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K. MICHAEL HAYS ARCHITECTURE’S DESIRE READING THE LATE AVANT-GARDE Writing Architecture series
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Architectures-Desire-michael-hays
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K . M I C H A E L H AYS
ARCHITECTURE ’S DESIREREADING THE LATE AVANT-GARDE
Writing Architecture series
ARCHITECTURE ’S DESIRE
Writing Architecture series
THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
ARCHITECTURE ’S DESIREREADING THE LATE AVANT- GARDE
K . M I C H A E L H AY S
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
ARCHITECTURE ’S DESIRE
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I write here about architecture’s status as a domain of cultural representa-tion.
DESIRE
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1.1 Aldo Rossi, Dieses ist lange her—ora questo è perduto, 1975, drawing. Courtesy Fondazione Aldo Rossi.
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1.2 Jeffrey Kipnis, 3 Masterpieces of Late- Twentieth- Century Design 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 meaning—signs dispersed across some larger social text.1
ANALOGY
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2.1 Aldo Rossi and Gianni Braghieri, Cemetery of San Cataldo, Modena, 1971, plan. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. “The analogy with death is possible only when dealing with the finished object, with the end of all things.”
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2.2 Aldo Rossi, La scuola di Fagnano Olona. Altre relazioni, 1979, sketch. Courtesy Fondazione Aldo Rossi.
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2.3 Aldo Rossi, untitled, 1983, sketch. Courtesy Fondazione Aldo Rossi. The plans in the sketch are of the school at Fagnano Olona and the cemetery at Modena.
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Peter Eisenman begins his introduction to the 1982 English translation of Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City with an excerpt from Jacques Derrida’s 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 nothing—they 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 Corbusier’s 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. Canadian Centre for Architecture.
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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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3.6 Jacques Derrida, letter to Peter Eisenman with sketch proposal for an intervention in Bernard Tschumi’s project for La Villette, May 30, 1986. Courtesy Marguerite Derrida. “And more than grille, grid, etc., it will have a certain rapport with a selective and interpretive filter, telescope, or photographic filter and aerial view, which allows the reading and the screening (sifting?) of the three sites, the three layers (PDE, BT, LV).”
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Form for the late avant- garde appears as a fatedness—an 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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4.2 John Hejduk, Wall House, sketch, c. 1968. Canadian Centre for Architecture.
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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 a natura morta, could it be possible for the architect to take the natura morta of a painting and, by a single transformation, build it into a still life?”
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The subject of representationThe gaze image
screen
4.4 Jacques Lacan, diagram of the gaze. From The Four Fundamental Concepts 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. Canadian Centre for Architecture.
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4.8 John Hejduk, Berlin Masque, 1981, characters.
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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. Canadian Centre for Architecture.
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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, bird’s- eye view of structures overlooking Cathedral site, 1996.
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But an overemphasis on architecture’s 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)
imaginary
relatio
n
unconscious
5.2 Jacques Lacan, L Schema. From Écrits.
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5.3 Bernard Tschumi, Manhattan Transcripts, 1976–1981, selections.
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5.4 Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, Paris, 1985, superimposition of points, lines, and surfaces.
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5.5 Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, showing grid of folies.
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5.6 Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, ideograms showing the permutations of the folies and 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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A N A L O G Y
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R E P E T I T I O N
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E N C O U N T E R
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S P A C I N G
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