76 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
The architectural branch
Two are the most representative deconstructionists architects who introduce the notion
of “textuality” in architecture in their theoretical discourse.
P. Eisenman considers “the building as a text, the architecture as language and the
architectural practice as representation of ideas”. He calls for an architecture as “writ-
ing” as opposed to architecture as image. His main contribution to the architectural
discourse is on the theoretical exploration of the architectural design process during all
his stages, not only during the stage of his “deconstructionism”. For instance, design-
ing the House X during the early stage of his life, he argues that “the process of design
for House X is not a manipulation of a set of linear and planar elements or a sequential,
linear progression through a readily reconstructible series of transformations”. His
argument is that “the traditional design process which begins with an image already
preconceived and thus at each stage has an almost unlimited number of alternatives,
since it does not follow logically from the step before but rather from the initial image.
This initial image describes and limits the actual choice from the range of alternatives.
In contrast the transformational method instead of narrowing at each step in the process,
in fact widens the range of possibilities because it does not move toward any preconceived
image” (Eisenman 1982, 36).
On the same vein, B. Tschumi seems also to equate architecture with language,
but in a critical way: «Dreams were analysed as language as well as through language.
Language was called the 'the main street of the unconscious’. Generally speaking, it
appeared as a series of fragments. So too with architecture when equated with lan-
guage. It can only be read as a series of fragments which make up an architectural
reality. Fragments of architecture are all one actually sees. These fragments are like
beginnings without ends. There is always a split between fragments which are real and
fragments which are virtual, between experience and concept, memory and fantasy"
(Tschumi 1977, 218).
The gendered architectural branch
The notion of the logocentrism has been applied as a way of dismantling the represen-
tations of gender into the text of the architectural discourse: “the logic in the system
of architecture represses sex in two different ways: sex is understood in positive and
negative terms, and woman assigned the negative term (phallocentrism)” (Agrest 1991,
17 -196). The impact of this application creates presuppositions for a new, multiple
“reading” of the space. A “reading”, through which “you can leave a trace in the text if
you can”, the trace of gender. A “reading” which intends: Not only to understand the
architectural discourse, but also to speculate upon the meanings and representations
of gender, even if not immediately obvious. Not only to illuminate the representations
of gender, as a part nevertheless of the photographic representation of built environ-
ment, but also to unlock them.
The experimental educational process of architectural design
The presented conceptual material is based on the educational process of two courses,
which are actually one “design studio” and one “theoretical course” during the years