A u t h o r s h i p i n a l g o r i t h m i c a r c h i t e c t u r e

f r o m P e t e r E i s e n m a n t o P a t r i k S c h u m a c h e r

Eletherios Siamopoulos, 04107077Supervising Professors: Vassilios Ganiatsas, Kari Jormakka

Athens, October 2012

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3N T U A - S c h o o l o f A r c h i t e c t u r e - A r c h i t e c t u r a l D e s i g n

A u t h o r s h i p i n a l g o r i t h m i c a r c h i t e c t u r e

f r o m P e t e r E i s e n m a n t o P a t r i k S c h u m a c h e r

Eletherios Siamopoulos, 04107077Supervising Professors: Vasilios Ganiatsas, Kari Jormakka

Athens, October 2012

4Abstract

Over the past two decadesm computer technology has evolved, resuling in acivaion of a complex geometrical language that could not be controlled by tradiional methods. However, the use of computer remained in a representaional stage and the design process remained classical to the end. So the architect remains the creator of the object with the meaning atributed to the word in Romanicism, and the tradi-ional relaion between the subject and the object does not change.

However Patrik Schumacher and Peter Eisenman,, tried a more integrated approach to the design of architecture with the computer, aiming to change the design paradigm, in a diferent way each, favor-ing the use of extensive algorithmic design. Ater I deine the the term algorithmic design in relaion to architecture and explore carious non-classical synthesis techinques in music and paining, I analyze the de-sign process followed by Patrik Schumacher and Peter Eisenman. Finally, ater analyzing, what conitutes a work of art in architecture and how we judge it, I explore the role of the above menioned architects in the creaion of the inal object. But does algorithmic design bring a change in the relaion between the subject and the object?

5Contents

Prologue

1. Introducion2. Algorithmic Design3. Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism4. Peter Eisenman and the Algorithmic Design5. Authorship in Architecture6. Authorship in Patrik Schumacher and Peter Eisenman Image Appendix AImage Appendix BImage Appendix CBibliography

p. 06p. 07p. 14p. 29p. 43p. 58p. 67p. 74p. 83p. 87p. 91

6 This research project started on the occasion of a quesion on Patrik Schumachers theory of autopoiesis in architecture, a term irst used from the Chilian biologists Humberto Maturana and Fransesco Va-relo in 1972 in the ield of biology. Patrik Schumacher adapted this idea in the theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1972-1998) and he is referring on the dynamic evoluion of architecture, whose au-tonomy as a system is helping it evolve, resuling in Parametricism. The iniial quesion that occurred to me is which is the role of the architect in this process? Ater a discussion with Professor Kari Jormakka, who was my ad-visor for the research project, in the Technische Univeristt Wien, where I studied for two semesters with the ERASMUS program, I decided to deal with the role of the architect in algorithmic architecture in general, and the relaion of the subject in creaing the object. For this reason I chose to analyze the approach of two architects who aim on changing the design paradigm, of Patrik Schumacher who is dealing with Parametricism and of Peter Eisenman who was the irst ar-chitect that used algorithms in the design process. But irst I analyze the diference between digital design as a drat tool and algorithmic design as a design tool. Before I reach the conclusions, I invesigate the role of the architect in the design process and whether the resuling object is ideniied as the work of art in architecture.

Prologue

7 1.1

Between, 23 of June and 30 of August in 1988, there was an ex-hibiion named Deconstrucivist Architecture, in the Museum of Mod-ern Art(MoMA) in New York. The architects, whose work was presented, were Coop Himmelb(l)au(Apartment Building in Vienna 1983, Hamburg Skyline 1985, Rootop Remodelling 1986), Peter Eisenman(Biology Cen-ter for the University of Frankfurt 1987), Frank Gehry(Familian Resi-dence 1978, Gehry House 1977-1987), Zaha M. Hadid(The Peak 1983), Rem Koolhaas(Boompjes 1980), Daniel Libeskind(City Edge 1987) and Bernard Tschumi(Parc de la Villete 1982). [Image Appendix A] Unlike the Modern Architecture exhibiion of 1932, which summed up the architecture of the twenies and prophesied an Inter-naional Style in architecture to take the place of the romanic styles of the previous century, the aim of the Deconstrucivist Architecture exhibiion was not to declare a new style. The guest curator of the ex-hibiion Philip Johnson already from the abstract of the exhibiion out-lined: It is a conluence of a few important architects work of the years since 1980 that shows a similar approach with very similar forms as an outcome. It is a concentraion of similar strains from various parts of the world. The associate curator, Mark Wigley, writes also in the abstract that: The nightmare of deconstrucivist architecture inhabits the uncon-scious of the architect. The architect merely countermands tradiional formal inhibiions in order to release the suppressed alien. Each architect releases diferent inhibiions in order to subvert form in radically difer-ent ways. Each makes themaic a diferent dilemma of pure form. [] An architecture, inally, in which form distorts itself in order to reveal itself anew..1

1 . Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968, The MIT Press, 1998

1. Introduction

8 Though the architects menioned above recognize the imperfec-ion of the modern world and they try to reveal, as Philip Johnson says the pleasures of discomfort. By using diagonals, curves and folds the are intenionally trying to violate the right angles, the simple composi-ion of platonic solids and the raionalism of modernism. The classical principles of harmony, unity and purity are displaced from disharmony, break and mystery. In the almost 25 years since the exhibiion, the above menioned architects have evolved coninuing nevertheless on designing forms which are similar to the forms created in post-modernism. The evolu-ion of these forms is closely related to the parallel development of computer science, which made the design and producion of free forms easier. It seams that through the digitalizaion of design, a new way of architectural thinking emerges, which ignores and opposes the classical formal convenions, in favor of a coninuous experimentaion with new forms. [Image Appendix B] 1.2

However it should not be assumed that free forms were irst discovered and used in the end of 20th century. Rafael Moneo, on a purely morphological level, talked about forgoten geometries lost to us because of the diiculies of their representaion.2 For example the forms that Frank Gehry is using in his latest projects such us the Giggen-heim Museum in Bilbao, can be ideniied in expressionisic works of the 1920s. Or even earlier, someone can encounter free forms in the organic and biomorphical shapes of Art Nouveau and more precisely in the heli-cal lines of Hector Guimard on the staions of the subway in Paris. Also in the sculpture-buildings of Gaudi with the complex organic forms, which result from his own method of curve modeling through the copy of the form of a hanged chain. There is a number of architects that used similar expressive means from 1920s onwards. The observatory Einsteinturm(1921) of Er-2 as quoted in: Kolarevic Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age Design and Manufacturing, Taylor & Francis, 2005

9ich Mendelsohn in Potsdam in Germany, the church of Ronchamp(1955) and the Philips Pavillion in Expo 1958 in Brussels of Le Corbusier, the TWA Terminal(1962) in New York of Eero Saarinen, the Sidney Opera House(1967) of Jrn Utzon. It is worth remembering that the free view and the free plan of Le Corbusier, are those who enabled the creaion of curves in the works of modernism. Eero Saarinen atributed the reap-pearance of free forms in the advance of technology, but he also rec-ognizes that they were used for aestheic reasons. Finally Alvaar Alto, objected to the strict geometry of Internaional Style the spiral lines and curved forms of his plans from the furniture scale to the building scale. The Finnish Pavillion in the World Expo of 1939, one of his best known works, is characterized by its undulaing curves within a modest rectan-gular cell. [Images Appendix C] Most of these works are a milestone in the history of architec-ture, for diferent reasons each. However all of them show the intenion of breaking with the classical convenions that were used in the contem-porary architecture of the ime. It is obvious that free forms have not prevailed unil the end of the 20th century, mainly due to the restricions of the available at that ime means of visualizaion and analysis. The tra-diional instruments of drating, such as triangles, compasses, scales and protractors, limited largely the designers in the world of straight lines, of parallels and perpendiculars and in construcions that were based on the logic of euclidean geometry for their producion. As a result, archi-tects oten found that they could not design forms which they could not describe suiciently and therefore they could not also construct them. Of course through these restricions it was possible for great projects to be built as the ones menioned above, exactly the same way that is hap-pening with the poets creaing masterpieces through the strict restric-ions of the sonnet. Today the computer technology has achieved to lit these restric-ions, with the use of 3D geometrical and digital models. For the irst ime in the end of the 20th century, it was made possible for the archi-tects to be able to design and produce easily free forms. To illustrate this extraordinary change that took place in the digital age it is enough

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to compare two masterpieces of the 20th century: the Sydney Opera House of Jrn Utzon and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao of Frank Gehry. Both buildings are considered masterpieces for their ime, which is conirmed by the fact that became emblems of the ciies in which they were built. The Sydney Opera House was the result of an internaional com-peiion in 1956, with winner the work of Jrn Utzon, that was charac-terized by curved concrete shells. Schemaic diagrams of the architect for the contest, were depicing free-form curves and surfaces, which presented a challenge for the construcion engineering irm of Ove Arup. From 1957 to 1961, Jrn Utzon and Ove Arup were trying to ind a soluion of mathemaical descripion of these curves, experimening in changing its shape, so that the construcion would become feasible. Finally the soluion came with a simpliicaion of the originally planned form of shells, by drawing them into triangular secions of the same sphere. This simpliicaion in form, has led to a simultaneous simpliica-ion to their design, to their calculaion and their construcion, with the contemporary design tools that were available. In 1967, 10 years ater the original design of the opera, the shells were constructed. At the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, four decades later, Frank Gehry designed an even bolder composiion of free forms. This ime, however, the exact design calculaion and construcion of these free forms was not a problem. By using the program Caia, which was most-ly used in the ield of aeronauics, he designed a complete model of free forms of the building, which in the end were constructed automated with minimal cost. For Frank Gehry it was not necessary to simplify the free forms that he designed, as it was of Jrn Utzon, and the inal result was strikingly similar to the original architects sketches. 1.3

With the revoluion in technology and digital representaion it became possible, in the late 20th century, for many architects to con-struct the free forms that they were drawing but they could not con-struct. Nevertheless, the use of computers in architectural design has

11Guggenheim Museum, Frank Gehry, 1999

Sidney Opera House, Jrn Utzon, 1967

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remained at the representaion stage, where the computers are used purely as an electronic design tool. In the example of the Guggenheim Museum of Frank Gehry, the program Caia was used to describe the digital free-forms that are part of the outer skin of the museum. Simi-larly most architects are using the computer that were presented in the Deconstrucivist Architecture exhibiion in MoMA. In most cases, the computer is allowing the acivaion of a geo-metric language, which could not be controlled because of the complex-ity of the geometry of the form by using tradiional projecive methods. This of course means that the use of computers remains in the repre-

sentaional stage in the architectural design, as there is no actual per-cepion of the compuing nature governing the digital environment. But instead, the design process remains deeply tradiional, remaining essen-ially similar to the approach of a process based on tradiional design methods. What is changing, is simply the awareness of the possible ex-tension of the geometric language of architecture, that is present in the invisible mathemaical descripion of the digital design tools. So in the case that the computer is only used as a design tool, in fact we have a development of the tool of design and nothing more. For this reason, in most cases we do not have change in the relaionship between the subject and the object during the architectural design. The architect in both cases remains creator of the object, in the sense that was given to the term in Romanicism. The author is an original genius, who through intuiion and emoions is able to produce its own original work, in a process of creaion from nothing. This idea can be found in a remark made by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich said that: The feelings of the arist is his law. . However two of the architects menioned before, Zaha M. Hadid and Peter Eisenman, tried a more integrated approach to architectural design with computers. They claim that they do not remain in the use of the computer as a tool for describing and designing complex geom-etries, but rather they aim to change of the design paradigm, favoring the extensive use of algorithmic design in the design process, each one

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of them for their own reasons. Therefore I chose these two extreme examples, to invesigate the changes that the use of algorithmic design brings to the relaionship between the subject and the object in their architecture. But what is algorithmic design?

2.1

Algorithmic architecture involves the designaion of computer sotware to generate form and space through a rule-based logic inher-ent in architectural programs, typologies, building code and language itself. Here we should make the disincion between the computaion and computerizaion of architecture. The dominant mode of uilizing computer in our days is that of computerizaion. That is nothing more than the digiizaion and then manipulaion of what they have already designed through tradiional means. On the other hand computaion, enables the role of the architect from architecture programming to programming architecture. An algorithm is the procedure to a soluion to a problem, which ater a inite number of steps, stops, and inally leads either to a soluion to the iniial problem or not. As a result an algorithm is a group of proce-dural rules, of instrucions; a decision making process.3

An algorithm can be a soluion strategy to a problem through a inite number of steps, but this doesnt mean that we already know the soluion neither that there is a soluion. The output of an algorithmic procedure is always open. We can know the input and the steps that we will follow, but the result is unknown. The special thing about an algorithm as a soluion procedure to a problem is not only its initude or its universality, but also the importance of an every ime applicability. An algorithm is a procedure, which can be used in every possible state,

3 Manfred Wolff-Plotegg, Architektur Algorithmen, Passagen Verlag, 1996Unter Algorithmus versteht man ein Verfahren zur Lsung eines Problems, das nach endlich vielen Schritten abbricht und dabei entweder eine Lsung des Problems produziert oder es als unlsbar zurckweist. Ein Algorithmus ist also eine Verfahrensanweisung, eine Handlungsanweisung, eine Entscheidungsprozedur. 14

2. Algorithmic Design

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Sierpinskys Triangle, same rules different variables

Three houses of Frank Lloyd Wright with the same program and layout

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in the procedure of addressing a problem. As a result an algorithm is a universal procedure consising of rules, which can always be used, is objecive, methodical and efecive. As I have already menioned, the basis of algorithmic design is that with the same rules and procedure a designer can create diferent forms. For example Frank Lloyd Wright cre-ated three diferent buildings by using the same organizaional scheme, but using diferent shapes for creaing the inal form; once by using rect-angles, once by using triangles and once by using circles. Nevertheless the use of algorithms has an aim which paradoxically is, to put the aim itself aside. In what we could call classic architecture, what the inal out-come of a design process should be, was deined by our aims, but in algorithmic architecture, the end is allowed to be unknown, as it is going to be generated through the use of algorithms. Although the human forms a set of instrucions to be performed of a computer, he cannot have an oversight of the inal result, as the there are algorithms which simulate the way natural processes work, algorithms which create randomness, or even algorithms which are able to generate new algorithms. For instance the introducion of an arbi-trary process can produce results which are unpredictable but in the same ime accidentally meaningful. Unpredictability is, by deiniion, a disassociaion of intenion, but unlike chaos, a random rearrangement of elements, in a predeined rule-based system can result a legit result. However, from very early a lot of arists have tried to achieve a disassociaion of the intenion of the creator from the creaion process by using diferent non-classical techniques. Even so without using the computer they invented a process that displaced the creator himself, giving importance to other pieces of the work of art. 2.2

Alexander Cozens, a Briish landscape painter (1717, St. Peters-burg 1786, London), who worked during the irst years of Romanicism, ried to free his art from the formal noions and the rules formed in clas-sicism, through a new process that he proposed. This new non-classical process of creaing original composiions in paining, was not based on

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Blotting of a landscape painting of Alexander Cozens

The landscape paining of Alexander Cozens that was produced from the bloing above

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the original geniuss idea of Romanicism, but on the other hand it was ruled by the concept of randomness; a method no more controlled from the human conscience. Alexander Cozens, described his radical process in his pamphlet A New Method of Assising the Invenion in Drawing Original Composi-ions of Landscape, published in 1785. One of his pupils give us a de-scripion of his peculiar method of teaching: Cozens dashed out upon several pieces of paper a series of accidental smudges and blots in black, brown and grey, which being loated on, he impressed again upon other paper, and by the exercise of ferile imaginaion, and a certain degree of of ingenious coaxing, converted into romanic rocks, woods towers, stee-ples, cotages, rivers, ields, and waterfalls. Blue and grey blots formed the mountains, clouds and skies.4 An improvement of this technique, was to splash the botoms of earthenware plates with these blots, and to stamp impressions therefrom on sheets of damped paper. As Alex-ander Cozens, in his book A New Method of Assising the Invenion in Drawing Original Composiions of Landscape suggests: To sketch is to transfer ideas from the mind to the paper. To blot is to make varied spots... producing accidental forms... from which ideas are presented to mind. To sketch is to delineate ideas; bloing suggests them..5 More-over he deines bloing as a producion of chance with a small degree of design.

The proposed process of Alexander Cozens, can be seen as an algorithmic process through a contemporary view. This process can be interpreted as an algorithm exactly because he displaced the way of producing a paining; from the creaion through intuiion of the original genius, to the interpretaion of a result which came out of an arbitrary procedure. The algorithm in the process that he proposes, is not other than discovering the unknown, by seeing in his random composiion of blots something that he would not imagine in another way. Leav-

4 Otto Stelzer, Die Vorgeschichte der abstrakten Kunst, R. Piper, Mnchen, 19645 Alexander Cozens, A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape, 1785, as quoted in: Manfred Wollf-Plottegg, Architektur Algorithmen, Passagen Verlag,1996

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ing outside intenions, turning something through interpretaion that seems meaningless into meaningful. This way, he achieves the end of the beginning, since he has no iniial intenions and his iniial point of creaion is just deined by a random composiion of smudges and blots. Moreover he achieves the end of the end, as he has no aim in his pro-cess; he just has a random composiion of smudges and blots, which he later interprets, resuling in a creaion of a paining he had not foreseen; a result that is to him unknown from the beginning. However, as Alexander Cozens acknowledges, his ideas are inlu-enced of a passage in Leonardo da Vincis (1452-1519, Old Style Calen-dar) book Treaise on Paining, published in France in 1632. Leonardo da Vinci recommends that arists should look for inspiraion of painings in marks on old walls or igures in clouds. He coninues suggesing a method, of throwing a wet cloth against the wall, from which someone could be inspired for new composiions. In the modern period, Paul Klee (18 December 1879-29 June 1940), followed the advice of Leonardo da Vinci for inding unreasonable ways of inspiraion regarding paining composiions, as he writes: In the restaurant of my uncle(Frick), the fat-test man in Switzerland, tables were arranged on which stood polished porcelain dishes, and on their surface was designed a tangle of lines. In this maze of lines, someone could discover grotesque human igures, which he could later draw them with pencil..6

Another example of random composiion in paining, howev-er this ime without interpretaion, is the method of Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966), a French arist. Claiming that chance is my raw material he created composiions of collages and reliefs, by leing pieces of pa-per unexpectedly fall on a blank canvas. However, he did not use his method for creaivity reasons or for breaking away from classic values 6 Paul Klee, Tagesbuch, p.16, as quoted in: Stelzer Otto, Die Vorgeschichte der abstrakten Kunst, R. Piper, Mnchen, 1964 Im Restaurant meines Onkels (Frick), des dicksten Mannes in der Schweiz, standen Tische mit geschliffenen Marmorplatten, auf deren Oberflche ein Gewirr von Versteinerungsquerschnitten war. Aus diesem Labyrinth von Linien konnte man menschliche Grotesken herausfinden und mit dem Bleistift festhalten.

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and forms, but rather for poliical reasons. Doing his irst experiments with Dada-collages created by chance, during the First World War, he was seeking solace in the randomly occurring forms in nature, he set these works against the raional order that unleashed the war: mecha-nizaion, organizaion, naionalism. However, the idea of random composiion was not an idea only used in paining. John Cage (1912 Los Angeles) is an American composer, who began to invesigate the ways music was composed through chance procedure, believing that something beauiful could come out. During his studies in UCLA with the composer Arnold Schnberg, he realized that he wanted to make radically diferent music from the music of the ime, and he says: I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schn-berg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said Youll come to a wall you wont be able to get through. So I said, Ill beat my head against that wall... John Cage wanted to make art in ways that broke from the rigid forms of the past, and inspired by Marcel Duchamps ready-mades that presented everyday items in mu-seums as inished works of art, he found music around him without re-lying on expressing something from within. His irst experiments using non-classical techniques for composing music involved altering stan-dard instruments, such as puing plates and screws between a pianos strings before playing it, but he later realized that he needed enirely new instruments. Pieces such as Imaginary Landscape No 4(1951) used twelve radios played at once and depended enirely on the chance broadcasts at the ime of the performance for its actual sound. In his piece Water Music (1952), he used shells and water to create another piece that was moivated by the desire to reproduce the operaions that form the world of sound we ind around us each day. Throughout the sixies he started to focus his atenion on the technologies of record-ing and ampliicaion. One of his beter known pieces composed using this technique is Cartridge Music(1960), during which he ampliied the sound small household objects make at a live performance. Taking the noions of chance composiion even further, he cut up a tape of record-ing, randomly puing it back together.

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2.3

The problem regarding such techniques which were described above, is that they usually contain to much. They tend to contain a vast number of possibiliies that have no meaning, plus possibiliies which are meaningful but irrelevant or uninteresing. Somebody could state that the techniques described above, mostly ruled by randomness, are not objecive neither scieniic. The state-acion trees, which are created from an arbitrary process containing rules, establish numerous branches that are not worth exploring. To take as much as we can through this process, leaving out the branches not worth exploring, can be done by ightening up the rules of the game. One powerful way of doing this is the grammaical combinaion of parts. For example in the English lan-guage, when we use a noun in a sentence, it is essenial to being an English noun that is only instaniated in English sentences in certain kind of combinaions with other words, as given by the rules of English gram-mar. Thus not all string of words count as sentences in English. Only those which follow the rules of the English grammar. Coninuing from music, Arnold Schnberg, the Austrian com-poser who was a teacher of John Cage in UCLA, tried in his way to com-pose music diferent from the forms used in classical music, through the deiniion of rules of producion, through an algorithmic process. Arnold Schnberg invented, in 1921, the method of musical composi-ion called Twelve-tone technique. Twelve-tone technique orders the 12 notes of the chromaic scale, forming a row or a series and provid-ing a unifying basis for a composiions melody, harmony, structural pro-gressions, and variaions. It is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromaic scale are sounded as oten as one another in a piece of music while prevening the emphasis of any through the use of tone rows, an ordering of the 12 pitches. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Schnberg himself described this system as a Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another. His invenion of the method of Twelve-tone technique made it possible for the technique of composiion called serialism, that uses a series of values to manipu-late diferent musical elements, to emerge.

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However the idea of using rules of producion to create music was irst proposed by Ludwig Mizler, friend of J.S. Bach ,in his paper in 1739: The Iniial Basses of Figured Bass, propounded mathemaically and presented in a very clear way by a newly invented machine. is the machine of musical composiion . The era had already let romanicism aside and Ludwig Mizler invented a machine of musical composiion, which mechanically produced objecive music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, between other composers such Haydn, C.P.E. Bach and Calegari, invented his own Musikalisches Wr-felspiel, in the year 1787, which was published from N. Simrock in Bonn, in 1787, ater the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was a system for using dice to randomly generate music. The dice was rolled, and ev-ery ime a number was atributed to a number on a table, which respec-ively was corresponding in a two-bar secion of music. Adding up the randomly selected secions of music, a musical piece was created. His aim was to show that anyone without an idea about music could com-pose a walz and other types of music. In 1801, Antonio Calegari presents in Venice the Gioco pitagorico musicale, another musical dice game, in which he proposed the use of three dices and he writes: It is obvious the music, which is considered the language of heart, should have as ev-ery other language its phrases, its sentences, its words, its syllables and its leters..7

The analogy of the grammaical combinaion of parts in architec-ture can be illustrated in Alberis handling of columns, piers, entabla-tures and arches, as analyzed by Rudolf Witkower, in 1962: In his religious buildings Alberi consistently avoided the combi-naion of arch and column. When he used columns he did, in fact, give them a straight entablature, while when he introduced arches, he made them rest on pillars with or without half-columns set against them as decoraion. Alberi found the models for both forms in Roman architec-7 , . , , 2007

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The use and the combinaion of columns, archs, half-columns and entablatures from Alberi in his religious buildings

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ture. But whereas the irst moif is Greek, the Romans playing the role of mediators, the second is Roman. The irst moif is based on the func-ional meaning of the column, the second on the cohesion and unity of the wall. To explain this later point: in the Colosseum the arched pillars may be interpreted as residues of a pierced wall, with the half-columns, which carry the straight entablature, placed against them as ornament. In pracice, therefore, Alberis concepion of the column is essenially Greek, while his concepion of the arc is essenially Roman.8

The grammaical rules of a language of architectural form, like those used in a language, can be speciied in a variety of formats. The simplest approach as employed by Pugin, is to display various exemplars of correct and incorrect pracice. This technique has already been employed from Vitruvius unil today. Another, more sophisicated ap-proach, is to state generalized prescripive rules, as in elementary lan-guage textbooks. In Renaissance, architectural theorists were paricu-larly fond of doing this, as the rules of composiion Palladio introduced in his Four Books of Architecture in 1570. John Mitchell in his book The Logic of Architecture in 1990, proposes a sophisicated generaive grammar to create villa loor plans in the style of Palladio, since Palladio was one of the irst architects to explore plan ideas by sketching numerous variants. The Palladian gram-mar which is formulated by Mitchell is a parametric shape grammar, as deined by Siny in 1980, in which shapes consist of points, lines, and labels. The proposed grammar consists of vocabulary and rules of the language and illustrate them through a step by step derivaion of the plan of the Villa Malcotenta. The grammar generates plans in a top-down fashion, working from footprint and an organizing grid, down to the details of walls, columns, doors and windows. The stages of the plan generaion of a Palladian Villa are the following: 1. grid deiniion 2. exterior wall deiniion8 William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition, MIT Press, 1996

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The unixaial villas that Palladio published in his Four Books of Architecture as they were produced from John Mitchells grammar

Villa Malcontenta as produced from John Mitchells grammar

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All the combinaions that are being produced from John Mitchells grammar in a 3x3 grid

Two prototype villa plans as they were produced from John Mitchells grammar in a convincing Palladian grammar

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3. room layout 4. interior wall realignment 5. principal entrances, poricos and exterior wall inlecions 6. exterior ornamentaion, columns 7. windows and doors 8. terminaion The above proposed Palladian grammar, generates not only all the uniaxial villa plans published in Palladios Four Books of Architec-ture, but also many plans of him sketched elsewhere and moreover a rich catalogue of original plans in a convincing Palladian manner. Since we can create grids of increasing size it, this grammar speciies a count-able ininite universe of villa designs for exploraion. In essence such a grammar of generaing Palladian villa plans can be used also in the op-posite direcion, providing a way to recognize villa plans as Palladian, by succesfully reducing them to the iniial step of the generaion.9

Such shape grammars have been used from ime to ime to de-sign architecture. Most notable is Bernard Tschumis design for Park of La Villete in Paris, in which he has programmaically employed subsitu-ion of architectural elements from a chosen lexicon, within the frame-work of a gridded ten-meter cube to generate a set of pavilions. The above paradigms, show us how the algorithmic way of think-ing can be used to create an objecive I dare to say architectural de-sign. The shape tokens, being the vocabulary, and the rules of combin-ing them, being the grammar of such a language. The above menioned rules and the predeined steps form an algorithmic procedure, which cannot only be seen as a tool of giving a soluion to a design problem, but also a design tool that leads towards the producion of concepts, ideas and even forms, which in turn efect the way the architects are thinking. The basis of algorithmic design is that with the same rules a designer can create diferent forms.

9 as quoted in: William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition, MIT Press, 1996

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At this point, however, we need to explore the way in which Patrik Schumacher and Peter Eisenman, have used the algorithms in the design process and the reasons that each one of them favors.

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3.1

MAXXI was described as a building for the staging of art, and while provocaive on many levels, this project demonstrated a maturity and calmness that belied the complexiies of its form and organisaion. [] This was a mature piece of architecture, a disillaion of years of ex-perimentaion, only a fracion of which has been built. It is the quintes-sence of Zahas constant atempt to create a landscape, a series of cav-ernous spaces drawn with a free, roving line. The resuling piece gives the visitor a sense of exploraion.. With these words the jury of RIBA Sirling Price commented on the winning disincion of MAXXI win as the Building of the Year 2010. The design of MAXXI started about 12 years ago as a theorei-cal project; it was understood, by the Zaha Hadid Architects, from the beginning as a radical experiment in design research. Its compleion, 10 years ater the design compeiion, proved that the transformaion of a radical concept into a project, a project into a building, and a building into a living insituion. Even ater its compleion as a building MAXXI remains a theoreical project in the sense that it is an architectural mani-festo projecing the potenial of the new architectural style: Parametri-cism.10

Parametricism is the new architectural style which Patrik Schum-acher, collaborate and right-hand of Zaha Hadid Architects, proposed in the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice, in 2008. During the last iteen years he has published numerous aricles theorizing a new agenda for architecture. In his latest atempts of expressing a new uniied theory of architecture of the new style called by himself Parametricism, he 10 Patrik Schumacher, The Meaning of MAXXI Concepts, Ambitions, Achievements, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2010

3. Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism

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wrote and published a book in two volumes which is named: The Auto-poiesis of Architecture. As he claims: Contemporary avant-garde architecture is addressing the de-mand for an increased level of ariculated complexity by means of retool-ing its methods on the basis of parametric design systems. The contem-porary architectural style that has achieved pervasive hegemony within the contemporary architectural avant-garde can be best understood as a research program based upon the parametric paradigm. We propose to call this style: Parametricism.11

Parametricism tries to introduce new concepts as well as new values in the course of architecture. This happens in terms of a richer and expanded formal repertoire as well as a new deiniion and under-standing of funcion, which are organized through scripts and executed by computers. As a result MAXXI is acing as a built manifesto for the values represented in Parametricism, by trying to organize and ariculate life, which is its general aim. To accomplish this, Parametricism tries not only to intensify the internal cohesion and difereniaion through an ordered complexity of the architectural design, but to also create coni-nuiies between the building and the urban context. As Patrik Schumacher claims, cultural buildings in general, but especially contemporary art centers, are the perfect vehicles for staing architectural opinions, thus a new architectural style. This has to do with the openness of contemporary art, which is trying to relect new social phenomena and ideas. Art was always about invenion and experiment-ing with new, as also Adolf Loos stated, in Ornament and Crime. Con-temporary art has no speciied content and typology and tries always to reinterprets the very concept of art. Art is the zone of incubaion of all ideas, including architectural ideas. This is easily understood when somebody thinks of modernism, and the way modern art stated the

11 Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism as Style Parametricist Manifesto, Presented and discussed at the Dark Side Club, 11th Architecture Biennale, Venice 2008

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values of modernism long before they were adapted, if they ever were completely, in architecture. The architectural frame, which in our case is the museum, should be a catalyst and incubator of art and furthermore the ideas which art is expressing. It is all about brainstorming about brainstorming 12; achieving something new by designing an excepional form.

In the site in which the MAXXI was built two urban grids meet. The Zaha Hadid Architects were confronted with this challenge, so the design took its iniial point of departure, from the geometry of the sur-rounding urban context. The resultant change in the angle of 51 degrees of the building is mediated by means of curves. The second decisive design concept was the imposiion of a strong rigorous formalism; the formalism of parallel lines that bend, branch, bundle or intersect, which were later interpreted as walls, beams, ribs, staircases and lightning stripes.13

As the design moved on, the formalism gained funcional sig-niicance, by becoming a wall everywhere thought of as a potenial exhibiion surface and the fundamental space-making element of the design. The walls remain mostly parallel, and the curves coming from the change of the urban grid create exhibiion spaces between walls, as well as interior and exterior spaces, but rather enhancing than losing the coninuous low of space. The low of the walls deines two streams: one major the galleries and one minor the staircases and bridges. As a result, every single one of the architectural elements: walls, beams and ribs as well as ramps and staircases is being created by the strict formal-ism of linear, streaming elements, contribuing to the circulatory low of the visitors and densifying communicaion and event paricipaion.

12 Patrik Schumacher, The Meaning of MAXXI Concepts, Ambitions, Achievements, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 201013 Patrik Schumacher, The Meaning of MAXXI Concepts, Ambitions, Achievements, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2010

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The urban context in which was built

The formalism of parallel lines

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This low of people inside the museum is achieved by the proj-ects formal unity and coherence and it is thus understood internally as a ield rather than externally as an object.14 The interplay of a mulitude of architectural elements menioned earlier results to a space which can-not be grasped in a single glance. There exist two kind of zones with dif-ferent funcional meaning. Zones of laminar low, which are spaces used for art exhibiion and adequate for concentrated encounter. And zones where the intersecion and the layering of lines is correlated with verical connecions that aford level changes. Such spaces of visual and circula-tory interchange is the great public foyer and some connecions which are ofered internal to the domain of the galleries. The luid sequence of space results to an open-wandering through the building without a be-ginning or an end-point. MAXXI abandons the tradiional room-by room museum layout, in favor of an open, dynamic low of people wander-ing throughout the building, through an ordered complexity. By creat-ing surprising shits of space, draws the visitors further, bringing new aspects in view and ofering new choices to coninue their path. No other style could have achieved the formal coherence in such diferent site condiions and scales with so many variants; especially when confronted with a large scale development of this kind. The use of generaive formal algorithms, which the Zaha Hadid Architects are using, are able to create this formal consistency in such diferent scales and such diferent structures. But this consistency depends upon the adherence to the strictures and imposiions discussed above. That im-plies that the parametricist coninuaion forged by diferent architects is possible in myriad diferent ways, but never random. Patrik Schumacher says: Large scale projects in Beijing and Cairo prove that Parametricism is able to deliver all the components for a high performance contempo-rary life process.15 That is why Parametricism will succeed in changing our percepion of the built environment, exactly as modernism did on

14 Patrik Schumacher, The Meaning of MAXXI Concepts, Ambitions, Achievements, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 201015 Patrik Schumacher, The Parametricist Epoch: Let the Style Wars Begin, AJ: The Architectural Journal, vol. 231, no. 16, 06 May 2010

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The big public foyer and a complex of staircases and bridges

The idea of the open museum

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the dawn of 20th century. 3.2

Every new style that is proposed in architecture needs a compre-hensive architectural theory. The reasons are for organizing the ideas and the people who are designing using this new style, which is Para-metricism for us. It is also important if you are trying to work in an oice and lead many architects across a muliplicity of projects, diferent in terms of program and scale. Finally it is important for oneself, so that one will be able to eliminate all contradicions within ones own eforts; so that one doesnt stand in its own way all the ime. You can only lead a coherent pracice with a coherent theory.16

It is necessary for us to agree that in Parametricism all elements are considered parametrically malleable. Unlike every other former style of pracicing architecture, I dare to say from the beginning of ar-chitecture unil today, including modernism, Parametricism is not work-ing with platonic solids, with rigid, hermeic and geometric igures by just composing them. Unlike modernism which was leaded by the prin-ciples of separaion and repeiion, Parametricism is being led by the principles of difereniaion and correlaion and that of formal coher-ence. Nobody will claim the opposite regarding the use of such forms by modernism. Although modernism, compared with classical architecture, was allowed, and did stretch proporions, gave up on symmetry creaing a more dynamic equilibrium and leaving for the user a bigger degree of freedom, it remained classical to its internal structure, avoiding the break with the tradiion and the classical forms; unlike the change that happened in the rest of the arts during the same period of ime. If somebody looks how Patrik Schumacher and his followers are doing architecture he will realize that they are using nothing more than splines, blobs, nurbs, and paricles, all organized by scripts. The archi-tecture they create, has a coherent formal vocabulary generated from algorithms, that creates coherent forms, led by the principles of uni-16 Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism and the Autopoiesis of Architecture, Lecture in SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, September 2010

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formity but yet variety. In the last centuries though, numerous variants of the uniformity and variety formula(unity and variety or order and complexity) have been put forward, leading ulimately to various eforts of quanifying aestheic value.17 The mathemaician George Birkhof (1933) made an interesing but yet unconvincing atempt to measure aestheic values of musical and visual composiions by a formula of the form m=o/c, where m is the aestheic value, o is an objecive measure of order, and c an objecive measure of complexity. As Patrick Schumacher claims, avant-garde styles might be in-terpreted and evaluated in analogy to new scieniic paradigms, aford-ing a new conceptual framework and formulaing new aims, methods and values. Therefore: Styles are design research programs.18 Every research program requires its hard core of design principles and a char-acterisic way of tackling design problems and tasks. So the style or re-search program consists of methodological rules; some that say which paths we should avoid (negaive heurisics) and others what paths to pursue (posiive heurisics). Because a style is not only a mater of forms and formalism, but it also introduces a paricular aitude and way of comprehending and handling funcions and program, Patrik Schumach-er introduces a series of negaive and posiive heurisics for both form and funcion. Formal negaive heurisics: avoid straight lines, avoid right an-gles, avoid corners, avoid rigid geometric primiives like squares, trian-gles and circles, avoid simple repeiion of elements, avoid juxtaposiion of unrelated elements or systems, and avoid familiar typologies Formal posiive heurisics: hybridize, morph, deterritorialize, de-form, iterate, use splines, nurbs, generaive components, script rather than model, consider all forms to be parametrically malleable, difereni-ate gradually (at variant rates), inlect and correlate systemaically17 William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition, MIT Press, 199618 Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism A New Global Style for Architecure and Urban Design, AD Architectural Design Digital Cities, vol. 79, no.4, July/August 2009

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Funcional negaive heurisics: avoid thinking in terms of essenc-es, avoid stereotypes and strict typologies, and avoid designaing func-ions to strict and separated and discrete zones Funcional posiive heurisics: think in terms of gradient ields of acivity, about variable social scenarios calibrated by various event pa-rameters, think in terms of actor-arifact networks

Somebody could interpret and use the funcional and posiive heurisics away from one another. But in Parametricism those two make sense together. In order to translate and achieve these funcions into form someone needs the formal heurisics. The projects that are com-ing out of the Zaha Hadid Architects oice show the richness and unity of the formal vocabulary used in Parametricism, through the richness of the types of structures of various scales it is addressing. The hallmark of Parametricism is exactly this kind of unity within diference and difer-ence within unity in the various scales of architecture from the tectonic detail, to the building scale, as well as to the urban scale why not to the whole world. In such a style as Parametricism, which claims universal valid-ity, what is most important is formal coherence, which derives from the universality of the algorithms which are used to create such forms. The elegance of the ordered complexity but yet unity which is produced and the sense of seamless luidity, akin to natural systems, can be reviewed through diferent projects that came out of the Zaha Hadid Architects oice, from the shoes to the Nordpark Cable Railway and inally to the Kartal-Pendik Masterplan. The Zaha Hadid Architects oice collaborated with the Brazilian shoe company Melissa, in order to design a pair of shoes which would achieve the creaion of the characterisic sensaion of luidity, which the oice produces. The natural staring point for the design was the organic curves of the human body, that inspired the idea for a shoe in lux, which comes into life when somebody wears it, in contrast to a typical shoe

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Melissa Shoes

The stations of Norpark Cable Railway

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that is understood as staic in a shop window. In the project Nordpark Cable Railway, in Innsbruck, Austria, where diferent kinds of cable railway staions were designed, the for-mal unity and yet diference in the construcions is understood. The dif-ferent kinds of roofs were successively adapted in the diferent site con-diions creaing diferent inal forms; however without losing the formal consistency between each other. The same formal coherence in the urban scale is easily repre-sented in the design of the Kartal-Pendik Masterplan, in Istanbul, Tur-key, which Zaha Hadid Architects designed in 2006. Using parametric sotware in this project they achieved a worth-while collecive value: The unique character and coherent order of the urban ield that all players beneit from, if adherence can be enforced..19 The design in all the scales of the city produces an elegant, coherently difereniated city-scape. This ordered complexity replaces the monotony of other planned developments and the disoriening visual chaos which was the outcome of unil now planned contemporary city expansions. The interaricula-ion between cross towers and perimeter blocks, as well as the system of parks that are spread into the city achieve the rhythmic low of the urban fabric, and give a sense of organic cohesion. In addiion, the sys-tem of the facades used throughout the city, makes the exterior of the blocks look heavier than the interior. This results in a low of the public space where a block opens up, via the gradient transformaion between the outer and the inner ariculaion. 3.3

If we look at the history of the whole evoluion of architecture, we could easily come to the conclusion, that social order requires spaial order and that society doesnt exist without a structured environment. As Mark Wigley has said, architecture was always a central cultural unity and it will be protected as such, because it provides for stability and

19 Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism A New Global Style for Architecure and Urban Design, AD Architectural Design Digital Cities, vol. 79, no.4, July/August 2009

41Renders that show the formal coherence of the city-scape

Use of a formal algorithm in Kartal-Pemdik Masterplan

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order. 20 At this point, Patrick Schumacher claims the same; that spaial organizaion sustains social organizaion. Parametricism, which claims universal validity, through the extensive use of scriping in an almost scieniic way, is creaing endless coherent forms, and thus it organizes and ariculates life. Patrick Schumacher, being leaded himself by the needs of the society of the 21st century, he tries to make the new style of Parametri-cism, the only valid for architecture in the future; the great new style ater modernism. According to him, post-modern and deconstrucivist architecture have been transiional episodes that ushered in this new, long wave of research and innovaion, of Parametricism. Nevertheless, Patrik Schumacher acknowledges that decon-strucivist architecture, which started with the formal invesigaions of Peter Eisenman, made the turn in the way we conceive and do architec-ture possible. Peter Eisenman being lead by the deconstrucion theories of Jacques Derrida used various techniques for designing architecture; through gridding, scaling, tracing, folding and scriping, he designed buildings that were more of experiments. By this way the start was made, by geing away from the tradiional drawing and designing tech-niques, and by these I mean drawing with ruler and compass, making rigid lines and rigid igures, and introducing and working with dynamic systems.

20 Philip Johnson, Mark Wigley, Deconstructivist Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988

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4.1

Peter Eisenman, even in his early designs in the beginning of decostrucivist architecture, tries to distance himself from the design process, oten by using an arbitrary process with the help of algorithms and diferent non-classical techniques in the design process. By inter-preing the ideas of Jacques Derrida regarding Deconstrucion, he tried to generate a kind of non-representaional iguraion in the object. This suggests the idea of architecture as wriing as opposed to architecture as image. What is being writen is not the object itself, but the act of creaing this object. Architecture is no longer seen as merely aestheic or funcional elements, but rather as another grammaical counter, pro-posing an alternate reading of the idea of the object.21 In this case a not classical architecture begins acively to involve an idea of a reader conscious of his own idenity rather as a user or an observer. The reader proposed here is distanced from any external value system, paricularly an architectural-historical system. As a result such a reader brings no a priori competence to the act of reading other than his own idenity as a reader, thing useful for the non-classical architecture which does not aspire to be understood through such preconcepions. The above idea, is expressing the idea about the death of the author. It comes originally from the philosopher Roland Barthes, who expressed it in its essay The death of the author. The essay summa-rizes itself in the last paragraph: Thus is revealed the total existence of wriing: a text is made of muliple wriings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relaions of dialogue, parody, contestaion, but there is one place where 21 Peter Eisenman, Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure, Architecture and Urbanism no. 202, July 1987

4. Peter Eisenman and algorithmic design

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this muliplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hith-erto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotaions that make up a wriing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a texts unity lies not in its origin but in its desinaion..22

Barthes himself claims that the language is a system by itself and the only thing that the author does is using this exact system for wriing a text, which contains the subject. He claims that the author should stop being important. What should be important on the other hand, is the reader and the way he interprets the same text. Diferent readers will give texts diferent meanings, as the original intenion and the objec-ive interpretaion of the writer will be no more of importance. Barthes himself says that To give an author to a text is to impose that text a stop clause.. The author should stop playing this god-like role, as what is re-ally important to us is the reader himself. [...]the death of the reader must be ransomed from the death of the author..23 The author should stop to play this god-like role, as what is important to us is the reader. Nevertheless, Peter Eisenman is not only trying to achieve the end of the author the way Barthes is expressing. He tries to give the end of the author, another dimension already from his irst deconstrucivist designs. He explores himself diferent, non-classical processes of de-sign. He distances himself from the architectural design, as much as he can, and by using algorithmic design the reader has the inal reason against the building rather than the god-like architect. The analogy to wriing can be here done, referring to Oulipo. The workshop for potenial literature, Ouvroir de litrature potenielle, which the writers Raymond Queneau and Franois Le Lionnais founded in 1960. It was a loose gathering of mainly French speaking writers and mathemaicians which explored ways of seeking new structures and pat-terns of creaing texts. They used a variety of constrained wriing tech-niques which were used as means of triggering ideas and inspiraion. Most famous of those is the technique called lipogram, which is wriing 22 Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, Aspen, no. 5-6, 196723 Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, Aspen, no. 5-6, 1967

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Cent Mille Milliards de Pomes of Raymond Queneau

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a text using words which do not contain a speciic leter. A famous work writen using the above technique is La Dispariion, by Georges Perec in 1969, enirely without using the leter e. Other famous techniques are: S+7in which you replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun ater it in the dicionary, Palindromes in which sonnets and other poems are constructed using palindromic techniques. Finally, another well known work of the groups is Queneaus Cent Mille Milliards de Pomes which is inspired by childrens picture booksin which each page is cut into horizontal strips that can be turned independently, allowing diferent pictures to be combined in many ways (usually people: heads, torsos, waists, legs, etc.). Queneau applies the same technique into po-etry. The book consists of 10 sonnets, each on a page. Each page was split into 14 strips, one for each line, allowing one to be combined with each on let from the other 9. This creates 10^14 poems which some-body needs approximately 200 million years to read all possible combi-naions. 4.2

The most famous non-classical design technique Peter Eisen-man developed, inspired by the ideas of Roland Barthes about the end of the author and interpreing the theory of Deconstrucion of Jaques Derrida in architecture, is a method called scaling, which he used for the irst ime in 1985 in Romeo and Juliet project, in Verona. In Peter Eisenmans criical essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and other Errors: An Ar-chitecture of Absence, commemoraing his winning submission for the Third Internaional Venice Architecture Biennale of 1985, outlined his theoreical design direcion: For ive centuries the human bodys proporions have been a datum for architecture. But due to developments and changes in mod-ern technology, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, the grand abstracion of man as the measure of all things, as an originary presence, can no longer be sustained, even as it persists in the architecture of today. In order to efect a response in architecture to these cultural changes, this project employs another discourse, founded in the process called scaling. The process of scaling entails the use of three destabilizing con-

47The scaling process used in the Romeo and Juliet project

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cepts: disconinuity, which confronts the metaphysics of presence; re-cursivity, which confronts origin; and self-similarity,which confronts representaion and the aestheic object. Strictly speaking, disconinuity, recursivity,and self-similarity are mutually dependent aspects of scaling. They confront presence, origin, and the aestheic object in three aspects of the architectural discourse: site, program,and representaion.24

Peter Eisenman, with the Romeo and Juliet project did not want to create any work, but instead a text, that would reveal its structure from within. He wanted with the process of scaling to confront pres-ence, origin and the aestheic object in three aspects of the architec-tural discourse; the site, the program, and representaion. He treated the site, not only as physical presence, but also as a palimpsest and a quarry, containing traces of memory as well as of immanence, resuling this way in a non-staic site. The program of this project, was not a usual program, as it presented the dominant themes of Romeo and Juliet in architectural form in at the site of the two castles in the city of Verona. In the story of Romeo and Juliet there are three structural relaionships, which were taken as the basis of the architectural program. The irst of these structural relaionships is this of division the separaion of lovers which was symbolized through the balcony at Julias house. The second is this of union the marriage of the lovers which is symbolized through the church and the third is their dialecical relaionship the togeth-erness and apartness of the lovers which is symbolized through Julias tomb. The above described structural relaionships can also be found to exist at physical level in the plan of the city of Verona. Cardo and de-cumanus, the two middle-age city walls divide the city, whereas the old Roman grid unites it. Finally, the Adige creates the dialecical condiion of union and division between the two halves of the city. Peter Eisenman then, draw a icive plan of the city of Verona, which depicted the middle-age city walls(division), the old Roman grid(union), the Adige river(dialecical relaionship), as well as the sup-posedly exising in Verona house of Juliet(division), the church in which 24 Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros, and other Errors: An Architecture of Absence, Architectural Association, London, 1986

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The result of the scaling proccess used in the Romeo and Juliet project

The physical model of the Romeo and Juliet project

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the couple was married(union) and Juliets tomb(dialecical relaion-ship). Those elements were drawn as axonometric designs in three dif-ferent scales. The superposiions of scales were done so that the ic-ional elements would fall on top of the real elements. In the overlaps and coincidences of the design arise elements which have to do with the condiion of memory, of presence and of immanence. The elements which had to do with the past or the condiion of memory were drawn gray, the elements which had to do with the condiions of present were drawn blue, and the elements which had to do with the future or the condiion of immanence were drawn white. The scaling process used by Peter Eisenman in Verona, has no privileged point of relaion with the design; it has no origin, thus is free-ing architecture from the concept of the human scale. Moreover, in the scaling process, the overlapping of architectural and no architectural el-ements, controlled by randomness, we might talk of a design which have changed the tradiional relaion between the object and the subject, creaing a self-referenial object; an architecture without author. As we have already menioned, the scaling process used by Peter Eisenman in several projects, is an interpretaion of Jacques Derridas theory of Deconstrucion in architecture. Jacques Derrida wants to re-verse the widespread convicion that a sign literally represents some-thing, because a sign could always refer to yet more signs ad ininitum. Thus there is no ulimate referent or foundaion.25 As in this text, noth-ing guarantees that another person will endow the words I use, with the paricular meaning that I atribute to them. For example, when reading the word water, we might think of water drops, a lake, the chemical symbol H2O, and so on. We dont necessarily think of a predeined im-age of water; there is no such thing as a universal referent or foundaion of water. And then, each of the diferent signiiers in which the word water could refer, according to our percepion, could trigger another sig-niier, with no ending. So we conclude that a sign can represent more than one thing, yet it cannot represent anything. The same way thinks 25 Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1982

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Peter Eisenman of the use of sign in architecture. He wants to free the object which he designs from sign, origin and direcion, because it could for someone represent more than one thing, thus it could not represent anything. He makes architecture without origin and without author. Peter Eisenman, however, is beter known for a series of 10 ex-perimental houses that he designed, most of them not built. In his writ-ings following the design of the houses he claims that he atempted the freeing of the house from its cultural atributed meanings. Each one of the houses were designed through a process, which he would say, re-sulted to the a self-referenial inal object, without taking into account the formal convenions of the modern movement. However, those de-signs had a diferent point of iniiaion, which was Noam Chomskys syn-tax theory of generaive grammaical transformaions. Noam Chomsky claimed that there is a universal frame of grammar rules, that makes ev-erybody understand if a combinaion of words in a sentence is logical or not. In every generaive grammar there is a deep structure and a surface structure that both form sentences. The process, that builds a surface structure from a deep structure is called transformaion. Peter Eisen-man was inspired from the concept of the grammaical transformaions, and he created a system of simple geometrical transformaions which together with an iniial formal vocabulary, created complex designs of houses.26

26 His most famous design, from this series of experimental houses, is House VI that he designed in a lat site in Cornwall, Connecicut. The design of the house started with a typical grid, which then he manipulated in a way so that, when it was completed, it could exist not only as an object, but also in a way of cinematographic embodiment its own transformaion process. To start, Eisenman created a form from the intersecion of four planes, subsequently manipulaing the structures again and again, unil coherent spaces began to emerge. As a result structural elements, were revealed so that the transformaion process was evident, but not always understood. This means that even if a simple post and beam system was used for the design and the construcion of the house, not all of these played a structural role. There are columns not supporing anything, one column in the kitchen hovers over the kitchen table with-out even touching the ground. In other spaces, beams meet but do not intersect, creat-ing a cluster of supports. There is even an upside down staircase, the element which portrays the axis of the house, painted red to draw the atenion. Robert Gutman, Sociologist Professor in the University of Princeton, wrote on the house saying: [...]

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4.3

The above designs shows us the importance which Peter Eisen-man gave into creaing architecture through diferent non-classical processes. In his essay The End of the Classical, The End of the End, The End of the Beginning, one year before the Romeo and Juliet project, he had already outlined the theoreical direcion of his work, claiming that architecture from the 15th century unil the present has been under the inluence of three icions. These icions are representaion, reason and history. According to him each of the three icions had an underly-ing purpose: representaion was to embody the idea of meaning; rea-son was to codify the idea of truth; history was to recover the idea of imeless from the idea of change. These three icions have persisted through the diferent architectural styles that emerged since the 15th century; from classicism, neoclassicism, romanicism, to modernism and postmodernism. Because of the persistence of these icions in ar-chitectural thought, we can refer to this coninuous mode of thought as the classical.27

By the icion of representaion, he addresses the problem of the simulaion of meaning in architecture. Before Renaissance the meaning of a building was in itself, truth and meaning were self- evident. Renaissance buildings on the other hand received their value by rep-resening an already valued architecture. Modern architecture claimed to liberate itself from the Renaissance icion of representaion, thus it was no longer necessary for architecture to represent another architec-ture but important was to embody it own funcion. Form should follow funcion, so a building should express its funcion, and moreover the raionality in the design process. Modern architecture though it tried to become more objecive, more social; a programmaic art, stayed only

most of these columns have no role in supporing the building planes, but are there, like the planes and the slits in the walls and ceilings that represent planes, to mark the geometry and rhythm of Eisenmans notaional system.27 Peter Eisenman, The End of the Classical, The End of the End, The End of the Beginning, Perspecta, Vol.21, 1984, p. 154

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in reproducing abstracion, atonality, atemporality which though being stylisic manifestaions of modernism, did not represent its essenial na-ture. By the icion of reason, he addresses the problem of the simu-laion of truth in architecture. Before Renaissance the idea of the ori-gin of architecture was self-evident, as its meaning and importance be-longed to an a priori universe of values. In the Renaissance, origins were sought in natural or divine order, as it was widely believed that an ideal beginning would lead to an ideal end. Enlightment brought a change in the way of thinking, and from that ime on, architecture was thought as a raional process of designing, rather than of divine order. The idea of the raionality reinforced from the development of technology, became the moral and aestheic manifestaion of modern architecture. By the icion of history, he addresses the problem of the simu-laion of the imeless. Unil the mid-iteenth century, when the idea of temporal origin emerged, and with it the idea of eternal or universal values, there was no concept of the forward movement of ime. The modern movement polemically rejected the history and its values that preceded it, and presumed itself to be a form of intervenion which fol-lowed the spirit of the age, appealing to values other than those embod-ied the eternal or the universal. But one more ime this resulted only to yet another set of aestheic preferences, supporing asymmetry over symmetry, dynamism over stability, absence of hierarchy over hierarchy. In brief, the modern movement made a shit possible, away from the dominant aitudes of humanism which were pervasive in Western socieies from the iteenth century. The modernist sensibility had to do with a changed mental aitude regarding the arifacts of the physical world, not only manifested aestheically, but also socially, philosophical-ly and technologically. Modern art for example fundamentally changed the relaionship between the man and the object, away from an ob-ject whose primary purpose was to speak about man, to one which was concerned about its own object-hood. The inal object should be au-tonomous, having no idenity or signiicance; it should speak by itself.

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This was more accomplished in modern art, that it was ever in modern architecture. In fact, this shit away from the values of humanism took place in diferent imes in the 20th century in disciplines such as paint-ing, literature, music and ilm. The non-objecive abstract painings of Malevich and Mondrian, the non-narraive atemporal wriing of Joyce and Apollinaire, the atonal and polytonical composiions of Schnberg and Webern, as well as the non-narraive ilms of Richter and Eggeling.28

The shit made in the above disciplines was suggesing a displace-ment of the man away from the center of the world. He was no longer viewed as an originaing agent of the objects. The objects were seen like ideas independent of man. Although modern architecture, as we have already said, atempted similar dislocaion, there was no fundamental shit in the relaionship between the subject and the object. Although the object looked diferent, its relaion to the subject stayed essenially the same. Although the buildings someimes were conceptualized, by axonometric or isometric projecion rather than perspecive, no consis-tent delecion of the subject was carried out. Somebody could also sup-port that architecture did never achieve a break with the tradiion, but on the other hand, it coninued the Renaissance tradiion, unlike the big changes that happened in art throughout the 20th century, remaining classical to its essence. In the deconstrucivist architecture of Peter Eisenman, there is a constant try to free itself from place and go against the laws of gravity. The aboliion of gravity means as much as the aboliion of place. The aboliion of place means as much as the aboliion of presence. He tries to create an architecture away from the tradiional physical experience of room. Peter Eisenman is aiming to an non-classical architecture which would achieve the end of the classical, the end of the end, the end of the beginning. An architecture without origin, without end and without author. By the end of the classical he means the end of the tradiional view and values of the world that were established in Renaissance and 28 Peter Eisenman, Post-Functionalism, Oppositions 6, Fall 1976

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coninued through Enlightenment. Whether the appeal was to a divine or natural order, as in during the Renaissance, or to a raional technique and typological funcion, as in the post-Enlightment period, it amounted to the same thing. To the idea that architectures value derived from a source outside itself; no mater if those values where funcion and type or divine and natural ones. He suggests that a non-classical architecture should be made possible which would pose an end to the dominance of classical values in order to reveal other values. By the end of the beginning he means the end of the origin. The idea of architecture as something added to rather than something with its own being leads to a percepion as a pracical device. But once this self-evident characterisic of architecture is dismissed and archi-tecture is seen as having no a priori origins whether funcional, divine, or natural alternaive origins can be proposed. Not-classical origins, unlike classical ones, can be strictly arbitrary, simply staring points, without value. They can be ariicial and relaive, as opposed to natural, divine and universal. But if the beginning is arbitrary, there can be no direcion toward closure or end, because the moivaion for change of state(that is, the inherent instability of the beginning) can never lead to a state of no change(that is, an end). Thus, a process freed from univer-sal values of both historic origin and direcion, can lead to ends diferent of what we understood as end in its tradiional meaning. By the end of the end he means the freedom from an aim or a speciic end. With the end of the end what was formerly the process of composiion or transformaion ceases to be a causal strategy, a process of addiion or subtracion from an origin. Instead, he invents a non-di-alecical, non-direcional, non-goal oriented process. The invented start of this process; the invented origin difers from the classicist idea of ori-gin by being arbitrary, reinvented for each circumstance. The process instead of being a goal-oriented strategy is now more of an open-ended tacic. The diference between strategy and tacic in our case, is that strategy is directed to a goal, to an iniial intenion. In our case architec-tural form is invented rather than intenionally designed. To invent an architecture is to allow architecture to be a cause; in order to be a cause,

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it must arise from something outside a directed strategy of architectural composiion.

4.4

Peter Eisenman tried to achieve in the early 80s what the mod-ern failed to do. Ater the paradigm shit that took place in the years that following the Second World War, from the mechanical one to the elec-tronic one, a non-classical architecture was made possible, through the use of algorithms. The idea of the paradigm shit can be easily under-stood by comparing the impact of such primary modes of reproducion as the photograph and the fax on the role of human subject. The pho-tograph illustrates the mechanical paradigm and the fax the electronic one. In photographic reproducion the subject sill maintains in control of the outcome and the object itself. The human can develop the photo-graph deciding upon the contrast, the texture, the clarity, even the col-ors. Thus the human subject remains an interpreter and decider of the outcome of the process. On the other hand in the scanning-principle of the fax, the human subject remains out of the process of reproducion, being unable to interpret, as it takes place without control or adjust-ment.29

Under the inluence of such electronic media and machines, not only the distances(relaionship between close and far) and scales(relaionship between small and big) changed, but also the rela-ionship of human and space. The principles with which we design archi-tecture where put under quesion. Architecture, unil then was deined as the art of building, and was close related to the physical experience of space. Although the changes that the electronic era brought to the con-cepts of reality, architecture was hardly inluenced by it. In tradiional ar-chitecture, everything has its own place: an apartment, a room, a desk. A ciizen without a house, has no place; having no place is not allowed. The Town hall should be in the main square, the dinner room next to the kitchen, in the oice we should be working. Moreover every detail has its own place. The place is deined each ime in a paricular way accord-29 Peter Eisenman, Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media, Intelligente Ambiente, Ars Electronica, Linz, 1994

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ing to the observer. The reason why, is that architecture has tradiionally been a basion of what we consider to be the real. Peter Eisenman claims that the electronic shit should have had a big impact on the way we understand architecture because it deines reality in terms of media and simulaion, it values appearance over ex-istence. This way the foundaions of the immaterial space experience were put. Even that space and body were forming a unity for centuries, the immaterial space experience had an efect on the beginning of the disappearance of space and room. He focuses in the dislocaion that this paradigm shit should have brought saying that architecture can no longer stay ied in the staic condiions of space and ime and that in one electronic world there is no place with its tradiional meaning.30

He suggested that, through the use of non-classical design tech-niques and the use of algorithms, a displacement of the man away from the center of the world can be made possible. He suggested a non-classical architecture which would achieve the end of the classical, the end of the end, the end of the beginning. An architecture without origin, without end and without author, radically negaing the idea of the origi-nal genius, the tradiional role of the creator in architecture but also the way of deining the work of art in architecture.

30 Peter Eisenman, Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media, Intelligente Ambiente, Ars Electronica, Linz, 1994

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5.1

In his Poeics of Music, in 1942, Igor Stravinsky pointed out the isolated natural sound such as the murmur of the breeze in the trees the rippling of a brook, the song of a bird are not music but merely promises of music. Coninuing his argument he claimed that the tonal elements become music only by the virtue of their being organized. To generalize this idea we can claim that a creator gives form to his materials. The above idea can be traced back directly to the Platonic doc-trine of ideas, which suggest that physical objects imperfectly imitate perfect, abstract ideas. Aristotle, in the Metaphysics, developed a modiicaion of the above doctrine, according to which a form irst ex-ists in the mind of the arist, and then it is given by the arist to mater. Alberi echoed the above idea, in his Ten Books of Architecture, when he carefully disinguished between the design and the structure of a building: Nor has this design anything that makes its nature inseparable from mater; for we see that the same design is in a mulitude of build-ings, which have all the same form, and are exactly alike as to the situ-aion of their parts and the disposiion of their lines and angles; and we can in our thought and imaginaion contrive perfect forms of buildings enirely separate of mater, by setling and regulaing in a certain or-der, the disposiion and conjuncion of the lines and angles. Which being granted, we shall call the design a irm and graceful pre-ordering of the lines and angles, conceived in the mind, and contrived by an ingenious arist. 31

31 Alberti, Ten Books of Architecture, as quoted in: William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition, MIT Press, 1996

5. Authorship in Architecture

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It is important to recognize that when we describe the forms of buildings we refer to extant construcions of physical materials in physi-cal space, but when we describe designs we make claims about some-thing else construcions of the imaginaion.32 Therefore we will refer from now on, to the design as the construcion of imaginaion and to the building as construcion of the real world.

5.2

Architecture, is the art which we could call the basion of what we consider to be real, as what maters to most is the inal result of the design, the physical object, which is of course the building itself. Archi-tecture, from its beginning was about overcoming the physical forces; overcoming gravity, overcoming extreme weather condiions. However, as we have seen there are architects that give the same importance to the construcion of imaginaion as well as to the construcion of the real world, the design as well as in the building itself. At this ime it is important to make an analogy of architecture with music, so that we can idenify the diference between the design and the building. In music we have the composiion and its performance. The composiion is read, whereas its performance is heard. The composiion is writen in the notaional language of music, which is the score, that has a universal power and meaning. Although a score is a notaional language, and it should contain rules which should be unambiguous, it is not always that way. Most musical composiions consist of the notes, which are objecive rules, but also contain verbal notaion, which are subjecive rules. This kind of verbal notaion is there to deine the tempo, the dynamics but also the expression of the performance. The master of an orchestra is there to interpret these unspeciied rules and to synchronize the orchestra, so that they perform the musical composi-ion. Moreover, in works of art, such as classical music, theater, opera, 32 William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition, MIT Press, 1996

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cinema, which they depend on a collecive of people the deiniion of the author of the work is more problemaic. The musical composiion depends mostly on one person, whereas the musical performance de-pends on more. We can say that the author of a composiion is usually one person, whereas the author of the performance is no person, but a group of persons. Finally, this group of people can change from perfor-mance to performance, so we have a change of author every ime the performance is performed. The composiion can be performed unlim-ited imes in diferent places and each ime will be therefore not consid-ered to be a more authenic or original instance of work. Imagine for in-stance, the performance of the Opera Tristan and Isolde of Oto Wagner, in 1865 in Munich and in 2003 in Los Angeles. Nobody could claim that those performances were the same nor that they are of the same arisic value, even though they were performances of the same composiion. As a result of the above thoughts, we can understand that when we talk about the composiion and the performance of a musical piece, we talk about two diferent pieces of art. In music the notaion is not only a pracical aid to producion and a guide to the inal perfor-mance, but it also gives the composer an authoritaive ideniicaion. The composer remains the author of this musical piece and he is the one to whom the arisic value of the composiion is atributed to. On the other hand, since a composiion can be performed unlimited imes from an unlimited number of groups of persons, each performance con-situtes a diferent work of art. In this case, every ime a composiion is performed the arisic value is contributed to the orchestra that per-formed the composiion. In architecture the place of the composiion takes the design(construcion of imaginaion) and the place of the performance takes the building(construcion of reality). In architecture, we have the architect who is the author of the design, and a group of people which now the author of the physical object. The main diference between mu-sical performance and architectural performance is that, the architec-tural performance is only performed once, resuling the building. There are also excepions, as it happens with the case of Barcelona Pavilion,

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designed from Mies van der Rohe, which was irst built in 1929, in the Internaional Expo, in Barcelona, Spain. As the work was the German Pavilion for the Expo, and therefore a temporary exhibit, it was demol-ished in 1930. A group of Spanish architects, reconstructed the building from 1983 to 1985 in its original locaion, under the original plans and black and white photographs, because of its architectural value. Yet we can perhaps talk about to diferent buildings, two diferent works of art, with diferent architectural value, as they were constructed from difer-ent groups of people in diferent imes. Following the above thoughts we can claim that when we refer to architecture we refer to two diferent works of art, that have two diferent authors. On the one hand there is the work of art of the de-sign which is atributed to the architect and on the other hand there is the work of art of the building which is atributed to a group of people; an orchestra of diferent specialists which build it. As there can be a successful and a less successful performance of a musical composiion, there can be a successful and a less successful performance of a design. One could argue that the work of art as the architecture is iden-ical to the building, and any criic of architecture should be based on the building itself. Firstly, many buildings have visible features which are ignored systemaically by historians and criics of architecture. Secondly, buildings have changed to their original design at imes, so to keep the building in operaion, but sill the original design is generally used for their criicism. For example the Finlandia Hall, designed by Alvaar Aalto, in Helsinki, Finlandia, complies to both of the above condiions. Speciic details, such as electricity cables running inside the building, are sys-temaically ignored by the criics, though they are visible and are per-manent elements. Experts, however, focus instead, on the composiion of enclosed space, on construcion and colors. While the coaing of the facade with marble plates atracts atenion, because of the accidentally wavy form that they have taken due to the extreme weather condiions, is overlooked by criics, and it is neither regarded as a key featur