Peter Eisenman challenges to Rem Koolhaas

It was obvious that if "egos" are touched, some architects would jump on the defensive, and this was the case with Peter Eisenman. Before, Nobody had attacked a director of the Biennale as virulent way.

Rem Koolhaas. Venice Biennale 2014. Photography © Italo Rondinella. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

With some bitterness after his fiasco with the City of Culture in Galicia, according to architect Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas has used the biennale to announce the end of his "hegemony" over the profession.

"He's stating his end," said Eisenman, adding: "Rem Koolhaas presents the Biennale as la fine [the end]: 'The end of my career, the end of my hegemony, the end of my mythology, the end of everything, the end of architecture'."

The American architect at 81 years old, said that Koolhaas, 70, was "the totemic figure" of the last 50 years and compared him to Le Corbusier's dominance of the first half of the twentieth century. Eisenman made the comments in Venice on Friday, where he was attending the opening of a collateral event the exhibition about the Yenikapi Project, a vast new development in Istanbul he designed in collaboration with Aytaç Architects.

Peter EisenmaniIronically said "I think it's very important to have lived in the time of Rem, like to have lived in the time of Corbusier," recalling the day he turned up outside Le Corbusier's Paris atelier in 1962 but felt too intimidated to ring the doorbell: "I think that students today feel the same way about the mythology of Koolhaas."

Eisenman said the Elements show was like language without grammar: "Any language is grammar," he said. "So, if architecture is to be considered a language, 'elements' don't matter. So for me what's missing [from the show], purposely missing, is the grammatic."

Koolhaas "doesn't believe in grammar," he added.

Giving a tour of the show last week, Koolhaas said he hoped Elements would lead to "a modernisation of the core of architecture and architectural thinking itself."

Eisenman, head of Eisenman Architects, has known Koolhaas since the 70s, when the Dutch architect studied at Eisenman's Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York.

"I helped publish his first book," said Eisenman. "I got the money to publish Delirious New York, I was on the jury that gave him the first prize he ever won for his architecture. I gave him an office where to write Delirious New York, so I know Rem from the beginning."

Below, a transcript of the interview.-

Valentina Ciuffi: Let's talk about Elements [the exhibition occupying the Central Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale]. You've known Rem from the very beginning – what do you think of the core show at his biennale?

Peter Eisenman: First of all, any language is grammar. The thing that changes from Italian to English is not the words being different, but grammar. So, if architecture is to be considered a language, 'elements' don't matter. I mean, whatever the words are, they're all the same. So for me what's missing [from the show], purposely missing, is the grammatic.

Look, 50 years ago, we knew that Modernism was dead. Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright: all dead. We didn't know what the future was but we knew all this was dead.

In '68 we found out what the future was going to be: the revolution in '68 in the schools, in culture, in art etc: all was changed. We are now 50 years from '64 and the totemic figure of these 50 years, the symbolic figure? Rem Koolhaas, right?

Rem Koolhaas presents the Biennale as la fine [the end]: "The end of my career, the end of my hegemony, the end of my mythology, the end of everything, the end of architecture." Because we don't have architects [in the biennale]. We have performance, we have film, we have video; we have everything but architecture.

So Rem is saying: "You know, I want to say: I don't do this, I don't do this, I don't do this, but I also want to tell you that I don't want you to tell me my end. I'm telling you the end." He makes the point, bonk, like that.

Valentina Ciuffi: He's stating his end?

Peter Eisenman: He's stating his end. And he's finished. And we don't know what's coming in four five years. 2018, like 1968, could be a revolution. Who knows?

Valentina Ciuffi: So this end is the start of something new?

Peter Eisenman: Always. History always goes like this.

Valentina Ciuffi: But when he says no to archistars, yes to architecture…

Peter Eisenman: He is the archistar! He is the origin of the archistar. He was there at the beginning.

Valentina Ciuffi: You taught all the archistars. They all came from your academy [the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York].

Peter Eisenman: He is the archistar and now he is the curator star. He's killed all the archistars, and now he is going [to be the] single curator star.

Valentina Ciuffi: You are one of the few people able to be so straight with him because…

Peter Eisenman: I know him very well. We started together way back. I helped publish his first book. I got the money to publish Delirious New York, I was on the jury that gave him the first prize he ever won for his architecture. I gave him an office where to write Delirious New York, so I know Rem from the beginning.

Valentina Ciuffi: So you think this idea of taking elements and not thinking about the grammar is totally…

Peter Eisenman: Well it's Rem. It's Rem because he doesn't believe in grammar. That's Rem, and that's good. Look, when he was at the Architecture Association School in 1972, in the spring of '72 when he quit – because he never finish school, you have to understand – because he went to the new director and he said, quote: "I want to learn fundamentals. Where can I learn fundamentals?"

And the director looked at him and said: "We don't teach fundamentals here. We teach language." And then he quit. So there is a relationship between quitting the school in 1972 and Fundamentals today. Okay?

Valentina Ciuffi: You are perhaps one of the the few people who can be so direct about Rem.

Peter Eisenman: I love Rem. I think it's very important to have lived in the time of Rem, like to have lived in the time of Corbusier. In '62 I went to Paris and I stood on the doorstep of Le Corbusier's atelier at 35 rue de Sèvres with my mentor Colin Rowe. He said, "Ring the doorbell!" And I said: "What I'm going to say to this guy? What am I doing here?"

And I think that students today feel the same way about the mythology of Koolhaas: "What am I going to say to him?" So very few people would challenge him. If you ask him questions; yesterday at the press conference people were asking him questions and he said: "I don't answer questions like this. You should stop asking questions."

So he's a very, very clear and a good person to put this biennale on. And sarà la fine dell'architecttura [it will be the end of architecture].

Read less

INTRODUCTION. Elements of Architecture. Central Pavilions, Venice Biennale 2014. Photography © Francesco Galli. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

TECHO. Elements of Architecture. Central Pavilions, Venice Biennale 2014. Photography © Francesco Galli. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

DOOR. Elements of Architecture. Central Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2014. Photography © Francesco Galli. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

TOILET. Elements of Architecture. Central Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2014. Photography © Francesco Galli. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

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More information

Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman. A distinguished member of the group of The New York Five, he opened his own studio in New York in 1980, after teaching at some of the most prestigious universities of the World, such as Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Yale and Ohio.

Peter Eisenman holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree form Cornell University, a Master of Science in Architecture degree from Columbia University, an M. A. and Ph. D. degrees form Cambridge University (UK). He holds honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois, Chicago, the Pratt Institute in New York and Syracuse University. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Architecture by the Universitá La Sapienza in Rome.

In 1967, Eisenman founded in New York the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), a body of international experts dedicated to architecture, which he was director of until 1982. He was awarded the first prize at the third edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1985 for his project "Romeo & Juliet". He was also one of the two architects chosen to represent the United States at the Fifth International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 1991, and he returned there again in 2002 and 2004 to display the project for the City of Culture of Galicia.

He has authored emblematic architectural works such as the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, the Aronoff Center at the University of Cincinnati or the Holocaust Memorial located near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. His projects are characterized by a style defined as "modern deconstructivism", very close to the line of work of Arata Isozaki, Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas.

Peter Eisenman has also been awarded many other prizes and distinctions, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Brunner Award and the National Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects, the latter on two occasions, one for the Wexner Center in Ohio and the other for the headquarters of the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation in Tokyo.

In 2010, he received the international Wolf Prize in Architecture

Website of Eisenman Architects

Act.>. 12-2012

REM KOOLHAAS

Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.