Deeper Than Decon

7/29/2019 Deeper Than Decon

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Deeper Than Decon:Culture and Conflict in Architecture

GEORGE L. CLAFLEN, JR.Temple University

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of semiotics as a generalinterpretive method is clearly one of the mostexciting intellectual achievements in the socialsciences of the last thirty years. Its reverberationsare still being felt in every discipline concernedwith meaning and its understanding,environmental design last among them. Its lateand highly polemic arrival on the architecturalscene has resulted in the peculiar situationwhereby the first exposure of many architects tosemiotic principles is found embedded inattempts to apply the most highly evolvedconcepts of post-structuralist cultural analysis ordeconstruction to architecture, thus shortcircuiting the developmental process throughwhich structuralist thought evolved in the contextof other disciplines and actually contributed tothe framing of post-structuralist concerns.

Although some of the consequences (andmotivations) of this improvisational borrowingare now receiving consideration from criticswithin the movement, crucial issues remain whichrequire attention. The aim of this essay is tooutline what hasn't been considered: (1) themissing context of structuralism, (2) theimplications of emerging critiques from withinand without, and (3) some potentially interestingquestions concerning the unique nature oftextuality and arbitrariness in architectural form.

LINGUISTICS/SEMIOTICS:STRUCTURALISM/POST-STRUCTURALISM

Semiotics was anticipated by Saussure'sCourse in General Linguistics in 1922

1, but it was

not until the 60's hat Claude Levi-Strauss,influenced by the structural inguistics of NoamChomsky

2, successfully analyzed ultural processes

with a structural (synchronic) as op- to historical(diachronic) method

3. For Levi-Strauss cultural

expression involved the making of choices withina framework of possibilities (analogous to

Sausurre's langue or language as a whole). Choiceitself was individual and unique. (analogous toSaussure'sparole or individual speech). Thebedrock of semiotic analysis is the distinctionbetween the signifier(word, sound image, "real"object in the world), and signified(concept, idea inthe mind). Together they constitute a "linguistic

entity" often referred to as a sign.4

Althoughseparate and opposed to each other, Saussureemphasized that:

"the linguistic entity exists only throughthe association of the signifier with thesignified. Whenever only one element isretained, the entity vanishes; instead of aconcrete object we are faced with a mereabstraction."

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Levi-Strauss, in The Raw and the Cooked,

for example, analyzes cultural practices in whichfood and the rituals and practices associated withit may be seen as a signifier, revealing complexsocial hierarchies based upon kinship and status.

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After initial acceptance, particularly in theintellectually conservative milieu of France, whereit tended to displace historicism with a new"scientific" rigor, the structuralist approach cameunder increasing attacks, grounded principally onthe impossibility of stabilizing the relationshipbetween signifier and signified. Some critiquesemphasized the signified as in Foucault'spolitical-historical analysis of the culturalmotivations of structural operations

7, while others

attacks were primarily concerned with thesignifier as in Jacques Derrida's philosophical

effort to understand the indeterminacy of anystructural condition.

Concerned with opening what he saw asthe rigidly fixed nature of all structures, Derrida,in his work now known as deconstruction,argued in a new way for understanding asindefinite and provisional in nature allcommunication, and by implication, allhierarchies based upon language, particularlyphilosophy. Deconstruction is concerned withthe inability to nail down correspondencebetween signifier and signified and the tendencyof the signifier, especially under aggressive and

autonomous reading, to overflow any bounds setfor it and generate additional alternative,supplementary, and contradictory meanings.Derrida considers deconstruction not a theory ora technique, but a practice of analyzing texts toobserve how, despite the intentions of theirauthors, they reveal ambiguities, and fissures,ultimately resulting in an aporia or anunresolvable indeterminacy of meaning.

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Eisenman Robertson Architects. J.W. Goethe Frankfurt Biology Laboratory Project, 1987. Model.

THE SPECIAL CASE OF ARCHITECTURE

The linguistic properties of architecturehave long been noted in a generalizedmetaphorical way. Some would argue that eachbuilding event can be seen as an occasion for thedevelopment and application of a particular and

unique vocabulary of forms. Each architect is thuspotentially an inventor of a new language, or atleast and more likely, a new dialect of formalrelations.

This a-historical, structuralist /post-structuralist formulation resonated inprofound ways with the nature of architecturalpraxis. As John Whiteman observed:

"...the basic problem is that architects areprobably the last adherents of adiscredited Platonism. That is to say, theyimplicitly believe in a correspondencetheory of truth, and are largely unaware

of the developments in modernphilosophy of a reference theory oftruth."

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Generations of students, teachers, critics,

and architects have conceptualized their effortsas directed toward achieving certaincorrespondences or representations linking formand idea. That architectural form was to representan ideal world in accord with geometricized

representations of natural elements, thatarchitectural form should represent tectonicstructure, and that architectural form shouldrepresent use organization, have all been majortheoretical positions characteristic of classicism,modernism, and functionalism respectively.

J.W. Goethe Biology Laboratory Project. Plan.

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There was thus embedded in most architectsunderstanding of architecture, in a way thatsurvived numerous changes in the character ofthe dominant expressive tendency, the naivebelief that the architect actually could chooseamong these ideas and subsequently apply anappropriate formal vocabulary in correspondence

to the representational task. The teaching ofarchitecture has often been approached as a kindof language instruction, where speechperformance based upon given ideologies andrepresentational vocabularies is the measure ofsuccess.

For those who based their architecturalinstruction on an assumed correspondence/directrepresentation model, the advent ofdeconstruction was truly subversive for it assertedthe impossibility of achieving stable relationsbetween signifier and signified. Thedeconstructivists, for their part, often assertedthat all architectural instruction other than their

own was based upon the erroneouscorrespondence model of signification.

DECONSTRUCTING ARCHITECTURE: THE FIRSTATTEMPTS

It is thus not surprising that the evolutionof semiotic thought from an emphasis onstructuring principles to emphasis on"de-structuring" principles would inspire a searchfor its architectural analogue. Peter Eisenman andBernard Tschumi have closely associatedthemselves with deconstruction, even to theextent of working directly with Derrida on

architectural projects.10

Daniel Libeskind has alsoexpressed a strong interest in deconstruction, butin the context of attempting to retain aphenomenological reading of intention.

11Each

has produced provocative architectural proposals,which have provoked vigorous debate.

After the first wave of excitement typicalof any encounter with the new and unanticipated,the profound problems raised by the first"deconstructive" efforts in architecture havebegun to be voiced by critics both within andoutside the decon establishment.

TWO VIEWS FROM THE INSIDE

A concise and thoughtful overview ofcontemporary architecture that attempts to placedeconstruction in context was recently offered byJeffrey Kipnis, himself a strong advocate:

"The stylistic destitution andimpoverishment of vocabulary that wasthe dominant legacy of architecturalmodernism in the U.S. has led recent

design theory to be written in semiotic(and postsemiotic) terms, emphasizingthe meaning engendering function ofarchitectural design and symbolism. It is,however, both possible and desirable torearticulate the same concerns in spatialterms.

12

Kipnis goes on to characterize and

dismiss the Beaux Arts as concerned with theexpression of hierarchy and modernism for itsefforts to substitute an equipotential spatialcontinuity for all hierarchies. He concludes withthe following characterization of attempts toacknowledge difference in architecture:

"As we have grown increasingly aware that anydiscourse of empowerment must respectdifference, we have also grown aware that thehomogenous space aspired to by modernism wasequally hegemonic in suppressing difference. The

problem that faces postmodernist design inspatial terms, therefore, has been to reinvigoratethe exploration of heterogenous space. Someargue that premodern hierarchies are essential tospatial heterogeneity [postmodernism of theclassical variety?], others argue that genuineheterogeneity flows from georegional differences,[critical regionalism?] while still others pursue aradical heterogeneity, one that supports theproliferation of differences without alignmentand without allowing difference to sediment intoany reified, categorical hierarchy.[deconstruction?]"

13(comments in brackets added

by the author)

By suggesting a move from a semioticfocus to a "spatialized" one, Kipnis at once locatesdeconstruction in architecture within acontinuous discourse of difference, and makesthe whole discussion more congenial to aMarxist-historical interpretation of space as anindex of power.

14Both of these steps would be

viewed with some alarm within thedeconstructive establishment as an attempt torehabilitate methods of historical analysis whichdeconstructivists consider to be thoroughlydiscredited.

Mark Wigley, curator of the

Deconstructivist Architecture exhibit at theMuseum of Modern Art recently expressed hisconcerns on the superficial obviousness of thegeometric metaphor often drawn betweencomplex discontinuous spaces anddeconstruction:

"It is now over 20 years since Derrida'sfirst books were published. Suddenly hiswork has started to surface in

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architectural discourse. This appears tobe the last discourse to invoke the nameof Derrida ....After such a long delay - ahesitation whose strategic necessitymust be examined there is such a hasteto read Derrida in architecture. But it is areading that seems at once obvious and

suspect. Suspect in its very obviousness.Deconstruction is understood to beunproblematically architectural. Thereseems to be no translation, just ametaphoric transfer, a straightforwardapplication of theory from outsidearchitecture to the practical domain ofthe architectural object. The hesitationdoes not seem to have been producedby some kind of internal resistance onthe part of that object. On the contrary,there is no evidence of work, no task forthe translator, no translation. There is justa literal application, a transliteration.

Architecture is understood as a rep- ofdeconstruction, the materialrepresentation of an abstract idea."

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These critiques from within raise issues

of: (1) the obviousness of the formal analogue andthe implicit worry that a new form ofcorrespondence is indeed being attempted(Wigley), and (2) the apparent isolation ofdeconstruction from the spatial history ofarchitecture and contemporary critiques of spaceas a manifestation of power (Kipnis).

TWO VIEWS FROM THE OUTSIDE

Kipnis was anticipated in his concern forthe potential significance of the effort tospatialize post structuralist theory in 1974 byAlgirdas Greimas who found quite anotherproblem affecting the development of a semioticsof urban space:

"Of the two possible methodologicalapproaches (the interpretive approachand the generative approach)corresponding to the two poles of thestructure of communication-the city,considered as a global utterance

readable by the receiver and the cityenunciated by the sender-it is the latter,for reasons that are not all of a scientificnature, that interests most architectswho wish to investigate urbanproblematics from a semioticperspective. In adopting this perspective,it is as though town planners naturallyfound themselves once again in afamiliar ideological landscape. By

identifying with the sender-enunciator ofthe city, in their own eyes they aretransformed into the producers of thecity, thus misrepresenting theirfundamentally individualistic andreactionary ideology. We know to whatdegree the myth of the individual

creator, which dates only from theeighteenth century, is deep-rooted andself-serving. The subject ofenunciation,...is transformed into anobsessive focalization for all ideological,aesthetic, and sociological ills. Such afocalization ensures delaying the actualestablishment of urban semiotics."

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In his concern for the narcissistic focus upon theindividual creator, Greimas also anticipates therealization of this as a crucial problem found inother recent work on the subject.

17

All this would, perhaps, be an interesting

side discussion in the history of architecturaltheory were it not for the enormous claim madeby deconstructivist architects that their methodsare the only ones free of the taint of thecorrespondence theory of representation.Perhaps this could be viewed as an excess ofrhetorical enthusiasm. In his critique ofdeconstruction, however, John Ellis arguesotherwise, suggesting that deconstructivepractice depends upon finding and retaining themost objectionable version of the idea to bedeconstructed:

"The traditional idea is questioned,

subverted, and undermined-and thenretainedin order that we can focus on theact of subversion itself, which, however,does not constitute a final rejection ofthat idea."

18

He goes on to suggest that in order to focus onthe most obvious cases:

"Deconstructionist thinking shifts thecontext we begin with, away from themost sophisticated thought achieved todate, on to unsophisticated, simplenotions.

19

Perhaps this tendency can be read in Kipnis'sconcise history that permits him to dismiss boththe Beaux Arts and modernism in the sameparagraph.

Just as some educators influenced bydeconstruction appear to believe that all othermethods are tainted by the correspondencemodel of signification, the claims fordeconstruction in architecture can be seen as

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dependent upon sweeping assumptions aboutthe history of architecture. Must we believe, forexample, that only now, as the heirs of semiotics,and newly aware of the problems of logicalpositivism and correspondence theories oflanguage, that we are the first architects to beable to see the possibility of an alternative to the

geometric reinforcement of organized authoritythrough architecture? Or, to put it differently,have there always been architectural practiceswhich either intentionally or unintentionallyproblematized direct representational efforts?

Francesco Borromini. San Carlo alle Quattro

Fontane. Rome. 1634-41.20

The most superficial review of the historyof architecture reveals many such alternativediscourses: famous ones such as the mannerismof the Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, thebaroque of Borromini's St. Carlo alle QuattroFontane, or the expressionism of Scharoun orHaring, or more obscure discourses such as thoseof Hannes Meyer at the Bauhaus or the IndianNationalist movement. Since each of these can nodoubt be deconstructed, the lack of interest ofcontemporary proponents of deconstruction in sodoing reveals yet another implicit position,namely that deconstruction is somehowconcerned or aligned directlywith thedevelopment of a new and attractivecontemporary formal vocabulary, and thattherefore efforts which would not advance thiscause are of peripheral interest.

Is it necessary, therefore, to summarilyabandon deconstruction or are there alternativepaths, possibly some which might be illuminatedby an investigation of structuralism in

architectural thought prior to the emergence ofpost-structuralism? It is to this enterprise that wenow turn.

ROOTS-ANOTHER LOOK AT SAUSSURE ANDWITTGENSTEIN

It is also surprising to find so little in thediscussions of architecture and deconstructionwhich refers to its own methodological evolution.Although Saussure is occasionally referred to asthe founder of semiotics, there is very littlereference to another giant of the 20th century,Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose views on languageare close to those of Saussure.

21This omission is

hardly accidental, for the conclusions he drawscreate profound problems for deconstruction inarchitecture. Even Christopher Norris (a strongsupporter of deconstruction) acknowledges thesignificance of Wittgenstein's view of the diverseand provisional nature of the conventions which

enable communication:

"Language is now conceived of as arepertoire of "games" or enablingconventions, as diverse in nature as the

jobs they are required to do. The naggingproblems of philosophy most oftenresulted, Wittgenstein thought, from thefailure to recognize this multiplicity oflanguage games."

22

Norris suggests that according to

Wittgenstein the Saussurian emphasis upon thedistinction between the signifier and the

signified, in fact falls into the trap of implying yetanother form of correspondence between them.23

Wittgenstein deconstructs the oppositionbetween the signifier and the signified, byrecognizing that it, too, is based upon aconvention, thus destabilizing any future work forwhich this distinction is foundational. The notionthat there indeed might be a multiplicity ofgames, rather than one game, here acts both toopen the discourse and increase the relevance ofan examination of the diverse systems ofmeaning offered by any cultural setting.

Hans Schroun, Edgar Wisniewski.Kammermusiksaal. Berlin. 1984-88.

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ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE

Is it possible that the difficulties firstpredicted by Griemas and belatedly felt by Wigleyand Kipnis are the result of an attempt toresuscitate an abstract formalist tradition in

architecture from the impasse reached in the late70's between postmodernism of the classicalcollage variety and the abstracted classicism ofrationalism by introducing to rationalism newanti-classical geometric procedures supposedlylegitimated by deconstruction. This could only bedone through compound distortions of theconceptualization of architecture and theprocesses of its making and interpretation whichwhen reasserted in an adequately robust fashionreveal the inability of these formulations togenerate anything other than formalist spatialexercises of limited interpretive resonance. Theimplications of this possibility suggest

considerations of: textuality, language, and form.

PROBLEMS IN THE TEXTUALITY OFARCHITECTURE

The notion of text, crucial to semioticanalysis can be understood as the establishmentof a field within which semiotic relations can bepursued. In literature the nature of textuality iseasy to comprehend at a superficial level as thebook or the titled work.

24To read architecture as a

text is at once easy and difficult: Easy, for textualconditions are apparent in any building as aunique organization of space and materials, often

understood as the "work" of known individuals.Difficult, though, for architecture is that itactivates a complex stream of significant realms,all potentially addressable through semioticanalysis: use, perception, movement, technology,construction are among the obvious. Lessobvious are languages of, regulation,iconography, symbolism, and interpretation itself.Still additional levels are further outside anypretense of autonomous control of the architectsuch as land use economics, the investment useof buildings, etc. Each, however, is a language ormore properly, a dual language mixing naturaland arbitrary characteristics.

One of the reasons for the strongresonance of deconstruction and semiology witharchitecture can be found in the realization thatmost of the languages of meaning in architectureare in continual conflict with each other. Theshaping and mediating of these conflicts is one ofthe most important things architects do. There isthus an important motivation for architecture toseek methodologies which might acknowledgerather than attempt to eliminate conflict. The

image of architecture that begins to emerge fromthese circumstances is not one text l inear in thenature of its reading, and dominated by theauthor's intent, but many texts simultaneouslywritten in multiple languages, sometimesinvolving multiple authors, each of which isintelligible only in context.

Architecture is a medium of expressionwhich may employ culturally identified vehicles ofmeaning, yet material artifacts and their uniqueemployment by individuals changes both theirmeaning and the language itself. This activates aunique synthesis drawn from many levels ofculture.

This textuality thus inscribes manydiscourses. The application of deconstruction hastended to privilege only a representationaldiscourse, namely the task of representing itself inform. It is inherently destabilized by any attemptto make it material. The materiality of architecturebrings with it a form of meaning different from

representation, and found extensively invernacular architecture, which can be called"embodied intelligence." This is the notion that amaterial element reveals in some way, (maybeonly to a very abstract examination) thecalculations and history that went into itsestablishment. Henry Glassie, forexample, in hisclassic analysis of the vernacular architecture of

Tidewater Virginia, suggests that one can read themeasuring process and therefore the intellectualtradition of the builders from the room shapesand other characteristics of the buildings. This isquite a different form of intelligence thanrepresentation.

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An understanding of the "vehicles ofmeaning" in semiotic terms is necessary in orderto establish the conditions of textuality. Theanthropologist Clifford Geertz has expressedhimself on just this point with respect to art:

"...the notion that the mechanics of artgenerate its meaning, cannot produce ascience of signs or of anything else, onlyan empty virtuosity of verbal analysis. Ifwe are to have a semiotics of art (or forthat matter, of any sign system notaxiomatically self-contained), we aregoing to have to engage in a kind of

natural history of signs and symbols, anethnography of the vehicles of meaning."26

If we are to have a semiotics of space, ananalogous ethnography will likewise benecessary.

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NATURAL VERSUS ARBITRARY LANGUAGE

One of the first issues such anethnography would have to take up would be thequality of architecture as either a natural or anarbitrary language, or as both a natural and anarbitrary language. Traditional spoken and

written languages are composed of arbitrarysounds or symbols which have been givenassociative meaning by psycho-culturalprocesses. Conversely architecture and othersystems of meaning such as fashion, or foodcustoms, have both natural and arbitrarycharacteristics. For example, architecture'sprovision of shelter and shaping of patterns ofactivity or movement might be considerednatural (natural in the sense of providing shelterat all, but quite arbitrary in the different ways thatshelter is actually provided), while types ofdecorative form and varied compositionalpreferences including the organization of space

might be viewed as arbitrary.Alan Colquhoun attempted to sort

through the difficulties of applying the linguisticmodel to architecture:

"The application of the linguistic modelto the arts resulted in a certainconfusion., for it could be interpreted inone of two ways: as a syntactics that was`empty' or as a semantics that was `full'.Neither of these interpretationscontradicts the notion of thearbitrariness of the signs. Nor do theynecessarily exclude each other, since one

is concerned with the signifier and theother with the sign (signifier + signified)as an object of attention. But, I wouldargue, it is the second of these twointerpretations that applies toarchitecture, a position best justified byLevi-Strauss in his discussion of ...music....In music, meaning (that is, musicalmeaning) is only imaginable if the sonicmaterial has already been given astructure; no meanings can only emergeas modifications of an inheritedstructure. Now in music the basis for anysuch cultural structuration already exists

in the natural degrees of dissonance. Iwould argue that a similar basis exists inarchitecture and that, therefore,architecture, like music, is both a naturaland an arbitrary system.

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Characteristic of architecture, is,

however, its continuous tendency to make thenatural arbitrary and the arbitrary natural. This is

an inherent quality of attempts to find meaning inform and space. For example, the uniqueapproach to the organization of spaces in abuilding takes the natural or phenomenal space,and makes it arbitrary -- a unique pattern whichcan be distinguished from other patterns.Similarly the building of a decorative molding or

a classical column takes an arbitrary language andmakes tangible form with it which then can beagain interpreted in both natural and arbitrarylinguistic contexts. The implication of this is, ofcourse, an endless chain of natural making andarbitrary making -- in a process which is akin to anendless regression of slanted mirrors --each layerpotentially shifting the meaning of the next. Havesome deconstructivists simply magnified a pieceof this larger continuum and mistaken it for thewhole thing?After Wittgenstein we can suggest that eachproject sets up its own custom language schemeconsisting of relations specific to a project or site

which have there own peculiar position withrespect to the natural and the arbitrary. This isparticularly evident although by no means limitedto projects larger than a single building, such asurban design schemes, where a variety ofstrategies with respect to the meaning of theexisting context maybe inherently active.

The complexity suggested here mightimply a certain futility in the semiotic/architectureproject, but all it really is doing is serving to tell usthat the work is far more complex than generallyunderstood and that the initial efforts to employsemiotic thinking as a generative rather thaninterpretive tool have limited themselves to very

narrow self representational territory.

FORM AND ITS GENERATION

What then of form and its generation?Attention to this issue has historically beenattempted by means of formal analysis with theattendant risks of a static formalism. Have theefforts to introduce deconstruction inarchitecture a formalism of product with a formal-ism of process? If so, it may again, therefore, be ofinterest to examine the means by whicharchitectural form itself may be understood inboth its cultural and formal settings.

The physicality of architecture results inelusive transformations of meaning. Theimplementation of geometry (an arbitraryalthough logical system of relations) creates anatural form which will then exhibit certainqualities which are arbitrary or natural withrespect to alternative hierarchies of meaning. Thesearch to replace the geometry of the renaissancewhich attempted to create

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an ordered world with new geometries whichattempt to create a disturbed world is still asearch for correspondence -- the human mind iscapable of far more subtlety in its manipulation ofthe ambiguities of architectural form.

Much of the previous discussion hasbeen presented in terms of form as a signifier of

some representational meaning. The work ofHenry Focillon can be construed to remind us thatthere exist conventions of a purely formal naturewhere the signified and signifier are both formswhich present us with a realm of discourse whichhas not yet been joined:

"The most attentive study of the mosthomogenous milieu, of the most closelywoven concatenation of circumstances,will not serve to give us the design of thetowers of Laon. Exactly as mankindmodifies the face of the earth and cratesa sort of geography that is his alone, by

means of agriculture, deforestation,canals and roads, so does the architectengender new conditions for historical,social and moral life. No one can predictwhat environments architecture willcreate. It satisfies old needs and begetsnew ones. It invents a world all its own."

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And maybe Clifford Geertz writes the epitaph forthe whole enterprise when he states:

"The variety of artistic expression stemsfrom the variety of conceptions menhave about the way things are, and is

indeed the same variety."29

NOTES

1Ferdinand de Sausurre, Course de LinguistiqueGenerale, published posthumously by hisstudents, 1922. Various editions and reprints.References from Ferdinand de Saussure, Coursein General Linguistics, Wade Baskin, trans. (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1966)

2Noam Chomsky,Aspects of the Theory of Syntax(Cambridge: MIT, 1965)

3Claude Levi Strauss, Structural Anthropology(New York: Basic Books, 1963)

4In some versions, there are three elements:signifier, signified, and a concept or "real thing"inaccessible directly. For this essay the two part

emphasis of Saussure will be employed. SeeGeorge Baird, "La Dimension Amoureuse inArchitecture," in Baird and Charles Jencks eds.,Meaning in Architecture, (New York: Braziller,1969) 78-99.

5Saussure 102-103.

6 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked,(New York: Harper, 1969)

7see, for example, Michel Foucault, Discipline andPunish: The Birth of the Prison.Trans. AlanSheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977) for adiscussion of Chomsky and Foucault see: PaulRabinow, ed. The Foucault Reader(New York:Pantheon, 1984) 3-7.

8see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans.Gayatari Spivak (Baltimore: Hopkins, 1976).Derrida attacked the stability of the bondbetween signifier and signified suggested bySaussure, arguing, among other things, thatwriting is before speech in logical priority.

9 John Whiteman, "On the ClassicalRepresentation of the Human Soul and ItsDenial," in Investigations in Architecture(Cambridge: Harvard GSD, 1986) 13 n32.

10see for example, Peter Eisenman, "BiologyCenter for the J. W. Goethe University ofFrankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, 1987,"Assemblage5 February 1988, Peter Eisenman, "Blue Line

Text," Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume, AndreasPapadakis et al. eds. (New York: Rizzoli, 1989)and Bernard Tschumi, La Case Vide: La Villette(London: Architectural Association, 1985),Bernard Tschumi, various works inDeconstruction III, Andreas Papadakis, ed.

(London: Academy Editions, 1990). See also mycritique of Eisenman's Biology Centerproject:George L. Claflen, Jr., "Borrowing Architectural

Theory: Fissures in the Simulation ofCoherence," inArchitecture: Back ...to...Life,(Proceedings of the 79th Annual Meeting of theACSA) (Washington: ACSA Press, 1991), and mygeneral critique of Eisenman methodologies inGeorge L. Claflen, Jr., "Something Borrowed,Something Blue: Some Problems in the CriticalMethodologies of Peter Eisenman," WhoDesigns America?(Proceedings of the 76thAnnual Meeting of the ACSA) (Washington:ACSA Press, 1988) 242-249.

11

see for example, Daniel Libeskind, Countersign(New York: Rizzoli, 1992)

12Jeffrey Kipnis, Moonmark,Assemblage 16,December 1991. 9.

13Kipnis 10.

14for a discussion of the contemporary Marxistview of space at the georegional scale, seeEdward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: TheReassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory(London: Verso, 1989)

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15

Mark Wigley, "The Translation of Architecture:The Product of Babel," Deconstruction III, ed,Andreas Papadakis (London: Academy Editions,1990) 6.

16Algirdas Julien Greimas, The Social Sciences: ASemiotic View, Paul Perron and Frank Collinstrans., (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1990) 155.

17Linda N. Groat, "Rescuing Architecture from theCul-de-Sac,Journal of Architectural Education45.3 (May 1992) 138-146.

18John Ellis,Against Deconstruction (Princeton:Princeton U., 1989) 71.

19Ellis, 138.

20The reference is to Kipnis.

21Roy Harris, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein(London: Routledge, 1988)

22Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory andPractice (London: Routledge, 1982) 129.

23Norris, 129.

24see Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text",

chapter in, Image, Music, Text, Stephen Heathtrans., (New York: Hall and Wang, 1977)155-164.

25Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: AStructural Analysis of Historic Artifacts, (Knoxville:University of Tennessee, 1975, 1987) This is oneof the few structuralist studies of environmentaldesign actually implemented. See also for adiscussion of the implications of intentionalityof the emitter and the interpreter, Juan PabloBonta, Architecture and its Interpretation: A studyof expressive systems in architecture, (New York:Rizzoli, 1979) 28.

26Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York:

BasicBooks, 1983)27Alan Colquhoun, "Postmodernism andStructuralism: A Retrospective Glance,"Assemblage 5 February 1988: 10.

28Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art(New York:Zone, 1989) 149.

29Geertz, 120.

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Figure 1, 2:Assemblage 5 28, 42 respectively.Original images credited to the architect.Permission requested.

Figure 3. Paolo Portoghesi, Roma Barocca,(Cambridge: MIT, 1970) plate 121. Permissionrequested.

Figure 4. Author.Figure 5. Daniel Libeskind, Countersign, (New

York: Rizzoli, 1992) 107 top. Permissionrequested.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge with thanks the thoughtfulcriticism I received from Trevor Boddy and TimMcGinty.

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Deeper Than Decon