Deconstructivist architecture

An architectural style that juxtaposes different structural and design elements in seemingly random ways

Deconstructivist architecture symbolized both the complexity of contemporary life and a postmodern aesthetic that was the result of unprecedented American wealth and power in the 1980s.

The deconstructivist movement in architecture, also known as deconstructivism or deconstruction, is an evolution in postmodern architecture that began in the 1980s. “Deconstructivism” is a term that seems counterintuitive when applied to building, and examples of this style often seem equally counterintuitive in terms of their organization and construction. Deconstructivist architecture often looks as though it has been exploded, cobbled together with random bits and pieces from a number of different buildings. It can seem intentionally designed to be abstract rather than functional.

In the 1980s, deconstructivist architects drew on theories from other disciplines, such as philosophy, literature, and cultural studies, to develop an approach to buildings that reflected the fragmented, pluralistic, and global nature of everyday life. Deconstructivist architecture attempted to illustrate post-structuralist ideas about diffusion, discontinuity, fragmentation, and context. Many of the foundational ideas of deconstructivist architecture reflect the work of literary scholars of the 1980s and the French philosopher Jacques Derrida , who founded a literary and philosophical movement known as deconstruction that saw that complexity was an organizing principle of human experience. Deconstructivism is most concerned, then, with questions of meaning and how people make order in their world.

New Shapes

Deconstructivist buildings have several distinctive physical features, including generally non-rectilinear foundations; unusually curved or distorted facades; and unpredictable, almost chaotic structures. These elements reflect deconstructivist architects’ interest in experimenting with ideas about the nature of the “skins,” or facades, of buildings, using or referencing non-Euclidean geometry in architecture, and creating a building or place that sends messages about dislocation at the same time that it acts as a clear locus of action or experience.

Early interest in this type of architecture was first expressed in Europe. For example, the 1982 Parc de la Villette competition included several examples of projects that might be understood as deconstructivist. These included a collaborative submission from Derrida and the American architect Peter Eisenman , as well as the winning entry by Bernard Tschumi, an architect with offices in both France and New York who was interested in academic and theoretical approaches to architecture.

By 1988, deconstructivist architecture was influential enough to merit the attention of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Organized by the architect Philip Johnson and his associate Mark Wigley, the museum’s Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition featured the work of the seven most influential deconstructive architects of the time: Frank Gehry, David Liebskind, Rem Koolhaas , Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau , Eisenman, and Tschumi. What these architects had in common was their sense that the traditional view of architecture as an art focused on order, stability, and history was no longer a valid way to view building design. Instead, in the 1980’s, architecture began to explore pure abstraction and the power of critical theories developed in other disciplines. As a result, the structure of a building came to be seen as a potential tool for questioning and reforming social relationships, on both a community and an individual level.

While many of the architects whose works were highlighted by the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit subsequently distanced themselves from the term, “deconstructivism” became a common description of the particular look and approach adopted by many of them. Gehry, for example, is among the architects who disassociated himself from the deconstructivist movement, but his home in Santa Monica (1978) is, for many architectural historians, the prototypical deconstructivist house. Beginning with an ordinary three-bedroom cottage in an ordinary neighborhood, Gehry changed its masses, spatial envelopes, and facade, subverting the normal expectations of domestic design. Typical of deconstructivist buildings, Gehry’s house emphasized irregular and quirky shapes and volumes and used unexpected materials, like metal, tile, and stucco, in unusual ways and jarring combinations. In contrast, Eisenman, who embraced the label of deconstructivist, produced house designs in the 1980’s that focused on an effect of dislocation, achieved through formal purity and lack of historical or vernacular reference.

Gehry projects like Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (1981–84), Edgemar Center in Santa Monica (1988), and Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles (begun in 1989) reveal deconstructivism’s lack of interest in the unity, orthodoxy, and simple functionality that shaped most modernist architectural designs. Buildings like Eisenman’s Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus (1989) illustrate the complexity and fragmentation common to deconstructivist architecture. A three-dimensional grid runs through the castle-like structure. Some of the grid’s columns fail to reach the ground and loom over the stairways, creating a feeling of dread and concern about the structural integrity of the columns.

New Tools

Deconstructivist architects made unparalleled use of computer-aided design (CAD), which by the 1980s was a common tool in all architectural firms. For deconstructivist architects, computers were an important design aid, permitting three-dimensional modeling and animation that supported their desire to create very complicated spaces. Similarly, the ability to link computer models to production activities allowed the manufacturing of mass-produced elements at reasonable cost. While the computer made the designing of complex shapes easier, though, not everything that looks odd is “deconstructivist.” It was the use of new technologies in ways that were connected to postmodern and post-structural theoretical frameworks that enabled deconstructivist architects to revolutionize people’s experiences of their built environments in the 1980s.

Impact

As an expression of postmodern attitudes, deconstructivist architecture was as much about theory and cultural change as it was an approach to building design. Although in some ways deconstructivism as a movement was at the fringes of 1980s architecture, it significantly changed the shape of the American built environment.

Bibliography

Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. 3d ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.

Jencks, Charles. The New Moderns: From Late to Neo-Modernism. New York: Rizzoli International, 1990.

Johnson, Phillip, and Mark Wigley. Deconstructivist Architecture. New York: Little, Brown, 1988.

Macrae-Gibson, Gavin. The Secret Life of Buildings: An American Mythology for Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.

Wigley, Mark. The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.