Good clip mdler - In my opinion Eisenman unnecessarily bashes Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was a brilliant architect/engineer. He didn't produce much "refined" architecture, but rather ideas and prototypes which others could use. His ideas on manufactured housing were ahead of his time and his work with geodesic domes was pretty amazing, although I think as an architect he failed to see some of the shortcomings these domes. In my view Fuller really contributed something, far more than Eisenman has (and I'm not trying to bash Eisenman's work here).
Alucidwake - don't work for free. Have some self-respect. I wouldn't work for free, even as a first year M.Arch student with almost no experience. If employers know they can get free labor, they may start to expect it from everyone. You seem to have plenty of experience for a student, so you should get a decent wage for your work.
If Peter Eisenman was not relevant he wouldn't attract so many hatters. Look back to the early-mid 90's, he pioneered many of the current "trends" and ideas so popular in contemporary architecture today.(take a look at the "Max Reinhardt") plus look at the all star roster that has come out of his office.
thriller no one is questioning the impact and importance he has had, what we are questioning is what impact and importance he CURRENTLY HAS.
thats the real question i guess, and honestly the general consensus is none. grah. i'll post more later when its not 1am with still tons of work to do, i've come to a conclusion based off of this thread (+ an email i got)
Fuller invented the space frame...tell me one thing that Eisenman has done that has had the impact on the architectural world that the modern space frame has?
fuller didn't invent the space frame though, it's been around since the 18th century (early triangulated reticular structures for bridges and the like) then developed during the 19th century by brunel, bell and so on. the eiffel tower is a space frame as are many constructivist works from the 1910's-20's-30's, all way before fuller did anything of note.
imho, a dynamic duo consisting of fuller and someone with a more developed spatial sense would have been outstandning. instead he mostly coined intriguing concepts as it were, but was unable (or unwilling) to carry most of them forward into useful design and architecture. he should have had a selective partner (read his books and you'll get a feel for the corresponding verbal manifestation of his inability to scrap and sift through ideas).
What structural system did Peter Eisenman invent? Hmmmmm.... hard one to answer, given that he is an architect, not a structural engineer. Whoops! there goes that word again, **Engineer**
Certainly they do not live alone. But when we start judging our architect's worth by which structural system they invented, I'll pack my bags and move to Canada.
Chris that has little to very little to do with what makes architecture a discipline and a cultural entity as opposed to just 'buildin' shit, hate to break it to you. Fuller was an amazing designer, and in his own right was a huge means of furthering the impetus of the larger project of Modernism. However, the fact that he had 19 patents means, like, nothing to the discipline of Architecture.
i concur. validated through number of patents or whether or not the inventor of structural systems, virtually none of history's architects except some ancient peoples, perrault, fuller and a few more would make the cut as "good architects". so that's obviously not a relevant criterion. doesn't change the fact that eisenman and the like still do zilch for humanity, though.
If Fuller and the rest of the 60's cats (archigram, superstudio, brutalism, etc., etc.) hadn't done what they'd done there would have been no philosophical or academic backing to the decon movement, which Eisenman advocates. That's the way I feel, but its pretty hard for me to look at alot of the "new" stuff built built by the starchitect crowd post-1980's up to today and not get a 60's feel about it. Maybe that's just me and I could take all morning to try and explain it.
I guess that all depends on how you define architecture as a discipline, which is maybe why I like the field so much, there ain't no one way to do that.
I don't think he was formally trained as an architect. He got kicked out of Harvard. Despite this he was able to make huge contributions too the field of architecture. He definitely designed and built some amazing things - so I would consider him an architect whether or not he had a degree. Fuller did this partly in an effort to make things better for humanity and the environment. It was a clear and easily understood goal. This isn't the case with Eisenman work. To make sense of the work Eisenman does it has to be explained through some academic mumbo-jumbo.
would someone please name 1 (one) B. Fuller building that has as much architectural intelligence and spatial sophistication as Eisenman's Wexler Centre.
otherwise, let's stop going on and on about Fuller, the God.
If Fuller was asked why he built what he did, he could list of a number of good reasons that almost anyone could understand. They might not understand the technical aspects or even like Fuller's architecture, but they would be able to see the "big picture" in Fuller work.
Even after seeing Eisenman on Charlie Rose for an hour I still had a hard time understanding the "big picture" in what he was trying to do. Maybe he doesn't want it to be easily understood. I actually only made it through about half of that "special".
I didn't take the time to read the rest of the responses you received, after the graffiti posted by the first few people, but i did want to throw my two cents in:
Verdict:
Loved the work and the chance to witness the process first-hand, but any of the people working there would have a monumental task if they chose to defend their lack of civility and denial of respect.
Details:
I worked for Eisenman for one month. It was a chance I took through my school over winter break. This was back when he was full-steam ahead on the City of Culture in Galicia, which I found to be an interesting project as an undergrad and therefore still enamored by all things theoretical.
The studio is an unfinished, or barely finished floor-through on 25th street, about 5 floors up (if memory serves and he hasn't moved in 10 years) with remnants of Peter's career strewn about in the back, including lots of old ANY paraphernalia.
There were two or three full-time employees and about a dozen of us undergrad grunts, and it is what I always imagined Kathy Lee's sweat shops would look like. Everyone's tired little fingers were whittling away at corrugated cardboard trying to achieve the shape of a striated cockle shell.
I went to lunch in Union Square once, a bit of a walk for someone totally new to New York, and was 10-15 minutes "late" getting back, for which i was yelled at quite vigorously and publicly when i did return. I put late in quotes b/c the legally allowed lunch break time was not observed, apparently.
I did meet one fellow, a bit older, with whom I was afforded the chance to do some research at the main public library. This also allowed me to grill him about life an as architect in the city. We were friendly, but never gave a thought to keeping in touch, unfortunately.
When it came time for me to head back to school, I said by good-byes to a couple people, but it was made clear that I was an outsider, and not welcome to the get-together they happened to arrange that evening.
He's no Arch. God, simply a very influential tinkerer whose work forms part of the 60's canon which is directly felt today in pretty much all contemporary architecture, including Eisenman's work.
cou2, if you wish to study a field of which its highest and most expert discourse (be that eisenman's, or whoever!) you can fully grasp in one hour, then I suggest you try ping pong or carpet cleaning. Just because the man on the street can understand or 'get' what Fuller does, certainly does not validate him or his architecture as richer, or 'better'. In fact, I think it does quite the opposite...
dlb - I would agree that Fuller may have lacked much "refined" architecture. I also believe that he relied too heavily on geodesic domes. Nevertheless these were extremely important contributions.
Could anyone name one Eisenman building that has the structural ingenuity that went into Fuller's Montreal World Exposition Pavilion?
eisenman's doing something right. every conversation on here in which his name comes up becomes a lightning rod for both the 'fors' and the 'againsts'. amazing that after 3-4 decades he can still trigger such passion in people. truly extraordinary.
i won't say i'm either a fan or not, but i'll venture a couple of observations:
1. his late80s/early90s lecture 'weak form' was a brilliant and timely piece of architectural/cultural criticism that also happened to include some pretty compelling projects. most not built.
2. a co-instructor of mine one semester had spent a good part of his early career at eisenman and it seems to have been both foundational and transformative for him. not only did he get a boost from his time there, eisenman gave work to him after he left and formed his own small upstart firm - evidence that eisenman can value his people and make lasting relationships with them.
is structural ingenuity a basic requirement of a worthwhile architecture, cou2? or just a quality that can be recognized in some worthwhile architecture?
like him or not, that's not where eisenman's interests lie and i don't know that he should be discredited for THAT, anyway.
ksArcher - If I was having a house designed by an architect, shouldn't he/she be able to describe in terms I can understand why the living room was placed where it is, why the windows are placed where they are, why the roof has a certain overhang, ect. The architect may have some complex way of coming up with these things, but it should be somewhat understandable to me.
Steven, I wasn't trying to suggest that Eisenman work be judged solely on a structural basis. Someone asked if any of Fullers work had the spatial sophistication of Eisenmans work. I was just trying to point out that spatial sophistical might not have been one of Fullers main goals - and that his work not be solely judged on that basis. As far as spatial sophistication, many would argue to Eisenman didn't do a great job (I guess that more subjective and I'm not really trying to argue that - but others have). But no one could argue that Fuller did not do a good job with structures (along with a lot of other things he did well).
Eisenman will always be controversial because there's seems to be little middle ground with him. Either he's a good architect (Cards Stadium, Wexner, his early Houses) or a bad architect (DAAP), either a good theorist (Decon Lectures) or a bad theorist (the Terragini Magnum Opus which one of the most poorly written books ever).
so, to answer dlb, i'll propose fuller's alcoa hq near/in cleveland by fuller. it's an arc-shaped office building hugging the edge of one of his domes. the dome covers a garden onto which the building focuses.
is it as spatially complicated as an eisenman project - no. but, in this case, its sophistication comes from the way the entire garden space becomes charged by the embrace of the building and the enclosure of the dome. standing in the concave space near the building was truly a unique feeling that i've not experienced anywhere else so far. the dome 'claimed' the zone under it, giving an impression (strangely, since the structure was open) of protection and shade and cool.
spatial sophistication doesn't have to mean shifts, angles, and jittery multiplication of lines. in the case of this fuller project, it meant understanding what the formal gesture of enclosing/embracing that space meant and how to make the most of it.
steven, I would be interested to see images or plans of the alcoa bldg. have been googling away and can't find an image or even a reference.
never meant to imply that spatial sophistication needed to be about shifts, angles, etc - rather what i find satisfying about Eisenman's Wexner is it's critical expression of a curatorial idea of a gallery, without resorting to a conventional sequence of exhibition spaces. i think the spatial play is with the organizational structure of these relationships.
as much as i admire B. Fuller and particularly his thoughts on ecology, in general i find his "architecture" to not be very architectural. as interesting as a geodesic dome is from a space-making, volume-forming structural solution, they are quite limited to deal with spatial variation - unless one takes the line that you just build a dome and then do "interesting stuff" inside it - which is exactly what most uses have been.
and from the point of view of 'architectural structure', i think someone like Peter Rice or Cecil Balmond is far more inventive and challenging to architects than the legacy of Fuller.
having heard B. Fuller speak on two different occasions, i would venture that just as many people went away from the lecture as energized and as confused as happens at any Eiseman lecture.
holz -- from what I've read, each man personally attributed credit to the other on numerous occasions... i think it was more collaborative between artist and engineer/inventor/architect...
i saw Fuller at a large event in early '70's, and then again at a lecture at Rice University in Houston, c.1978.
some of the ideas and the ways he expressed them were very clear and easy to take on board, whereas some were complex and difficult to assimilate, and virtually incomprehensible. still entertaining and a pleasure to experience, but i wouldn't describe him as the great communicator.
the idea that any idea can be presented in "simple language to simple people" is one of those quaint myths that people tell themselves so that when confronted with difficult thoughts and ideas, any lack of understanding is always the fault of the speaker.
One of the ironies of this not-too-unusual tale in the history of teacher-student relationships, is that by Bucky's transposing my original "X" module into the central-angles-of-the-tetrahedron shape to rationalize calling it his own, he managed successfully to put under wraps my original form, the highly adaptable X form. He could not have lived with himself with the blatant theft of my original system, of course, and besides, he had denounced it as the "wrong" form. As a result, none of the many students in schools where he lectured ever got to see it. In those years, any number of students labored to constructed their own "masts", but all were built using the tetrahedral form. That moment of recognition at the Museum of Modern Art in November 1959, transitory as it was, was quite fortifying and enabled me to once again pick up my absorbing interest in this kind of structure with the feeling that now I was free and on my own. Especially I picked up where I had left off with the neglected X-module which was left unnoticed for an entire decade. I no longer felt anonymous.
-snelson
Jul 31, 08 2:46 pm ·
·
alucidwake, if you do intern at Eisenman, bone up on the I Ching before you get there, and then let it be known that the I Ching is one of your avocations via demonstrations of your meaningful chancyness. You'll have a blast!
eisenman.
Good clip mdler - In my opinion Eisenman unnecessarily bashes Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was a brilliant architect/engineer. He didn't produce much "refined" architecture, but rather ideas and prototypes which others could use. His ideas on manufactured housing were ahead of his time and his work with geodesic domes was pretty amazing, although I think as an architect he failed to see some of the shortcomings these domes. In my view Fuller really contributed something, far more than Eisenman has (and I'm not trying to bash Eisenman's work here).
Alucidwake - don't work for free. Have some self-respect. I wouldn't work for free, even as a first year M.Arch student with almost no experience. If employers know they can get free labor, they may start to expect it from everyone. You seem to have plenty of experience for a student, so you should get a decent wage for your work.
deep down, eisenman is a nice guy with a good heart
at least that's what my friends who go to yale told me
If Peter Eisenman was not relevant he wouldn't attract so many hatters. Look back to the early-mid 90's, he pioneered many of the current "trends" and ideas so popular in contemporary architecture today.(take a look at the "Max Reinhardt") plus look at the all star roster that has come out of his office.
thriller no one is questioning the impact and importance he has had, what we are questioning is what impact and importance he CURRENTLY HAS.
thats the real question i guess, and honestly the general consensus is none. grah. i'll post more later when its not 1am with still tons of work to do, i've come to a conclusion based off of this thread (+ an email i got)
Was Fuller even an 'architect'?
Was he ever educated as one?
Maybe he had some many new ideals due to the fact he avoided the education system.
he was a machinist originally, no arch training afaik
Fuller = Calatrava = Glorified Engineer = Minor Architect
Fuller invented the space frame...tell me one thing that Eisenman has done that has had the impact on the architectural world that the modern space frame has?
Indeed, what would most American civic arenas and bus depots be without the generic qualities of the space frame?
yeah, that has been the only application...again, what structural system has Eisenman invented...no need to answer is the absence of one will suffice.
And the next time you want to subtract a column...thank bucky.
or most steel-bourne architecture for that matter
fuller didn't invent the space frame though, it's been around since the 18th century (early triangulated reticular structures for bridges and the like) then developed during the 19th century by brunel, bell and so on. the eiffel tower is a space frame as are many constructivist works from the 1910's-20's-30's, all way before fuller did anything of note.
imho, a dynamic duo consisting of fuller and someone with a more developed spatial sense would have been outstandning. instead he mostly coined intriguing concepts as it were, but was unable (or unwilling) to carry most of them forward into useful design and architecture. he should have had a selective partner (read his books and you'll get a feel for the corresponding verbal manifestation of his inability to scrap and sift through ideas).
i like fuller by the way, in the case that didn't come across :]
What structural system did Peter Eisenman invent? Hmmmmm.... hard one to answer, given that he is an architect, not a structural engineer. Whoops! there goes that word again, **Engineer**
yes work was done before...a quick wiki will tell you that...but bucky was also very influential in its lasting use as a structural element.
again, I am merely challenging the Eisenman notion that fuller was merely some hack...when the opposite is true.
engineering is part of architecture and architecture is part of engineering...they do not live alone.
Certainly they do not live alone. But when we start judging our architect's worth by which structural system they invented, I'll pack my bags and move to Canada.
well, that is a move I am already planning on...Vancouver in 2 years. heh.
I fully agree with Mr. Teeter here...he has more succinctly made my point.
Chris that has little to very little to do with what makes architecture a discipline and a cultural entity as opposed to just 'buildin' shit, hate to break it to you. Fuller was an amazing designer, and in his own right was a huge means of furthering the impetus of the larger project of Modernism. However, the fact that he had 19 patents means, like, nothing to the discipline of Architecture.
btw, NicolasBenjamin ^, VERY well said.
i concur. validated through number of patents or whether or not the inventor of structural systems, virtually none of history's architects except some ancient peoples, perrault, fuller and a few more would make the cut as "good architects". so that's obviously not a relevant criterion. doesn't change the fact that eisenman and the like still do zilch for humanity, though.
If Fuller and the rest of the 60's cats (archigram, superstudio, brutalism, etc., etc.) hadn't done what they'd done there would have been no philosophical or academic backing to the decon movement, which Eisenman advocates. That's the way I feel, but its pretty hard for me to look at alot of the "new" stuff built built by the starchitect crowd post-1980's up to today and not get a 60's feel about it. Maybe that's just me and I could take all morning to try and explain it.
I guess that all depends on how you define architecture as a discipline, which is maybe why I like the field so much, there ain't no one way to do that.
that is the discipline of architecture.
I don't think he was formally trained as an architect. He got kicked out of Harvard. Despite this he was able to make huge contributions too the field of architecture. He definitely designed and built some amazing things - so I would consider him an architect whether or not he had a degree. Fuller did this partly in an effort to make things better for humanity and the environment. It was a clear and easily understood goal. This isn't the case with Eisenman work. To make sense of the work Eisenman does it has to be explained through some academic mumbo-jumbo.
clarity is overrated.
would someone please name 1 (one) B. Fuller building that has as much architectural intelligence and spatial sophistication as Eisenman's Wexler Centre.
otherwise, let's stop going on and on about Fuller, the God.
If Fuller was asked why he built what he did, he could list of a number of good reasons that almost anyone could understand. They might not understand the technical aspects or even like Fuller's architecture, but they would be able to see the "big picture" in Fuller work.
Even after seeing Eisenman on Charlie Rose for an hour I still had a hard time understanding the "big picture" in what he was trying to do. Maybe he doesn't want it to be easily understood. I actually only made it through about half of that "special".
alucidwake,
I didn't take the time to read the rest of the responses you received, after the graffiti posted by the first few people, but i did want to throw my two cents in:
Verdict:
Loved the work and the chance to witness the process first-hand, but any of the people working there would have a monumental task if they chose to defend their lack of civility and denial of respect.
Details:
I worked for Eisenman for one month. It was a chance I took through my school over winter break. This was back when he was full-steam ahead on the City of Culture in Galicia, which I found to be an interesting project as an undergrad and therefore still enamored by all things theoretical.
The studio is an unfinished, or barely finished floor-through on 25th street, about 5 floors up (if memory serves and he hasn't moved in 10 years) with remnants of Peter's career strewn about in the back, including lots of old ANY paraphernalia.
There were two or three full-time employees and about a dozen of us undergrad grunts, and it is what I always imagined Kathy Lee's sweat shops would look like. Everyone's tired little fingers were whittling away at corrugated cardboard trying to achieve the shape of a striated cockle shell.
I went to lunch in Union Square once, a bit of a walk for someone totally new to New York, and was 10-15 minutes "late" getting back, for which i was yelled at quite vigorously and publicly when i did return. I put late in quotes b/c the legally allowed lunch break time was not observed, apparently.
I did meet one fellow, a bit older, with whom I was afforded the chance to do some research at the main public library. This also allowed me to grill him about life an as architect in the city. We were friendly, but never gave a thought to keeping in touch, unfortunately.
When it came time for me to head back to school, I said by good-byes to a couple people, but it was made clear that I was an outsider, and not welcome to the get-together they happened to arrange that evening.
I never saw Peter.
He's no Arch. God, simply a very influential tinkerer whose work forms part of the 60's canon which is directly felt today in pretty much all contemporary architecture, including Eisenman's work.
My favorite book is the 10 canonical blah blah blah's! That's where Eisenman lays out his most critical mumbo jumbo on cultural importance!!
cou2, if you wish to study a field of which its highest and most expert discourse (be that eisenman's, or whoever!) you can fully grasp in one hour, then I suggest you try ping pong or carpet cleaning. Just because the man on the street can understand or 'get' what Fuller does, certainly does not validate him or his architecture as richer, or 'better'. In fact, I think it does quite the opposite...
This simple internship has gotten a lot of attention.
dlb - I would agree that Fuller may have lacked much "refined" architecture. I also believe that he relied too heavily on geodesic domes. Nevertheless these were extremely important contributions.
Could anyone name one Eisenman building that has the structural ingenuity that went into Fuller's Montreal World Exposition Pavilion?
eisenman's doing something right. every conversation on here in which his name comes up becomes a lightning rod for both the 'fors' and the 'againsts'. amazing that after 3-4 decades he can still trigger such passion in people. truly extraordinary.
i won't say i'm either a fan or not, but i'll venture a couple of observations:
1. his late80s/early90s lecture 'weak form' was a brilliant and timely piece of architectural/cultural criticism that also happened to include some pretty compelling projects. most not built.
2. a co-instructor of mine one semester had spent a good part of his early career at eisenman and it seems to have been both foundational and transformative for him. not only did he get a boost from his time there, eisenman gave work to him after he left and formed his own small upstart firm - evidence that eisenman can value his people and make lasting relationships with them.
is structural ingenuity a basic requirement of a worthwhile architecture, cou2? or just a quality that can be recognized in some worthwhile architecture?
like him or not, that's not where eisenman's interests lie and i don't know that he should be discredited for THAT, anyway.
ksArcher - If I was having a house designed by an architect, shouldn't he/she be able to describe in terms I can understand why the living room was placed where it is, why the windows are placed where they are, why the roof has a certain overhang, ect. The architect may have some complex way of coming up with these things, but it should be somewhat understandable to me.
Steven, I wasn't trying to suggest that Eisenman work be judged solely on a structural basis. Someone asked if any of Fullers work had the spatial sophistication of Eisenmans work. I was just trying to point out that spatial sophistical might not have been one of Fullers main goals - and that his work not be solely judged on that basis. As far as spatial sophistication, many would argue to Eisenman didn't do a great job (I guess that more subjective and I'm not really trying to argue that - but others have). But no one could argue that Fuller did not do a good job with structures (along with a lot of other things he did well).
Eisenman will always be controversial because there's seems to be little middle ground with him. Either he's a good architect (Cards Stadium, Wexner, his early Houses) or a bad architect (DAAP), either a good theorist (Decon Lectures) or a bad theorist (the Terragini Magnum Opus which one of the most poorly written books ever).
got it.
so, to answer dlb, i'll propose fuller's alcoa hq near/in cleveland by fuller. it's an arc-shaped office building hugging the edge of one of his domes. the dome covers a garden onto which the building focuses.
is it as spatially complicated as an eisenman project - no. but, in this case, its sophistication comes from the way the entire garden space becomes charged by the embrace of the building and the enclosure of the dome. standing in the concave space near the building was truly a unique feeling that i've not experienced anywhere else so far. the dome 'claimed' the zone under it, giving an impression (strangely, since the structure was open) of protection and shade and cool.
spatial sophistication doesn't have to mean shifts, angles, and jittery multiplication of lines. in the case of this fuller project, it meant understanding what the formal gesture of enclosing/embracing that space meant and how to make the most of it.
steven, I would be interested to see images or plans of the alcoa bldg. have been googling away and can't find an image or even a reference.
never meant to imply that spatial sophistication needed to be about shifts, angles, etc - rather what i find satisfying about Eisenman's Wexner is it's critical expression of a curatorial idea of a gallery, without resorting to a conventional sequence of exhibition spaces. i think the spatial play is with the organizational structure of these relationships.
as much as i admire B. Fuller and particularly his thoughts on ecology, in general i find his "architecture" to not be very architectural. as interesting as a geodesic dome is from a space-making, volume-forming structural solution, they are quite limited to deal with spatial variation - unless one takes the line that you just build a dome and then do "interesting stuff" inside it - which is exactly what most uses have been.
and from the point of view of 'architectural structure', i think someone like Peter Rice or Cecil Balmond is far more inventive and challenging to architects than the legacy of Fuller.
having heard B. Fuller speak on two different occasions, i would venture that just as many people went away from the lecture as energized and as confused as happens at any Eiseman lecture.
fuller stole snelson's ideas.
i have never given a damn about structural ingenuity.
i have given a damn about time, memory and silence however.
dlb --
Where'd you see him speak?
holz -- from what I've read, each man personally attributed credit to the other on numerous occasions... i think it was more collaborative between artist and engineer/inventor/architect...
i saw Fuller at a large event in early '70's, and then again at a lecture at Rice University in Houston, c.1978.
some of the ideas and the ways he expressed them were very clear and easy to take on board, whereas some were complex and difficult to assimilate, and virtually incomprehensible. still entertaining and a pleasure to experience, but i wouldn't describe him as the great communicator.
the idea that any idea can be presented in "simple language to simple people" is one of those quaint myths that people tell themselves so that when confronted with difficult thoughts and ideas, any lack of understanding is always the fault of the speaker.
hey, i'm just here to incite a riot!
<off-topic>
dlb, did you go to Cranbrook?
-snelson
alucidwake, if you do intern at Eisenman, bone up on the I Ching before you get there, and then let it be known that the I Ching is one of your avocations via demonstrations of your meaningful chancyness. You'll have a blast!
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