Architecture's Desire

8/8/2019 Architecture's Desire

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K . M I C H A E L H AY S

ARCHITECTURES

DESIRE

READING THE LATE AVANT-GARDE

WritingArchitecture series


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ARCHITECTURES

DESIRE


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WritingArchitectureseries


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THE MIT PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

LONDON, ENGLAND

ARCHITECTURES

DESIREREADING THE LATE AVANT-GARDE

K . M I C H A E L H AY S


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

DESIRE 1

ANALOGY 23

REPETITION 51

ENCOUNTER 89

SPACING 135

NOTE ON THE COVER 171

ILLUSTRATION

NOTES 173

C O N T E N T S


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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S


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ARCHITECTURES

DESIRE


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1

I write here about architectures status as a domain of cultural representa-

tion.

DESIRE


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1.1

Aldo Rossi, Dieses ist lange her

ora questo perduto, 1975, drawing.

Courtesy Fondazione Aldo Rossi.


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1.2

Jeffrey Kipnis, 3 Masterpieces

of Late-Twentieth-CenturyDesign Theory, 1990.


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Mobilized explicitly against the scientism not only of modernist functionalism

but also of the remaining positivist design methodologies and operations

research of the 1960s, which sought to arrive at optimal architectural organi-

zations mathematically and avoid the slippery problems of architectural repre-

sentation and translation, Meaning in Architecture(1969), edited by Charles

Jencks and George Baird, proposed a preliminary semiotics of architecture

elaborating the basic structuralist insight that buildings are not simply physical

supports but artifacts with meaningsigns dispersed across some larger social

text.1

ANALOGY


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2.2

Aldo Rossi, La scuola di Fagnano Olona.

Altre relazioni, 1979, sketch.



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2.3

Aldo Rossi, untitled, 1983, sketch.


The plans in the sketch are of the

school at Fagnano Olona and the

cemetery at Modena.


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51

Peter Eisenman begins his introduction to the 1982 English translation of Aldo

Rossis The Architecture of the Citywith an excerpt from Jacques Derridas

Writing and Difference:The relief and design of structures appears more

clearly when content, which is the living energy of meaning, is neutralized,

somewhat like the architecture of an uninhabited or deserted city, reduced

to its skeleton by some catastrophe of nature or art.

REPETITION


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3.1

Peter Eisenman, House IV transformation

study, multiple axonometrics, 1975.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York.


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3.2

Peter Eisenman, project for Cannaregio, 1978, plan.

Courtesy of the architect. Upon close examination

these objects reveal that they contain nothingthey

are solid, lifeless blocks which seem to have been

formerly attached to the context. . . . They leave

a trace, mark the absence of their former presence;

their presence is nothing but an absence.


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3.3

Peter Eisenman, Cannaregio, 1978,

sketch site plan showing disposition

of el-cube structures with grid

derived from Le Corbusiers hospital

and diagonal axis of symmetry.

Canadian Centre for Architecture.


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3.4

Peter Eisenman, sketch diagram of two

Cannaregio grids at different scales

in preparation for Choral Works, 1986.



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3.5

Peter Eisenman, sketch site plan

showing superimposition of

Cannaregio and La Villette sites at

different scales, 1986. Canadian

Centre for Architecture.


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89

Form for the late avant-garde appears as a fatednessan inhuman force that

enables and organizes architectural concepts while imposing itself as a

blockage to any different future experiences.

ENCOUNTER


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4.1

John Hejduk, Diamond Museum C,

c. 1962. Explanatory sketches.


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4.3

John Hejduk, Wall House 3, 1974 elevation

and plan. If the painter could, by a single

transformation, take a three-dimensional still

life and paint it on a canvas into anatura

morta,could it be possible for the architect to

take thenatura mortaof a painting and, by a

single transformation, build it into a still life?


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The subject of representationThe gazeimage

screen

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Jacques Lacan, diagram of the

gaze. From The Four FundamentalConcepts of Psycho-Analysis.


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4.5

John Hejduk, Identity Card Man, from

the Victims series, 1986. Collects

identity card / photographs card /

Projects film of card onto screen /

Once / destroys negative / explicit

faith in memories / hallucination /

of signatures.


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4.6

John Hejduk, Cemetery for the

Ashes of Thought, 1975, elevation

showing Mulino Stucky building

to the right and Wall House 3 in the

lagoon to the left.


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4.7

John Hejduk, Cemetery for the

Ashes of Thought, 1975,

aerial perspective sketch showing

the cemetery on the Giudecca.



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4.9

John Hejduk, Berlin Masque,

1981, details.


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4.10

John Hejduk, Security, from the Victims

series, 1986. These elements will be

moved from place to place. The townspeople

of one place will move the elements to

the next designated place into the hands

of the receiving townspeople.


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4.11

John Hejduk, Cathedral, 1996, sketch.



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4.12

[two parts] John Hejduk, Chapel, Wedding

of the Moon and Sun, 1998, sketch.

Collection of Charles Gwathmey.


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4.13

John Hejduk, birds-eye view of

structures overlooking Cathedral

site, 1996.


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But an overemphasis on architectures wounds obscures the jouissance with

which the stigmata are received.

SPACING


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5.1

Bernard Tschumi, Advertisements

for Architecture (1 of 9 parts),

c. 1975.


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S a'

Aa

other

Other(ego)

(Es)

imag

inaryr

elatio

n

unconscious

5.2

Jacques Lacan, L Schema.

From crits.


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5.4

Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette,

Paris, 1985, superimposition

of points, lines, and surfaces.


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5.6

Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette,

ideograms showing the permutations

of the foliesand the grid as vanishing

mediator, 1982.


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N O T E O N T H E C O V E R I L L U S T R AT I O N


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D E S I R E

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N O T E S


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E N C O U N T E R

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