The famous architect, one of the main theorists of modern architecture, came to Moscow at the invitation of the AD magazine. This is his first visit to Russia, and he complained that he had been going here for too long, and that there were no Russians at all among his students (he has been actively teaching all his life). At the same time, he admitted his great interest in the Russian architectural avant-garde and boasted that he possessed the largest private collection of Soviet journals and books on architecture of the 1920s-1930s: he could not read them, since he did not know the Russian language, but he was inspired by those published there project drawings.
These words - probably a must-have tribute to the hosts for any guest - became the only neutral part of Eisenman's speech. Everything else surprised, puzzled, or elicited a strong emotional response - which was expressed in constant bursts of applause. Most likely, the speaker was counting on this: as he admitted, in his teaching practice, he asks students questions, and does not "teach" them in the literal sense of the word, and he came to Russia primarily as a teacher. Unlike the usual content of lectures by famous architects - a story about new or key works of his (which, as a rule, the audience already well imagines) - he began his lecture with a theoretical part on the relationship between capital and architecture and the impact of these relationships on style. … This text was in spirit more like an article for a special journal than an oral presentation, and Eisenman read it out slowly, almost dictating. But even the slowness of his speech did not help the Russian translators to successfully cope with their task, which ultimately led to the fact that the architect took pity on them and moved on to the “illustrative” part earlier than planned. However, even in such an abbreviated and incomplete form, his theoretical position raised many questions (which he himself most likely aspired to).
For Peter Eisenman, it is customary to consider architecture as a criticism of one or another concept or phenomenon, in this case he opposed it to design (without specifying, however, whether design itself or design as a whole) - the "servant" of capital, drawing a conclusion from this that architecture is inherently a criticism of capital. At the same time, the architect's eternal rival, postmodernism, also fell: it turned out that this direction is especially aimed at servicing capital, and since design and capital spread synchronously, together they penetrated into Russia (probably, Eisenman meant the 1990s) …
From these abstract "left" reasoning, the architect moved on to stylistic questions: this was suggested by the very title of his lecture - "Late Style", which is a reference to the work of Theodor Adorno. According to Eisenman, modernism as an avant-garde break with tradition does not correspond to the modern cultural situation. More precisely, there are no conditions for the emergence of the same revolutionary “new modernism” now (and architecture always reacts to changes in culture), therefore, the formal unity characteristic of early modernism has now been replaced by a variety of “late style”: endless experiments with form, its multilayerness and instability, the emergence of "parametric expressionism". The works of the "late style" exist for themselves, not reflecting the current moment, although they are also generated by it (!). They, in contrast to the works of modernism, depending on existing conditions (which led them to the aforementioned collapse, if we follow the logic of Eisenman), do not translate the zeitgeist - Zeitgeist - into an architectural form and deny the potential of the avant-garde. Such closeness and separation from reality, according to the architect, are beneficial to their main customer - capital. Peter Eisenman named Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid as exemplary representatives of the "late style" and, accordingly, his ideological opponents. This is somewhat surprising, since they can rather be ranked among his comrades in the deconstructivist camp, and with their projects, his own creations have much more in common than differences.
After reflecting on theory, Peter Eisenman turned to practice, presenting to the public only one of his projects, but the newest and largest: the ensemble "Cities of Galicia" in Santiago de Compostela, which is now underway. This undoubtedly impressive complex of six buildings with a total area of 93 thousand m2 should create in the city known primarily as a pilgrimage center, "Bilbao Syndrome" and attract tourists from all over the world. Even if we ignore the specter of capital that stands over this project (both in the aspect of its super task - making money, and in the aspect of implementation: this structure would have been impossible to build without the investment of private funds, in particular, the financial group Caixa), a formal question remains. Embodying his creative method, which has remained unchanged since the 1970s, of "removing" the volume of a building from the surface of the earth, Eisenman turned the "City of Culture of Galicia" into a variation on the hillside area where Santiago de Compostela is located. The outlines of individual buildings and their parts, as well as the decorative stripes crossing them outside and inside, are subordinated to a grid of topographic and topological lines, as well as to the lines of medieval roads (including pilgrim paths) running on this site, and to the usual rectangular grid. The architect boldly opposes such a complex system of shaping to the work of his colleagues: it turns out that he gets a "real" architecture - a criticism of capital, and they and others like them are inspired by crumpled sheets of paper (this metaphor worthy of an ardent opponent of modern architecture of Prince Charles, frankly, is not does Eisenman credit), although, for example, Zaha Hadid often derives his projects from complex mathematical calculations, which seems no worse than his own methods. Also, these representatives of the "late style", allegedly, are playing into the hands of the capitalists, although it is difficult to imagine the implementation on public funds and, moreover, in a socialist country that is far from functionality (this quality has long been called by Peter Eisenman one of the key principles of deconstructivism in general and his creativity in particular) and therefore very expensive projects: for example, in the same "City of Culture" "false" stone roofs of buildings hide under themselves real ceilings so that their smooth outlines are not spoiled by ventilation outlets and other technical details, and all glass panels of the facade Museum buildings have different shapes - although the author claims that this did not raise the cost of construction at all, it is hard to believe him. Considering all of the above, it is difficult not to notice the significant gap between the theory and practice of this architect.
At the end of his speech, Eisenman answered questions from the audience, and at that moment the paradox and contradiction of his statements, which were present initially, increased many times. Citing his City of Culture as an example, he called his works humanistic - after all, they combine different materials and scales - while noting that if the viewer perceives his architecture as a criticism of humanism, functionality and other values dear to his heart, if it evokes his concern, then this is consistent with his intention: architecture should make you think and raise questions. Also "psychological" was his answer to the question about teachers: he named three of many - Colin Rowe, Manfredo Tafuri and Jacques Derrida - and added that a good teacher himself hands the student a metaphorical knife, with which he must eventually kill him. Judging by the fact that all three stopped communicating with Eisenman by the end of their lives, probably everything happened as it should, the architect concluded with satisfaction.
At the same time, Eisenman limited himself to very vague and trivial statements about architecture itself: it should be "in the heart", in contrast to the techniques that have a place "in the head", and in order to become a good architect on a national scale, one must study the history of the national architecture (unexpectedly to hear this from a representative of deconstructivism, perhaps the least national of all architectural trends), but the most important question, according to Peter Eisenman, is "what is architecture" - without answering it to yourself, you cannot become an architect, but you are not worried about what: this is a matter of time, because very few people manage to do this before reaching the age of 40-50 years. Also, speaking about the importance of theory, about the priority role of ideas in creativity, he nevertheless listed the architects (and part-time theorists) whom he admires: Andrea Palladio, Nicolas Ledoux, Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi and Rem Koolhaas.
During his speech, Peter Eisenman called himself an "architect from space" and admitted that even his compatriots often do not understand him. It must be admitted that in the Moscow lecture, this "alien" pathos manifested itself especially strongly, giving his reasoning an almost "inhuman" aspect. In places approaching in the degree of significant confusion to the guru's words, his words require interpretation - and not even one, but several (if possible, contradicting each other). What makes one suspect: has the famous theorist, critic of postmodernism and ideologue of deconstructivism come to the stage of his own "late style", to the moment when the light of truth is visible only to him, and it is in no way possible to explain to others which direction to go, to overcome the next architectural and style crisis - either directly, or to the left …
