Eisenman’s work, the experience of that work, the philosophy demanded by it, opens up
the need to think philosophically beyond the recuperative and nihilistic unfolding of
tradition. Tradition is housed—since there is no pure beyond—but the housing of
tradition takes place within a plurality of possibilities that can no longer be foreclosed by
function, by teleology or by the aesthetics of form. Works with open doors must be what
are henceforth demanded by philosophy and architecture.
NOTES
1 I have discussed Descartes’ architectural ‘metaphor’ in relation to Derrida’s writings on
architecture in ‘Derrida, architecture and philosophy’, Architectural Design, vol. 58, no. 3/4,
1988.
2 R.Descartes, Discours de la méthode, Paris: Edition Vrin, 1979, pp. 59–60.
3 R.Descartes, ‘Meditations’, in Oeuvres Philosophiques, F.Alquié (ed.), Paris: Garnier, 1963.
4 R.Descartes, Discours de la méthode, p. 74.
5 The question ‘what is philosophy?’ takes the place of all questions of the ‘what is...?’ form. It
is a question that seeks the identity of that which is named within the question. Consequently
architecture, painting, sculpture, and even interpretation and aesthetics, could all come to be
posed within this form of questioning. This point is outlined in slightly greater detail further
on.
6 It is, of course, not just the essence that is in question here. The point could equally be made
in relation to a singular and unique referent that was not expressed in terms of having an
essence. This possibility means that what is, in fact, at stake is the necessity that what the
name names is at the same time homogeneous and excludes the possibility of an initial
heterogeneity. It is precisely this twofold necessity that contemporary philosophical writing,
especially that associated with Derrida, has shown to be impossible.
7 P.Eisenman, Houses of Cards, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 182–3.
8 The affirmative—a term ‘borrowed’ from Nietzsche and Derrida—has been redeployed here
in order to describe/locate those experimentations within the present that demand forms of
philosophical, aesthetic, political, physical responses that have not been handed down by
tradition. In this sense the affirmative becomes a way of redeeming the avant-garde.
9 P.Eisenman, op. cit., p. 169.
10 P.Eisenman, ‘The Blue Line Text,’ in Architectural Design, vol. 58, no. 7/8, August 1988.
11 Ibid., p. 172.
12 P.Johnson and M.Wigley, Deconstructive Architecture, New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1988, p. 56.
13 P.Eisenman, ‘Bio-Centrum Frankfurt’, in Architectural Design, vol. 59, no. 1/2, 1989.
14 Eisenman, Houses of Cards, p. 181.
15 I have attempted to sketch this interconnection in ‘Deconstruction and art/the art of
deconstruction’, in C.Norris and A.Benjamin, What is Deconstruction? (London: Academy
Editions, 1988).
16 While he does not use the term ‘affirmative’, Alain Pélissier provides an excellent analysis of
Eisenman’s work, and especially of House El Even Odd, that attempts to identify what has
been designated by it. See ‘Microcosmos’ in Cahiers du CCI, no. 1, Architecture: récits,
figures, fictions, Paris: AA, 1986.
17 E.Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful, J.T.Boulton (ed.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968, p. 40.
18 P.Eisenman and F.Yorgancioglu, ‘Tom’s loft, New York,’ in Architectural Design, vol. 58,
no. 7/8, 1988, p. 35.
19 Burke, op. cit., p. 34.
20 Ibid., p. 35.Rethinking Architecture 284