i made a small mistake.. its late at night and i am working.. so the post should go: does deconstructivism in architecture require the existence of a particular archetypal construction, conventional expectation to play flexibly against? does it only play with form ignoring the need for new context or does context create form..

OldFogey- i'm part of that lost generation too...

"[Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics. 'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms 'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics." (Introduction by Allison, in Derrida, 1973, p. xxxii, n. 1.)

So, I guess you get to start with Aristotle. Good luck...

I guess you could also read Derrida's Haunt ... but it has no pictures.

or you could just watch aGENIUS

deconstructivist buzzword = intertextual

Jacqu-is dead-ida

this whole "deconstruction"-theme is rather old, it just had other names... f.e. in the arts, the term decomposition comes rather close, used f.e. by Debuffet. derrida was just trying to make a philosophical system out of it, and had to admit that this system itself needs to be "deconstructed". i guess this architectural "deconstructivism" is a somewhat superficial approach, which is why Derrida and guys like Eisenman did not get along for a longer time... when Johnson and Wigley invented the term, they just needed a headline for their famous exhibition early in the 1990s...

not sure this was due to decon, young fogey. my school wasn't particularly decon-centric but there was still a lot of failure-to-be-hired. i bounced around from spring 91 'til mid-93 before finding a job in architecture. offices were closing, shrinking, merging, etc. i wish i could have blamed it on mis-education, but unfortunately, since i already had more professional experience than most of my graduating peers, it seemed more a matter of economy, time, and place.

my answer to the initial questions:

1. no. i can think of other architectural klischees or traditions, which can be "deconstructed". the archetypical is just one field among others.

2. most of the "deconstructive" buildings appear to me rather formal approaches, although this changes influences other fields (construction, use etc.) tschumi, f.e., was always saying that these formal dynamics of "decon" would not be necessary.

I ask one of my professors what he thought of Coop-H. He didn't even want to acknowlege it as architecture. The last thing he told me was I needed to really connect myself with the works of one architect, which up until this day I can say I really never been able to do. The closest I come to it is recgonizing the works of Bruce Goff each on its individual ground. I never had a need to be a modernist, a deconstructionist, a traditionalist. Every project offers new opportunities.

thats too bad snooker. it would be irrational to not qualify their work as architecture though...coop himmelblau is quietly building quite large buildings lately. not my favorite firm, but they have very fine moments.

as for the question i think decon is quite happy to work on its own without contrast. it is just a style.

Well Ive expressed my opinion on this but apparently my fairly obvious observations are quite controversial around here. If you were interested, other crazies have made similar suggestions...

deconstructivism as a tool of literary criticism is much different from deconstructivism as a philosophy of architecture. texts don't have to stand up or keep water out.

but i guess after the excesses and banalities of stylistic postmodernism, the nonbelievers had to find something with which to slay the beast.

i think it's fairly antiquated now to look to philosophy for answers anymore, but that won't stop architects from trying.

wow, to read down through here is sending me into some serious flashbacks. i'm a bit younger than the old fogey or mr. ward, but definitely came right on the heels of that generation and got to feel the full effects of it.
here's my take :

object is not equal to object

use equals object at moment of observance

object equals use compiled with history of observance

object is not greater than or less than the time at which it is viewed

object at time it is viewed = potential of truth

truth is not equal to object or system of observations of the object

don't know if that helps, but that's what i got out of it.

jump,

Oh, I was quite exicted when I saw there early works. Something we just didn't have in Arizona at the time. Cutting edge in Arizona at the time was Post Modernist. So we were getting banks with stucco and metal roofs. I was more than excited I was damn excited! Little did the professor know I was good friends with a woman who would become ia contemporary of his as a member of the University Staff. She was Europe educated in Switzerland and France. So we shared many conversations about the state of architecture.

think you and i are about the same generation, futureboy, but what i remember getting out of it was...
...visiting the vitra fire station and finding out it could not be used as a fire station and...
...visiting the baths at vals and finding out they could be used as baths.

have to side with zumthor, sometimes a building is just a building. albeit a very nice one.

I dont think its as much about finding answers as it is about understanding the framework on new terms. I dont see how you can break new ground without critically analyzing these kinds of fundemental questions.

and ps. zumthor is more philosophically driven than practically anyone...

IMHO the process and methods of Philosophy ( like architecture ) is not a singular entity but varies worldwide ,
e.g western philosophy uses reasoning to resolve arguments......

but thats not the case with some branches of eastern philosophy (Vedanta, Buddhism) which conversely uses various arguments to sometimes even define "reason" itself.

so it depends on which side of the river do we actually want to start our journey from .

oe, good call, i think i misstated myself. you're exactly right, nobody can practice architecture without (a) philosophy. however, the modern movement posited that architecture need not look outside itself for justifications and answers. why architects need to graft some kind of higher explanation onto work, i have never known.

is it useful to continually re-evaluate the ways in which architecture is used, perceived, and/or "read" (taking the textual approach)? i can't speak for anyone but myself -- but we all have to understand the many and myriad ways in which architecture is experienced in the world. the view of the architect is just one view. in that the postmodernists (the philosophical ones) were so dead on, it's not even funny: there is not just one view.

the seemingly irreducible set of parts that arise from the deconstructionist analysis might be reducible yet again given another viewpoint -- and the guy who can't see the painting in the museum because the window faces due south couldn't care less about the text the architect wants him to "read" because he can't read the text beside the painting.

if deconstruction is about the reader instead of the author -- and, as an extension, may include how the reader might misread the text and bring personal experience to the reading, scrambling its originally intended message -- then why would an architecture that takes cues from deconstruction be so bizarre and specific to the author?

a lot the work called deconstructivist is so author-centric and didactic as to defy the 'reader's' ability to engage it personally and have an opportunity for an individual reading of it.

i was digging what the various contributors to the 'decon' show in the 80s were doing when i was a student. it made me look at what deconstruction was about much more closely. and i came up empty when trying to relate them to each other. you could much more easily get me to believe that early h&dm was based on deconstruction because it was both seductive, strangely mute, and enigmatic -- inviting me to layer my own associations onto the work.

there are many deconstructions.yeees?

zaha, gehry, coop on one hand

libeskind, on another

tschumi, eisenman on the third (there must be more hands, hindu deity style)

the larger grouping seems, especially now in the calm after its storm, more of a marketing strategy. it is ironic that the criticism levied against them for being paper architects only helped increase their fame and later on their building activities. the formalism of the first, the subtitled analogical to graphical literature of the second (libeskind's seemed like an abstract comic) and the structural/spatial self-reflexivity of the third (being aware of sytactical arrangement as its own disturbance and that of its history)

the one thing they shared is a violent confrontation with one convention or the other. this massed into the decon wave...but the question, beyond the art history school of group-labelling, is whether the conventions were the same or at which points had they converged/diverged. in the architecture.

as for the significance of language (eisneman, derrida) , this should not be a naive soup of verbal literalism . derrida concretized a way of thinking..or a sensibility rather; texts (the sediments of written literature) were his material. however, essentially (a dangeroud word to use with derrida looming around in the same post), any form of human artifact with a history of its formation could be sensed in such a manner. that is to say, language is an instance and an all just as much as architecture is an instance and all. thought, in its imprints, is beneath the contigent mask. perhaps, this analogical bridge built from architecture to language to achieve decon (eisenman's bad prose) is doomed to be futile simply because deconstruction claims to happen from within (which is a funny thing, given that decon is anti-centric). derrida's writings were to be seen, at least, as language destabilizing itself....in action. eisenman's writings, however, are in contradiction to that purpose. they go on and on and on about something (architecture) not in the text. you really can't be deconstructive and then tell provide subtitles for that.

just to jump off of one of ochona's earlier postings to this thread....
what deconstruction taught me is that its way better to see an eisenman drawing than an eisenman building. i saw the checkpoint charlie museum building only a few years after it was completed and it already looked like it was ready for the wrecking ball.

as for where this thread is going...one way to think about it is that it was an experiment that, although intriguing in its reinforcement of conceptual thinking related to architecture ultimately failed in gaining a real critique or development of the discipline. i think the real successes were in instilling a marketing dimension to architecture that hadn't gone anywhere since the heyday of modernism.
new...wow....zany....experiential...experimental...
those that pushed the visual language the most did so without the conceptual baggage and instead aimed for the effect (or would it be affect)....such as thom mayne or (it makes my skin crawl to even say it) eric owen moss.