Deconstruction in Architecture

Reviewing Postmodern Urbanism
Seaside, Florida created the model of the small, gated community

"Civic intimacy" -> wanted to reassess/re-establish the idea of living with people rather than separated out from them

Seaside Requirements

 * Pastel colors
 * White trim
 * Window size had to be approved
 * Any shutters need to be operable
 * Idea of the center -> city oriented towards municipal downtown
 * No grass lawns -> natural brush, indigenous plant life only

Like Seaside
Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod (I've been there!)

Celebration, Florida -> The Disney old people resort

Poundbury Park
Prince Charles in dialog with Leon Krier to make a town on some royal property he owned. Oriented the building towards church and traditional town center

Poundbury makes an attempt to artificially grow a historical area

It's buildings seem to refer to former lives they never had -> built in the last couple of years

"Like creationism" Neumann argues.

"Postmodern is Dead"
E.M. Farrelly -> The New Spirit

"Postmodernism" as a "painted corpse"

Deconstruvist Architecture
Philip Johnson curated exhibition in 1988

Harkened back to the "Modern Architecture" show that Johnson had curated in 1920's

The exhibition brought together 7 architects who rejected postmodernism, classicism, and modernist social ideals

Deconstruction is the process of unbuilding, the desire to take apart established notions of completeness and togetherness which are governed by social norms.

It thus can be seen as the unsettling of traditional approaches to architecture.

Deconstruction was taken from the Jacques Derrida and his literary theory which re-situated the reader/writer.

Ironically, the deconstructivist architects, who had long resisted the idea of being a cohesive stylistic movement, and packaged ideals, were brought into both of those concepts when they were included in the exhibition.

The Architects

 * 1) Zaha Hadid
 * 2) Coop Himmelblau
 * 3) Bernard Tschumi
 * 4) Frank Gehry
 * 5) Peter Eisenmann
 * 6) Rem Koolhaas
 * 7) Daniel Libeskind

Jacques Derrida
"Deconstruction is not destruction... but rather the undoing of axioms of traditional nations"

It resists politics, institutions, and established styles.

Deconstructivist architecture must free architecture from the things in architecture that are not architectural.

The Peak
Project by Zaha Hadid for a gentlemen's club in Hong Kong

Road that went through the open floor plan bound together many highly different structrures

Berlin Offic Building
Drawings done in oil and paint

Believed in glass as wrapper

Vitra Fire Station
overlapping Concrete planes

No color

No parallel line