ultimately represent represents figuration and representation, as such. The ‘as such’ (or ‘the given’) is as much the space of the topological knot as anything inscribed within it. Thus all attempts to inscribe difference (while done so, typically, horizontally and/or rhyzomatically) fail due to the missing principle embedded in all topological thought; that is, that topological thought contains the traumatic kernel (as Zizek would say) of the Real plus its other (the Big Other or otherwise) -- a field, then, of repressions that sponsor the appearance of the phantasmatic (haunted) ‘nature’ contained within urban systems. To excavate the Real is to also ‘free’ it from all such repressions (and reifications as markets, economic flows, datascapes and what-have-you today in the de-natured, new-ish Master-Signifier, Landscape Urbanism). Thus, architecture-as-site remains the principle problem (and the principle ‘radical’ form) of all formalist insurrections. Thus, too, the ontological returns, until the object of architecture is no longer the object per se but instead topological thought itself. (06/12/05) / Regarding /LU/, see Black Sun @ MoMA (RTF)
POSTMODERN NECROPOLIS - The built version of the Memorial has 2,511 pillars (stelae) ... Many have been displaced by amenities (including trees, to the west), after the initial design (as above) ... For details (plans, sections, photographs of the models and the completed 'field'), see Marco Belpoliti, "The Concrete Labyrinth", Domus 881 (May 2005), pp. 72-79 - "Their irregularity and instability are true to another architectural hinge element of Peter Eisenman's monument; the idea of a gap, an 'interstice'. The space described by the monoliths is a space 'between', something produced by absence [i.e., a 'vitality' or 'potentiality'], as if this place were accessible only by subtraction. This is time inhabited by the victims, their own time but also ours: a suspended, interrupted, virtual but nevertheless present time." (italics added), Marco Belpoliti, ibid., p. 77
LOST (AND FOUND) - Peter Eisenman, "Il giardino dei passi perduti" ("The Garden of Lost Footsteps") @ Museo di Castelvecchio (Verona) - "The Comune di Verona, Assessorato alla Cultura, the Direzione Musei d’Arte e Monumenti, in collaboration with the AGAV (Association of Young Veronese Architects), have embraced with great interest and made possible Peter Eisenman’s proposal to realize a temporary architectural installation designed specifically for the Museo di Castelvecchio. The installation, titled Il giardino dei passi perduti, or The Garden of Lost Footsteps, heralds Eisenman’s participation in the Ninth International Architecture Biennale in Venice, and constitutes part of the Biennale’s parallel exhibitions section. The installation is also supported by the patronage of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione generale per l'Architettura e l'Arte Contemporanee and the Regione del Veneto." (Museo di Castelvecchio) - June 26, 2004 through January 23, 2005 - Catalogue: "The bilingual (English-Italian) catalogue, edited by Cynthia Davidson and published by Marsilio, comprises ample documentation relative to the installation and to recent projects by the American architect, analysing his methods and theory, describing their impact on the evolution of an architecture that knowingly faces the new century. The catalogue’s graphic design follows the guiding force of the entire project: Scarpa’s flooring in the sculpture Galleria of Castelvecchio. The catalogue features essays by Peter Eisenman, Kurt W. Forster, and Antonino Saggio, and more than 100 illustrations of models, studies, and documents." (Venice: Marsilio, 2004) - Cloth, 127 pages, ISBN 8-831-78460-9 - Other projects in the catalogue include: Cannaregio, Piazza, Venice, Italy (1978); IBA Social Housing Berlin, West Germany (1981-1985); Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library, Columbus, Ohio (1983-1989); Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France (1999); Cidade da Cultura de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1999-work in progress) / Eisenman’s ‘mythical’ 1963 Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation ??? - Werner Oechslin (ed.), Peter Eisenman: Die formale Grundlegung der modernen Architektur (Zurich: GTA Verlag, 2005) - Cloth, 250 pages, ISBN 3-856-76067-9 (3-786-11734-9)
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, ETC - "[T]he Compostela project has involved excavating an entire mountain to make way for a collection of opera houses, museums and libraries on the scale of Lincoln Center. It would be ambitious anywhere, but in a city of just 250,000, it looks dangerously like hubris." Reputations: Peter Eisenman (Domus, 12/02) - Santiago de Compostela images from the Biennale di Venezia 2002 (ArchiMagazine) / More on Santiago de Compostela ...
PERTURBATIONS - "When Eisenman's work began in the early sixties, it was, and remains to this day, a primarily tactical enterprise: its force from the outset was drafted from that of the enemy -- classicism -- but was also turned aggressively against it. The Eisenman parti has always been to deploy mobile entities such as historical circumstances (holocaust...), situations (death of God...), and idea-moments (generative grammar...) against the ethos of established orders and places, reversing the age-old bourgeois victory of values of domain over values of time. Eisenman's task has been to develop a practice that, to borrow an expression from Foucault and Nietzsche, would come from outside -- a new type of modernist adversarial practice to be launched from a placeless but volatile "steppe," home of disembodied fluxes, raw will to power, and the destabilizing forces of historical change. ... Like the autonomous, fluid, nomad civilizations who made legendary assaults on sedentary cultures, Eisenman's practice is assembled and articulated in movement and in the spirit of movement. Both operate through invasion, disruption, and the release of temporarily trapped forces into free motion and recombination." --Sanford Kwinter, "The Eisenman Wave", Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works (Mulgrave, Australia: Images Publishing Group, 1995), p. 7
Q & A - "Q: [W]hich of your projects has given you the most satisfaction? A: [T]he project that will be most interesting for most people of my work. [E]ven though its very different from most of my projects is the holocaust memorial in [B]erlin. [T]his is a controversial subject and a controversial project, and I think that when it will be built, it will be... I don't know what it will be like, but its going to be very interesting to have it built. [O]f the projects I've built, I think probably the [W]exner [C]enter is one which gives me a lot of good feeling and still remains a very didactic work. [B]ut I think in one's lifetime, maybe one can do 2 or 3 canonical projects that are precursors of something else. I think the [W]exner project was one, and I think that the holocaust project could be another. [A]nd of course anything that is successful in terms of being a precursor." - Interview in Milan (DesignBoom, 04/08/02)
Eisenman Ecrits (Archicool) - Serial writings
Intervista a Peter Eisenman (Arch'It, 09/2001) - An interview with Peter Eisenman (in Italian), exploring his formal language, from "Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica", nel numero monografico su Peter Eisenman, anno XXXIII, n. 97, Aprile 1999.
Das Holocaust Mahnmal in Berlin - Das Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Shoa) - This article (in German) includes two images of the proposed Memorial, plus an aerial view of the site.
Die Mahnmal-Debatte ist zu Ende (Die Welt, 04/1999)
Holocauste: 2700 stèles à Berlin (L'Alsace, 06/1999)
Berlin Struggles to Pick A Memorial to Holocaust (The Christian Science Monitor, 01/1998)
Potsdamer Platz (Unternehmensgruppe IMC) - See "ARCHITEKTEN" for a list of architects and projects.
Eisenman Bibliography (Loeb Library / Harvard GSD)
