SITE DU JOUR
With the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the Cultural Center for Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Peter Eisenman is (arguably) set to produce the first two canonical works of landscape + architecture for the 21st century. (Image - Santiago de Compostela)
NOTES ON THE DRAWINGS (12/2002) - The Cultural Center for Santiago de Compostela is on a hill not far from the historic (medieval) town center. Eisenman is currently excavating the site and you can see the gestures of the building form in that excavation. The curving canopy of the low volume will be stone-clad with curtain walls facing principal views to the landscape and city. A Cartesian grid will be incised into the undulating roof of the complex. This 'gestural' undulation is also a theme in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and represents, here and there, some sort of translation to built form of the Bergsonian concept of duration (viz., élan vital versus / clashing with abstract time). The complex includes a library, an opera house, and various exhibition spaces, plus, plus, plus ... Two towers designed by John Hejduk are included and are currently under construction. One will be stone-clad and the other glazed. Hejduk was notably inspired by the church at Santiago de Compostela and Eisenman is keeping a promise made to JH by including the Hejduk-designed towers in the composition. The building twists and turns but is morphologically in tune with the site. It is not at all like the tortured syntax of the Wexner Center. It is sublime (for many reasons). As such, it is also portentous, and 'from the future'. 'Instant canon' means, simply: IT will blow away all pretenders to the mantle of landscape + architecture once and for all, 'here' and 'there', 'here-and-now'. GK
"[I]n Santiago, my idea was to superpose a Cartesian grid onto the existing, organic, medieval “grid,” and warp or deform them with a topological grid that projects upward. This produces lines of force that were never a part of projective geometry. They mutate in the third dimension. This has a powerful impact on the ground surface. It is a way of dealing with the ground not as a single datum, not as a foundation, not as something stable. It disrupts its iconic value, turning it into an index." Interview w/ PE re Santiago de Compostela (Architectural Record, n.d.)Cliquez ici for an article by Deyan Sudjic in Domus on the Eisenman juggernaut.
See Anfione e zeto 17 (September 2004), entire issue (222 pages) for photos, aerial photos, drawings, models, elevations, sections, plans, site plans, diagrams, axonometric drawings, etcetera of La Ciudad de la Cultura de Galicia ... See also: Arquitectura viva 88 (Jan-Feb 2003), pp. 82-83; GA Document 70 (July 2002), pp. 32-37; Arca 164 (November 2001), p. 90; Architecture d'aujourd'hui 336 (Sept-Oct 2001), pp. 44,46; and Domus 824 (March 2000), pp. 9-15, for the evolutionary trajectory of the plans ...
EISENMAN (NOW & THEN) - Peter Noever (ed.), Peter Eisenman: Barefoot on White-Hot Walls (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005) - Paper, 302 pages, ISBN 3-775-71561-4 / Peter Eisenman, *Codex (New York: Monacelli Press, 2005) - Paper, 256 pages, ISBN 1-580-93138-3 / Mark Rakatansky (ed.), Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963-1988 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) - Cloth, 264 pages, ISBN 0-300-09008-0 / Andrew Benjamin, Cynthia Davidson, Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial, Eisenman Architects 1988-1998 (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003) - Cloth, 334 pages, ISBN 1-580-93049-2 / Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (New York: Universe, 1999) - Paper, 240 pages, ISBN 0-789-30264-0
*Codex (as above) is the authorized volume presenting Santiago plans and studies ...
Image (above, right) - El Greco, "Laocoon"
