compete for a good two decades in a field in which
success is often measured by one’s performance
in only one or two competitive seasons.
Further Reading
Heywood, Leslie, and Shari Dworkin.Built to Win:
The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon.Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Smith, Lissa.Nike Is a Goddess: The Histor y of Women in
Sports. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.
Tricaid, Louise.American Women’s Track and Field,
1981-2000: A Histor y. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
2007.
Joseph Dewey
See also Griffith-Joyner, Florence; Olympic Games
of 1984; Retton, Mary Lou; Sports.
Deconstructivist architecture
Definition An architectural style that juxtaposes
different structural and design elements in
seemingly random ways
Deconstructivist architecture symbolized both the complexity
of contemporar y life and a postmodern aesthetic that was
the result of unprecedented American wealth and power in
the 1980’s.
The deconstructivist movement in architecture, also
known as deconstructivism or deconstruction, is an
evolution in postmodern architecture that began in
the 1980’s. “Deconstructivism” is a term that seems
counterintuitive when applied to building, and ex-
amples of this style often seem equally counter-
intuitive in terms of their organization and construc-
tion. Deconstructivist architecture often looks as
though it has been exploded, cobbled together with
random bits and pieces from a number of different
buildings. It can seem intentionally designed to be
abstract rather than functional.
In the 1980’s, deconstructivist architects drew on
theories from other disciplines, such as philosophy,
literature, and cultural studies, to develop an ap-
proach to buildings that reflected the fragmented,
pluralistic, and global nature of everyday life. Decon-
structivist architecture attempted to illustrate post-
structuralist ideas about diffusion, discontinuity, frag-
mentation, and context. Many of the foundational
ideas of deconstructivist architecture reflect the work
of literary scholars of the 1980’s and the French phi-
losopher Jacques Derrida, who founded a literary
and philosophical movement known as deconstruc-
tion that saw that complexity was an organizing prin-
ciple of human experience. Deconstructivism is most
concerned, then, with questions of meaning and how
people make order in their world.New Shapes Deconstructivist buildings have sev-
eral distinctive physical features, including generally
non-rectilinear foundations; unusually curved or
distorted facades; and unpredictable, almost chaotic
structures. These elements reflect deconstructivist
architects’ interest in experimenting with ideas
about the nature of the “skins,” or facades, of build-
ings, using or referencing non-Euclidean geometry
in architecture, and creating a building or place that
sends messages about dislocation at the same time
that it acts as a clear locus of action or experience.
Early interest in this type of architecture was first
expressed in Europe. For example, the 1982 Parc
de la Villette competition included several exam-
ples of projects that might be understood as decon-
structivist. These included a collaborative submis-
sion from Derrida and the American architect Peter
Eisenman, as well as the winning entry by Bernard
Tschumi, an architect with offices in both France
and New York who was interested in academic and
theoretical approaches to architecture.
By 1988, deconstructivist architecture was influ-
ential enough to merit the attention of the Museum
of Modern Art in New York. Organized by the archi-
tect Philip Johnson and his associate Mark Wigley,
the museum’sDeconstructivist Architectureexhibi-
tion featured the work of the seven most influential
deconstructive architects of the time: Frank Gehry,
David Liebskind, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Coop
Himmelblau, Eisenman, and Tschumi. What these
architects had in common was their sense that the
traditional view of architecture as an art focused on
order, stability, and history was no longer a valid way
to view building design. Instead, in the 1980’s, archi-
tecture began to explore pure abstraction and the
power of critical theories developed in other disci-
plines. As a result, the structure of a building came
to be seen as a potential tool for questioning and re-
forming social relationships, on both a community
and an individual level.
While many of the architects whose works were
highlighted by the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit276 Deconstructivist architecture The Eighties in America