Peter Eisenman is an American architect known for his theoretical works and deconstructivist buildings. Some key works include House VI (1972-1975), a private residence built in Cornwall, New York that experimented with manipulating a structural grid to create unconventional and conceptual interior spaces. Eisenman also designed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (1998-2005), consisting of 2711 concrete stelae in varying heights with narrow paths between to disorient visitors and represent the absence of meaning in the Holocaust. Another notable building is the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University (1982-1989), where Eisenman used rotated grids and figures to link the past and present through fragmented representations of the site

1. PETER EISENMAN

2. INTRODUCTION
• Peter Eisenman was born in 1932 in Newark, New Jersey. He studied
architecture from 1951 to 1955 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,
and later at Columbia University in New York City, and concluded his
academic training in 1963 with a doctoral thesis on design theory.
• He worked together with Charles Gwathmay, John Hejduk, Michael Graves
and Richard Meier in the architects’ group »The New York Five. At this
time, Eisenman developed his principles for design theory in a number of
key publications.
• At the beginning of the 1980s, Eisenman established his own architectural
practice in New York, and since that time has created a number of
important and diverse structures.
• A recurrent topic is his thesis about an architecture of memory, from
which he derives the postulate of a place-oriented or »textual«
architecture, which affords the observer a unique experience, difficult to
express adequately, of space and time.

3. MEMORIAL FOR MURDERED JEWS, BERLIN.

4. • The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as
the Holocaust Memorial, is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims
of the Holocaust.
• The Berlin Holocaust memorial was the outcome of a process which
extended over a period of 17 years, moving from a grass-roots initiative to
a government resolution and eventually a multi-stage competition.
• Peter Eisenman won the competition and construction of project started
in April 2003. It was inaugurated on May 10’ 2005, sixty years after the
end of World War II.

5. SITE PLAN

6. CONCEPT : HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
• Generally, while experiencing a building a person walks through the
building perceiving columns on the left and moving around and again
there are columns on the right, so there can be a sort of conclusion about
the building being symmetric, axial etc. So understanding of a buildings
comes from being presence in the experience.
• But in the holocaust memorial, experiencing the building does not give
you understanding of the monument. In this project, when we move, we
do not learn anything, there is no specific path to follow, any point within
the memorial is no different than any other point.
• The underlying idea behind the memorial was to reduce the meaning of
experience because this relates to what happened in camps. The
memorial intends to show the absence of meaning in the executions
carried out in camps.
• The memorial is an analogy to experience of the camps but also an
analogy to the idea of breaking down the relationship between experience
and understanding.

7. •
Often referred to as a “field of stelae,”
the memorial consists of 2711
concrete stelae (95 cm x 2.37 m), with
heights varying from less than a
meter to 4 meters.
•
The stelae are separated by a space
equal to the width of an individual
stele, or enough room for a single
individual to pass through.
•
The memorial is traditional in the
sense of using material such as
concrete, which is a common means
for the construction of memorials, but
it is innovative in its form and design.
•
There is a quality of indeterminacy to
the entire field, despite what appears
to be a regularly spaced grid.
Regularity is only perceived when
standing on top of one of the lower
pillars at the perimeter or in an aerial
photograph.

8. • Upon approaching the site, one might assume that the stelae are evenly
spaced but the undulating ground surface defeats the sense of a grid, as does
the actual experience of walking through the relatively confined spaces and
the existence of varying views framed and obstructed by the stelae.
• Eisenman relates this monument to a living memory rather than a
sentimental memory as the holocaust cannot be remembered in the first,
nostalgic mode, as its horror forever ruptured the link between nostalgia and
memory. Remembering the Holocaust can, therefore, only be a living
condition in which the past remains active in the present.

9. • The space of the memorial is not overwhelming in scale, the instability of
the ground and unpredictability of the heights of the stelae interact to
frustrate understanding of the space.
• One is further confused or disoriented by the narrow alleys which are not
truly perceived as straight lines, due to the varying heights of the concrete
slabs and the uneven ground plane.
• Perhaps even more disorienting is the fact that there are no written cues
or symbols of any sort. Immediately discounting the notion that one
should “read” the pillars as tombstones is the absence of any language
and any apparent “right” or “wrong” direction or ending point.

10. INFORMATION CENTRE
• The Information Centre beneath the Field of Stelae documents the
persecution and destruction of the Jews of Europe and the historical sites
of the crimes.
• The focus of the exhibition lies on the personalisation of the victims and
on the geographical dimension of the Holocaust.
ROOM OF DIMENSIONS
ROOM OF FAMILIES

11. • A major section of the information centre that supplements the memorial
is dedicated to informing the visitor about authentic sites – even about
the ones that do not exist any more for reasons of concealment during the
Third Reich.
• The information centre stresses the importance of authentic sites and
encourages the visitation thereof.
ROOM OF NAMES
ROOM OF SITES

12. remembrance
FLOOR PLAN OF INFORMATION CENTRE

13. AUTHENTICITY AND PURPOSE OF THE MEMORIAL
• During the painful debates about erecting such a memorial, a major
aspect of criticism was the danger of authentic sites of the holocaust
losing their importance. Thus, it is vital to distinguish the different roles of
authentic sites from the artificially created monument.
• The more specified function was read in the resolution by the German
bundestag (a legislative body) of June 1999.
“With the memorial we intend to honour the murdered victims, keep alive
the memory of these inconceivable events in German history ,admonish
all future generations never again to violate human rights, to defend the
democratic constitutional state at all times, to secure equality before the
law for all people and to resist all forms of dictatorship and regimes
based on violence.”

14. • Peter Eisenman, the architect of the memorial says about its intention
that
“The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any
attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ...
Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from
nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in
the present.”
• The design is to turn the visit of the memorial into an individual
experience that causes the visitor to reflect about the genocide.
• Each individual entering the field of stelae will find him- or herself
wandering alone, because the paths in between the concrete slabs are not
wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. Thus, the
visitation turns into an individual experience.
• Lea Rosh, the initiator of the memorial stated that this meant to raise the
murdered above their murderers and to raise the victims above the
perpetrators.

15. • Looking at the historical significance of the claimed area, the memorial
gains a layer of authenticity, but what is almost of more importance is the
setting of the memorial in the government quarter and in the heart of the
capital.
• Time will show if the memorial will live up to the definition of authenticity
in the sense of heritage conservation where it is understood “as the ability
of a property to convey its cultural significance over time”.
• For one thing is sure, that the memorial’s cultural significance is complex
for being a monument to honour the Jewish victims of the holocaust and
at the same time a testimony of Germany’s accounting with the past.

16. WEXNER CENTER OF ARTS

17. INTRODUCTION
• The firm of Peter Eisenman and Richard Trott won the design competition
for Wexner Center of Arts.
• Eisenman wowed the Jury with his bold ideas for the art center, which
were aimed at linking the past to the present (“Timeless Earth 1), through
the use of unconventional means.
• The end result became both Peter Eisenman’s first large public
commission and one of the first large scale constructions of
Deconstructivist Architecture.
•
The building is tucked in between the Mershon Auditorium and Weigel
Hall both of which are home to programs that were to be consolidated
into the Wexner Center.

18. Design process
• The literal use of the
rotated grid is used by
Eisenman as an extensive
method of giving the
architecture its own voice.
• The identification of the
dialectic grids stems from
conditions that exist at the
boundary of the site,
Eisenman then grafts one
grid on top of the other
and seeks potential
connections or ‘event sites’
at the urban, local, and
interior scales.

19. • Scalar operations are performed as a means of mediating the scale of the
urban grid towards a pedestrian or human scale, lastly, the results of these
operations serves as a map that is used to locate program, pathways,
structure, interior forms, excavations, and views along the newly afforded
possibilities of ‘event sites’ in both the horizontal and vertical planes.
• The results of these operations are visible in almost every aspect of the
construction, from the module in the curtainwall, the tiling of the pavers,
planters and trees on site.

20. • To add to the depth of possibilities afforded by
this excavation of the immediate condition of
the grid Eisenman grafts figured scaffolding
onto the site and integrates this figure into the
primary circuit or pathway of the building.
• The scaffolding is scaled to represent the
module of the grid that is interpretable at a
human scale.
• The scaffold is reduced to its raw type, to the
essential condition that signifies the essence of
its existence that being an impermanent
accessory to architecture that allows its
construction, but does not necessarily shelter.
• This architecture of non-shelter is aligned
directly adjacent to an interior pathway within
the building that does enclose and protect.

21. • Eisenman coupled his grid abstractions with a series of figures that would
play a key role in his aim of linking the past with the present.
• The most prominent of these figures exists as a reconstruction of a part of
the armoury that occupied the site from 1898 until it was terminally
damaged by fire on May 17th 1958.
• The figure of the armoury Eisenman has presented along the south
pedestrian access (the most visually accessible elevation of the building)
has been reduced to a series of fragments of armoury-like forms that
indicate the ‘essence’ of the armoury without reproducing any of the
original intricate detail.

23. • Within the armoury forms the
negative space carved out of the
solid brick masses that make up
these figures is cast with a dark
tinted curtain wall, within which is
an aluminum mullion pattern
evocative of the use of grid.
• The contrast created by the
anodized aluminum of the mullions
intensifies the impenetrable depth
of the glass.
• The lack of historical fidelity in the
reconstruction of the armoury, the
fragmentation of the form, and the
insertion of dark glass into the voids
left between these fragments seems
to speak of the disjointed manner in
which we reflect the past, and in
turn, it serves to remind us of a past
we have lost and can never return
to.

25. • In revisiting the design devices that Eisenman used in the design of the
Wexner Center for the Arts is has been possible to determine that much of
the abstraction of form derives itself from co-related processes.
• Initiated by a series of processes which appropriate and manipulate
‘rotate’ the coordinates of the urban and pedestrian, horizontal and
vertical, and the past and the present Eisenman produces three very
distinctive extensive and intensive operations of shifting, figuring,
fragmenting that coalesce into an engaging ecology for the celebration of
creative thought.

26. House VI

27. • In the earlier stage of his career he designed a series of houses, named as
house I to house X. His House II, VI and X are most famous projects of his
initial ones.
•
Eisenman, one of the New York Five, designed the house for Mr. and Mrs.
Richard Frank between 1972-1975 who found great admiration for the
architect’s work despite previously being known as a “paper architect”
and theorist.
• By giving Eisenman a chance to put his theories to practice, one of the
most famous, and difficult, houses emerged in the United States.

28. • Situated on a flat site in Cornwall, House VI stands its own ground as a
sculpture in its surroundings.
• The design emerged from a conceptual process that began with a grid.
Eisenman manipulated the grid in a way so that the house was divided
into four sections and when completed the building itself could be a
“record of the design process.”
• Therefore structural elements, were revealed so that the construction
process was evident, but not always understood.
• Thus, the house became a study between the actual structure and
architectural theory. The house was effeciently constructed using a simple
post and beam system.
• However some columns or beams play no structural role and are
incorporated to enhance the conceptual design. For example one column
in the kitchen hovers over the kitchen table, not even touching the
ground! In other spaces, beams meet but do not intersect, creating a
cluster of supports.

29. DRAWINGS
GROUND FLOOR PLAN

30. FIRST FLOOR PLAN

31. ELEVATION

32. SECTION

33. • The structure was incorporated into Eisenman’s grid to convey the module
that created the interior spaces with a series of planes that slipped
through each other.
• Purposely ignoring the idea of form following function, Eisenman created
spaces that were quirky and well-lit, but rather unconventional to live
with.
•
He made it difficult for the users so that they would have to grow
accustom to the architecture and constantly be aware of it. For
instance, in the bedroom there is a glass slot in the center of the
wall continuing through the floor that divides the room in half, forcing
there to be separate beds on either side of the room.

34. • Another curious aspect is an upside
down staircase, the element which
portrays the axis of the house and
is painted red to draw attention.
• There are also many other difficult
aspects that disrupt conventional
living, such as the column hanging over
the dinner table that separates diners
and the single bathroom that is only
accessible through a bedroom.
•
Eisenman was able to constantly
remind the users of the architecture
around them and how it affects their
lives.

35. • He succeeded in building a structure
that functioned both as a house and
a work of art, but changing the
priority of both so that function
followed the art.
•
He built a home where man was
forced to live in a work of art, a
sculpture, and according to the
clients who enjoyed inhabiting
Eisenman’s artwork and poetry, the
house was very successful.

36. References
• Formal Strategies Assignment Christopher
Sparrow
• www.archdaily.com
• A Reader in Uncomfortable Heritage and
Dark Tourism