Peter Eisenman

So I decided to study at Columbia University, moved to New York.

And then after my studies, kind of got a job offer by Peter Eisenman and decided to work for him.

So I worked for Peter for three years and was also teaching at Columbia and soon after also teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.

And yeah, Then I suddenly turned out to be a New Yorker.

And maybe a formative part of that was when I was at Penn State, it was when FormZ was being created at the time, FormZ in American, I've become Canadian.

And Peter Eisenman who was involved, you know, and Chris Yessios and all that.

And Ohio, that was, a lot of that was being done at Ohio State, but there was a relationship with Penn State.

So we're seeing the early versions of a software program, modeling program that was-- I mean, when I did my computer class at Penn State, we were in kind of the beta phase of FormZ.

Um, my friend Mahfouz sent me this, uh, YouTube video of a 1975 AA conference on conceptual architecture.

And it's like Peter Eisenman sitting at the podium with a pipe, like actually not speaking English.

Um, I had, so I do, I do understand the point.

Like I don't, maybe just intellectually I'm not there, but I think it's, um, I think that we can like meet a middle ground because we've gone too far the other way.

This is confirmed by some who explicitly mention a new cosmology as the basis for their architecture.

So, 1982 there was a famous debate between Christopher Alexander, here on the right, and Peter Eisenman on the left.

This was at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

And at a certain point, they're talking about the inherited cosmology of the Western tradition, sort of like the cosmology of the last 300 years.

I think that's how you pronounce it.

It's got the .

So Peter Eisenman is celebrating these columns.

How would you describe these columns when you see that? What's your initial reaction? They look like chopsticks, right? They're rather thin, right? And it's a little, you kind of feel worried for this man.

Unfortunately, I don't really have much ties to the Rem Koolhaas Ome school.

I'm on the opposite side of the Peter Eisenman.

But I do think when I see things like this, and, you know, we've had a few kind of big names die in the past.

year or so and when you see that happening again it kind of circles back to our conversation earlier like they're not really making new star architects in a way and actually I feel like the end of that era you know we've talked about this a lot but like this neoliberal expansion of conceptual architecture into all these different places and his role as icon and all that seems to be heavily questioned now yeah

Daniel Liebeskind's vision, which he called memory foundations, beat out 40%.

5,200 designs submitted, including those by starkitects, as they're called, Richard Meyer, Peter Eisenman, and Charles Gwathmey.

But here's what makes this story almost incomprehensible.

Libeskind's own story, beginning with the fact that this world-renowned architect who designed some of the most iconic structures around the world did not design and complete his first building till he was 52 years old.

Um, if you are, if you are completely into addressing those major issues that we discussed before, if that is the most important thing to do with your life, to make a contribution to, to society, whatever it takes and whatever definition is, is, is, is, is given to it or whatever label is put on it, uh, you would not be so, uh, stressed about what is inside and outside architecture.

Um, uh, the, the people you mentioned, um, I, I, you know, I, I, I have been around for, um, long enough to, to, to even have, uh, done a few things with them, especially, uh, Peter Eisenman.

And I, I remember, uh, one conference many years ago, and I, I participated a few times in the ANY conferences in the late '90s, uh, which was basically organized by him, by, by Peter Eisenman.

And, uh, I will never forget a moment that this tension, this, the, the same question as you were asking, was coming from a student in Seoul, Korea.

And she was asking, uh, the very, the very famous architects on stage, um, uh, what everything they said about the mandate or the, the, the statute of architecture, what it has to do with her daily battles, um, as a, as, and to, to, to become a useful, relevant, inspired architect in Korea.

And since this is an architectural, since this is an architectural conference, it, it cannot be the question.

And then he referred, and I hope you allow me, he referred to a episode, um, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but, but it's, uh, extremely illustrative because he mentioned, uh, his time as a, as a, as a soldier in the Korean War, uh, where he was, um, identified by a colonel, uh, as being an architect.

Uh, so, and Peter Eisenman is a, is a, is an amazing, um, amazing speaker.