Misplaced Pages

#511488

113-802: The term does not inherently refer to the style's deconstructed visuals as the English adjective suggests, but instead derives from the movement's foundations in contrast to the Russian Constructivist movement during the First World War that "broke the rules" of classical architecture through the French language. Besides fragmentation, deconstructivism often manipulates the structure's surface skin and deploys non- rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate established elements of architecture . The finished visual appearance

226-503: A Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter ; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded . Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic. According to Nattiez, writing with Jean Molino , the tripartite definition of sign, object and interpretant

339-447: A symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses , visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Two major theories describe the way signs acquire the ability to transfer information. Both theories understand the defining property of the sign as a relation between a number of elements. In semiology, the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913),

452-541: A utopianism of place. Deconstructivism, meanwhile, maintains a level of self-criticism and a dystopianism of place, as well as external criticism and tends towards maintaining a level of complexity. Some architects identified with the movement, notably Frank Gehry , have actively rejected the classification of their work as deconstructivist. Critics of deconstructivism see it as a purely formal exercise with little social significance. Kenneth Frampton finds it "elitist and detached". Nikos Salingaros calls deconstructivism

565-432: A "viral expression" that invades design thinking in order to build destroyed forms; while curiously similar to both Derrida's and Philip Johnson's descriptions, this is meant as a harsh condemnation of the entire movement. Other criticisms are similar to those of deconstructivist philosophy—that since the act of deconstructivism is not an empirical process, it can result in whatever an architect wishes, and it thus suffers from

678-713: A Moscow apartment block in 1929. A particularly extravagant example is the 'Chekists Village' in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg ) designed by Ivan Antonov, Veniamin Sokolov and Arseny Tumbasov, a hammer and sickle shaped collective housing complex for staff of the People's Commissariat for the Internal Affairs (NKVD) , which currently serves as a hotel. The new forms of the Constructivists began to symbolise

791-408: A body-colored plastic 'rail' ahead of the spacebar, visually detached from the typewriter's main body. The term Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture is opposed to the ordered rationality of Modernism and Postmodernism . Though postmodernist and nascent deconstructivist architects both published in the journal Oppositions (published between 1973 and 1984), that journal's contents mark

904-541: A composite style sometimes called Postconstructivism . After this brief synthesis, Neo-Classical reaction was totally dominant until 1955. Rationalist buildings were still common in industrial architecture, but extinct in urban projects. Last isolated constructivist buildings were launched in 1933–1935, such as Panteleimon Golosov 's Pravda building (finished 1935), the Moscow Textile Institute (finished 1938) or Ladovsky's rationalist vestibules for

1017-443: A decisive break between the two movements. Deconstructivism took a confrontational stance to architectural history , wanting to "disassemble" architecture. While postmodernism returned to embrace the historical references that modernism had shunned, possibly ironically, deconstructivism rejected the postmodern acceptance of such references, as well as the idea of ornament as an after-thought or decoration. In addition to Oppositions ,

1130-477: A defining text for both deconstructivism and postmodernism was Robert Venturi 's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966). It argues against the purity, clarity and simplicity of modernism. With its publication, functionalism and rationalism , the two main branches of modernism, were overturned as paradigms. The reading of the postmodernist Venturi was that ornament and historical allusion added

1243-468: A disconnection from cultural references. With its tendency toward deformation and dislocation, there is also an aspect of expressionism and expressionist architecture associated with deconstructivism. At times deconstructivism mirrors varieties of expressionism, neo-expressionism , and abstract expressionism as well. The angular forms of the Ufa Cinema Center by Coop Himmelb(l)au recall

SECTION 10

#1732780787512

1356-479: A focus for Constructivism. Beginning in 1925 communal housing was designed for the area by architects like A. Gegello and OSA's Alexander Nikolsky, as well as public buildings like the Kirov Town Hall by Noi Trotsky (1932–4), an experimental school by G.A Simonov and a series of Communal laundries and kitchens, designed for the area by local ASNOVA members. An example of a finished Constructivist neighborhood

1469-686: A form of writing or discourse on writing and often works with a form of concrete poetry . He made architectural sculptures out of books and often coated the models in texts, openly making his architecture refer to writing. The notions of trace and erasure were taken up by Libeskind in essays and in his project for the Jewish Museum Berlin . The museum is conceived as a trace of the erasure of the Holocaust , intended to make its subject legible and poignant. Memorials such as Maya Lin 's Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Peter Eisenman's Memorial to

1582-474: A keen consciousness of the role of criticism within architectural theory. Whilst referencing Derrida as a philosophical influence, deconstructivism can also be seen as having as much a basis in critical theory as the other major offshoot of postmodernism, critical regionalism . The two aspects of critical theory, urgency and analysis, are found in deconstructivism. There is a tendency to re-examine and critique other works or precedents in deconstructivism, and also

1695-501: A label, legend, or other index attached to it, a "hypoicon", and divided the hypoicon into three classes: (a) the image , which depends on a simple quality; (b) the diagram , whose internal relations, mainly dyadic or so taken, represent by analogy the relations in something; and (c) the metaphor , which represents the representative character of a sign by representing a parallelism in something else. A diagram can be geometric, or can consist in an array of algebraic expressions, or even in

1808-474: A lack of consistency. Today there is a sense that the philosophical underpinnings of the beginning of the movement have been lost, and all that is left is the aesthetic of deconstructivism. Other criticisms reject the premise that architecture is a language capable of being the subject of linguistic philosophy, or, if it was a language in the past, critics claim it is no longer. Others question the wisdom and impact on future generations of an architecture that rejects

1921-507: A law or arbitrary social convention. According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a sign is composed of the signifier ( signifiant ), and the signified ( signifié ). These cannot be conceptualized as separate entities but rather as a mapping from significant differences in sound to potential (correct) differential denotation. The Saussurean sign exists only at the level of the synchronic system, in which signs are defined by their relative and hierarchical privileges of co-occurrence. It

2034-428: A mind and insofar as the sign is a determination of a mind or at least a quasi-mind , that functions as if it were a mind, for example in crystals and the work of bees —the focus here is on sign action in general, not on psychology, linguistics, or social studies (fields Peirce also pursued). A sign depends on an object in a way that enables (and, in a sense, determines) an interpretation, an interpretant , to depend on

2147-581: A minimalist text influenced deconstructivism, with its sense of fragmentation and emphasis on reading the monument. Lin also contributed work for Eisenman's Wexner Center. Rachel Whiteread's cast architectural spaces are another instance where contemporary art is confluent with architecture. Ghost (1990), an entire living space cast in plaster, solidifying the void, alludes to Derrida's notion of architectural presence. Gordon Matta-Clark 's Building cuts were deconstructed sections of buildings exhibited in art galleries. Mark Wigley and Philip Johnson curated

2260-399: A particular language. Peirce covered both semantic and syntactical issues in his theoretical grammar, as he sometimes called it. He regarded formal semiotic, as logic, as furthermore encompassing study of arguments ( hypothetical , deductive and inductive ) and inquiry's methods including pragmatism ; and as allied to but distinct from logic's pure mathematics. Peirce sometimes referred to

2373-456: A pick and mix of historical styles, sometimes achieved with new technology. Housing projects like the Narkomfin were designed for the attempts to reform everyday life in the 1920s, such as collectivisation of facilities, equality of the sexes and collective raising of children, all of which fell out of favour as Stalinism revived family values. The styles of the old world were also revived, with

SECTION 20

#1732780787512

2486-414: A potential sign. Secondness is reaction or resistance, a category associated with moving from possibility to determinate actuality. Here, through experience outside of and collateral to the given sign or sign system, one recalls or discovers the object the sign refers to, for example when a sign consists in a chance semblance of an absent but remembered object. It is through one's collateral experience that

2599-443: A pragmatic architecture, and instill the philosophic complexities of semiology . The deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is quite different. The basic building was the subject of problematics and intricacies in deconstructivism, with no detachment for ornament. Rather than separating ornament and function, like postmodernists such as Venturi, the functional aspects of buildings were called into question. Geometry

2712-568: A prototypical deconstructivist building. His starting point was a prototypical suburban house embodied with a typical set of intended social meanings. Gehry altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and other expectations in a playful subversion, an act of "de"construction" In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and deconstructivism, his notions of trace and erasure, embodied in his philosophy of writing and arche-writing found their way into deconstructivist memorials . Daniel Libeskind envisioned many of his early projects as

2825-404: A richness to architecture that modernism had foregone. Some Postmodern architects endeavored to reapply ornament even to economical and minimal buildings, described by Venturi as "the decorated shed". Rationalism of design was dismissed but the functionalism of the building was still somewhat intact. This is close to the thesis of Venturi's next major work, that signs and ornament can be applied to

2938-400: A series of cuts and fragmentations. A three-dimensional grid runs somewhat arbitrarily through the building. The grid, as a reference to modernism, of which it is an accoutrement, collides with the medieval antiquity of a castle. Some of the grid's columns intentionally do not reach the ground, hovering over stairways creating a sense of neurotic unease and contradicting the structural purpose of

3051-462: A sign and the real-world thing it denotes is an arbitrary one. There is not a natural relationship between a word and the object it refers to, nor is there a causal relationship between the inherent properties of the object and the nature of the sign used to denote it. For example, there is nothing about the physical quality of paper that requires denotation by the phonological sequence 'paper'. There is, however, what Saussure called 'relative motivation':

3164-407: A sign by a second , as its object. The object determines the sign to determine a third as an interpretant. Firstness itself is one of Peirce's three categories of all phenomena, and is quality of feeling. Firstness is associated with a vague state of mind as feeling and a sense of the possibilities, with neither compulsion nor reflection. In semiosis the mind discerns an appearance or phenomenon,

3277-424: A sign on how it will be interpreted, regardless of resemblance or factual connection to its object; but the symbol's individual embodiment is an index to your experience of the object. A symbol is instanced by a specialized indexical sinsign. A symbol such as a sentence in a language prescribes qualities of appearance for its instances, and is itself a replica of a symbol such as a proposition apart from expression in

3390-427: A still mostly agrarian country. There was also the critique that the style merely copied the forms of technology while using fairly routine construction methods. The winning entry by Boris Iofan marked the start of eclectic historicism of Stalinist Architecture , a style which bears similarities to Post-Modernism in that it reacted against modernist architecture's cosmopolitanism, alleged ugliness and inhumanity with

3503-489: A sure effect on deconstructivism, as forms and content are dissected and viewed from different perspectives simultaneously. A synchronicity of disjoined space is evident in many of the works of Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi . Synthetic cubism , with its application of found object art, is not as great an influence on deconstructivism as Analytical cubism , but is still found in the earlier and more vernacular works of Frank Gehry. Deconstructivism also shares with minimalism

Deconstructivism - Misplaced Pages Continue

3616-530: A tendency to set aesthetic issues in the foreground. An example of this is the Wexner Center . Critical Theory , however, had at its core a critique of capitalism and its excess, and from that respect many of the works of the Deconstructivists would fail in that regard if only they are made for an elite and are, as objects, highly expensive, despite whatever critique they may claim to impart on

3729-566: Is Sotsmisto (Sotsgorod) of Zaporizhzhia . Many of the Constructivists hoped to see their ambitions realised during the 'Cultural Revolution' that accompanied the first five-year plan . At this point the Constructivists were divided between urbanists and disurbanists who favoured a garden city or linear city model. The Linear City was propagandised by the head of the Finance Commissariat Nikolay Milyutin in his book Sozgorod , aka Sotsgorod (1930). This

3842-753: Is absent in Deconstructivism: form is often deformed when construction is deconstructed. Also lessened or absent is the advocacy of socialist and collectivist causes. The primary graphic motifs of constructivism were the rectangular bar and the triangular wedge, others were the more basic geometries of the square and the circle. In his series Prouns , El Lizzitzky assembled collections of geometries at various angles floating free in space. They evoke basic structural units such as bars of steel or sawn lumber loosely attached, piled, or scattered. They were also often drafted and share aspects with technical drawing and engineering drawing . Similar in composition

3955-413: Is addressed, more interpretants, themselves signs, emerge. It can involve a mind's reading of nature, people, mathematics, anything. Peirce generalized the communicational idea of utterance and interpretation of a sign, to cover all signs: Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds;

4068-431: Is allocated. More often, the receiver's desire for closure (see Gestalt psychology ) leads to simple meanings being attributed out of prejudices and without reference to the sender's intentions. In critical theory , the notion of sign is used variously. As Daniel Chandler has said: Many postmodernist theorists postulate a complete disconnection of the signifier and the signified. An 'empty' or ' floating signifier '

4181-489: Is architecture, and the same dialectic of presence and absence is found in construction and deconstructivism. According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural deconstructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal con struction, a strongly-established conventional expectation to play flexibly against. The design of Frank Gehry ’s own Santa Monica residence, (from 1978), has been cited as

4294-409: Is based on the " trace " or neutral level , Saussure's "sound-image" (or "signified", thus Peirce's "representamen"). Thus, "a symbolic form...is not some 'intermediary' in a process of 'communication' that transmits the meaning intended by the author to the audience; it is instead the result of a complex process of creation (the poietic process) that has to do with the form as well as the content of

4407-407: Is based upon convention or habit, even apart from their expression in particular languages. He held that "all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs". The setting of Peirce's study of signs is philosophical logic, which he defined as formal semiotic, and characterized as a normative field following esthetics and ethics, as more basic than metaphysics, and as

4520-569: Is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos. Deconstructivism came to public notice with the 1982 Parc de la Villette architectural design competition , in particular the entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman and the winning entry by Bernard Tschumi , as well as the Museum of Modern Art ’s 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in New York, organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley . Tschumi stated that calling

4633-483: Is in the same spirit as the deconstructivist rejection of ornament for geometries. Several artists in the 1980s and 1990s contributed work that influenced or took part in deconstructivism. Maya Lin and Rachel Whiteread are two examples. Lin's 1982 project for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial , with its granite slabs severing the ground plane, is one. Its shard-like form and reduction of content to

Deconstructivism - Misplaced Pages Continue

4746-621: Is the deconstructivist series Micromegas by Daniel Libeskind. The symbolic breakdown of the wall effected by introducing the Constructivist motifs of tilted and crossed bars sets up a subversion of the walls that define the bar itself. ... This apparent chaos actually constructs the walls that define the bar; it is the structure. The internal disorder produces the bar while splitting it even as gashes open up along its length. Two strains of modern art, minimalism and cubism , have had an influence on deconstructivism. Analytical cubism had

4859-418: Is the main subject of deconstructivist philosophy in architecture theory. The presupposition is that architecture is a language capable of communicating meaning and of receiving treatments by methods of linguistic philosophy. The dialectic of presence and absence, or solid and void occurs in much of Eisenman's projects, both built and unbuilt. Both Derrida and Eisenman believe that the locus, or place of presence,

4972-419: Is thus a common misreading of Saussure to take signifiers to be anything one could speak, and signifieds as things in the world. In fact, the relationship of language to parole (or speech-in-context) is and always has been a theoretical problem for linguistics (cf. Roman Jakobson's famous essay "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics" et al.). A famous thesis by Saussure states that the relationship between

5085-552: The Moscow Metro in particular popularising the idea of 'workers' palaces'. By the end of the 1920s Constructivism was the country's dominant architecture, and surprisingly many buildings of this period survive. Initially the reaction was towards an art decoesque Classicism that was initially inflected with Constructivist devices, such as in Iofan's House on Embankment of 1929–32. For a few years some structures were designed in

5198-802: The Moscow Metro . Clearly Modernist competition entries were made by the Vesnin brothers and Ivan Leonidov for the Narkomtiazhprom project in Red Square, 1934, another unbuilt Stalinist edifice. Traces of Constructivism can also be found in some Socialist Realist works, for instance in the Futurist elevations of Iofan's ultra-Stalinist 1937 Paris Pavilion, which had Suprematist interiors by Nikolai Suetin. Due in part to its political commitment—and its replacement by Stalinist architecture —the mechanistic, dynamic forms of Constructivism were not part of

5311-609: The Situationists , particularly the New Babylon project of Guy Debord and Constant Nieuwenhuys . High Tech architecture also owes a debt to Constructivism, most obviously in Richard Rogers ' Lloyd's building . Zaha Hadid 's early projects were adaptations of Malevich's Architektons, and the influence of Chernikhov is clear on her drawings. Deconstructivism evokes the dynamism of Constructivism, though without

5424-577: The Vesnin brothers for Leningradskaya Pravda . In 1925 the OSA Group , also with ties to Vkhutemas, was founded by Alexander Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg —the Organisation of Contemporary Architects. This group had much in common with Weimar Germany's Functionalism , such as the housing projects of Ernst May . Housing, especially collective housing in specially designed dom kommuny to replace

5537-404: The cognitive process is the same). The first stage in understanding the message is therefore, to suspend or defer judgement until more information becomes available. At some point, the individual receiver decides which of all possible meanings represents the best possible fit. Sometimes, uncertainty may not be resolved, so meaning is indefinitely deferred, or a provisional or approximate meaning

5650-534: The column . The Wexner Center deconstructs the archetype of the castle and renders its spaces and structure with conflict and difference. Some Deconstructivist architects were influenced by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida . Eisenman was a friend of Derrida, but even so his approach to architectural design was developed long before he became a Deconstructivist. For him Deconstructivism should be considered an extension of his interest in radical formalism. Some practitioners of deconstructivism were also influenced by

5763-433: The ground of a sign. The ground is the pure abstraction of a quality. A sign's ground is the respect in which the sign represents its object, e.g. as in literal and figurative language . For example, an icon presents a characteristic or quality attributed to an object, while a symbol imputes to an object a quality either presented by an icon or symbolized so as to evoke a mental icon. Peirce called an icon apart from

SECTION 50

#1732780787512

5876-587: The 'Dynamic City' (1919) of Gustav Klutsis ; Lazar Khidekel's Workers Club (1926) and his Dubrovka Power Plant and first Sots Town (1931–33). Immediately after the Russian Civil War , the USSR was too impoverished to commission any major new building projects. Nonetheless, the Soviet avant-garde school Vkhutemas started an architectural wing in 1921, which was led by the architect Nikolai Ladovsky , which

5989-533: The 1920s. Other notable works included the aluminum parabola and glazed staircase of Mikhail Barsch and Mikhail Sinyavsky's 1929 Moscow Planetarium. The popularity of the new aesthetic led to traditionalist architects adopting Constructivism, as in Ivan Zholtovsky 's 1926 MOGES power station or Alexey Shchusev 's Narkomzem offices, both in Moscow. Similarly, the engineer Vladimir Shukhov 's Shukhov Tower

6102-419: The 1988 Museum of Modern Art exhibition Deconstructivist architecture , which crystallized the movement, and brought fame and notoriety to its key practitioners. The architects presented at the exhibition were Peter Eisenman , Frank Gehry , Zaha Hadid , Coop Himmelblau , Rem Koolhaas , Daniel Libeskind , and Bernard Tschumi . Mark Wigley wrote the accompanying essay and tried to show a common thread among

6215-581: The Constructivist Nikolai Kolli . The duplex apartments and collective facilities of the OSA group were a major influence on his later work. Another famous modernist, Erich Mendelsohn , designed Leningrad's Red Banner Textile Factory and popularised Constructivism in his book Russland, Europa, Amerika . A Five Year Plan project with major Constructivist input was DniproHES , designed by Victor Vesnin et al. El Lissitzky also popularised

6328-594: The Constructivists was instilling the avant-garde in everyday life. From 1927 they worked on projects for Workers' Clubs, communal leisure facilities usually built in factory districts. Among the most famous of these are the Kauchuk , Svoboda and Rusakov clubs by Konstantin Melnikov , the club of the Likachev works by the Vesnin brothers, and Ilya Golosov 's Zuev Workers' Club . At the same time as this foray into

6441-578: The Murdered Jews of Europe are also said to reflect themes of trace and erasure. Another major current in deconstructivist architecture takes inspiration from the Constructivist and Russian Futurist movements of the early twentieth century, both in their graphics and in their visionary architecture, little of which was actually constructed. Artists Naum Gabo , El Lissitzky , Kazimir Malevich , and Alexander Rodchenko , have influenced

6554-506: The Saussurian distinction between signifier and signified, and look for meaning not in the individual signs, but in their context and the framework of potential meanings that could be applied. Such theories assert that language is a collective memory or cultural history of all the different ways in which meaning has been communicated, and may to that extent, constitute all life's experiences (see Louis Hjelmslev ). Hjelmslev did not consider

6667-634: The Textile Institute (Ordzhonikidze St, Moscow, 1929–1931), and Ginzburg's Moscow Gosstrakh apartments and, most famously, his Narkomfin Building . Flats were built in a Constructivist idiom in Kharkiv, Moscow and Leningrad and in smaller towns. Ginzburg also designed a government building in Alma-Ata , while the Vesnin brothers designed a School of Film Actors in Moscow. Ginzburg critiqued

6780-402: The abstract geometries of the numbered paintings of Franz Kline , in their unadorned masses. The UFA Cinema Center also would make a likely setting for the angular figures depicted in urban German street scenes by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner . The work of Wassily Kandinsky also bears similarities to deconstructivist architecture. His movement into abstract expressionism and away from figurative work,

6893-407: The art of devising methods of research. He argued that, since all thought takes time, all thought is in signs, that all thought has the form of inference (even when not conscious and deliberate), and that, as inference, "logic is rooted in the social principle", since inference depends on a standpoint that, in a sense, is unlimited. The result is a theory not of language in particular, but rather of

SECTION 60

#1732780787512

7006-653: The calm Platonism of the International Style as it was defined by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock . Their book included only one building from the USSR, an electrical laboratory by a government team led by Nikolaev. During the 1960s Constructivism was rehabilitated to a certain extent, and both the wilder experimental buildings of the era (such as the Globus Theatre or the Tbilisi Roads Ministry Building ) and

7119-506: The collectivised 19th century housing that was the norm, was the main priority of this group. The term social condenser was coined to describe their aims, which followed from the ideas of V.I. Lenin , who wrote in 1919 that "the real emancipation of women and real communism begins with the mass struggle against these petty household chores and the true reforming of the mass into a vast socialist household." Collective housing projects that were built included Ivan Nikolaev 's Communal House of

7232-415: The common form "All __ is ___" which is subjectable, like any diagram, to logical or mathematical transformations. Peirce held that mathematics is done by diagrammatic thinking—observation of, and experimentation on, diagrams. Peirce developed for deductive logic a system of visual existential graphs , which continue to be researched today. It is now agreed that the effectiveness of the acts that may convert

7345-434: The concept of sign to embrace many other forms. He considered "word" to be only one particular kind of sign, and characterized sign as any mediational means to understanding . He covered not only artificial, linguistic and symbolic signs, but also all semblances (such as kindred sensible qualities), and all indicators (such as mechanical reactions). He counted as symbols all terms, propositions and arguments whose interpretation

7458-425: The conventions of design. The difference between criticality in deconstructivism and criticality in critical regionalism is that critical regionalism reduces the overall level of complexity involved and maintains a clearer analysis while attempting to reconcile modernist architecture with local differences. In effect, this leads to a modernist "vernacular". Critical regionalism displays a lack of self-criticism and

7571-592: The dialectic) set the tone for the projects of the 1920s. Another famous early Constructivist project was the Lenin Tribune by El Lissitzky (1920), a moving speaker's podium. During the Russian Civil War the UNOVIS group centered on Kasimir Malevich and Lissitzky designed various projects that forced together the 'non-objective' abstraction of Suprematism with more utilitarian aims, creating ideal Constructivist cities— see also El Lissitzky's Prounen-Raum ,

7684-527: The everyday, outlandish projects were designed such as Ivan Leonidov 's Lenin Institute, a high tech work that bears comparison with Buckminster Fuller . This consisted of a skyscraper-sized library, a planetarium and dome, all linked together by a monorail; or Georgy Krutikov 's self-explanatory Flying City, an ASNOVA project that was intended as a serious proposal for airborne housing. The Melnikov House and his Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage are fine examples of

7797-784: The first was encapsulated in Antoine Pevsner 's and Naum Gabo 's Realist manifesto which was concerned with space and rhythm, the second represented a struggle within the Commissariat for Enlightenment between those who argued for pure art and the Productivists such as Alexander Rodchenko , Varvara Stepanova and Vladimir Tatlin , a more socially-oriented group who wanted this art to be absorbed in industrial production. A split occurred in 1922 when Pevsner and Gabo emigrated. The movement then developed along socially utilitarian lines. The productivist majority gained

7910-519: The formal experimentation and geometric imbalances of Russian constructivism . There are additional references in deconstructivism to 20th-century movements: the modernism / postmodernism interplay, expressionism , cubism , minimalism and contemporary art . Deconstructivism attempts to move away from the supposedly constricting 'rules' of modernism such as " form follows function ", " purity of form ", and " truth to materials ". The main channel from deconstructivist philosophy to architectural theory

8023-462: The functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism, particularly the international style, of which its white stucco skin is reminiscent, as a starting point. Another example of the deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is Peter Eisenman 's Wexner Center for the Arts . The Wexner Center takes the archetypal form of the castle , which it then imbues with complexity in

8136-431: The graphic sense of geometric forms of deconstructivist architects such as Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au . Both Deconstructivism and Constructivism have been concerned with the tectonics of making an abstract assemblage. Both were concerned with the radical simplicity of geometric forms as the primary artistic content, expressed in graphics, sculpture and architecture. The Constructivist tendency toward purism , though,

8249-452: The hidden potential of modernism. Computer-aided design is now an essential tool in most aspects of contemporary architecture, but the particular nature of deconstructivism makes the use of computers especially pertinent. Three-dimensional modelling and animation (virtual and physical) assists in the conception of very complicated spaces, while the ability to link computer models to manufacturing jigs (CAM— computer-aided manufacturing ) allows

8362-546: The idea of building in the new society being the same as in the old: "treating workers' housing in the same way as they would bourgeois apartments...the Constructivists however approach the same problem with maximum consideration for those shifts and changes in our everyday life...our goal is the collaboration with the proletariat in creating a new way of life". OSA published a magazine, SA or Contemporary Architecture from 1926 to 1930. The leading rationalist Ladovsky designed his own, rather different kind of mass housing, completing

8475-419: The industrial assemblage of materials. Designs combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced many pioneering projects and finished buildings, before falling out of favor around 1932. It has left marked effects on later developments in architecture . Constructivist architecture emerged from

8588-459: The mass production of subtly different modular elements to be achieved at affordable costs. Also, Gehry is noted for producing many physical models as well as computer models as part of his design process. Though the computer has made the designing of complex shapes much easier, not everything that looks odd is "deconstructivist". Since the publication of Kenneth Frampton 's Modern Architecture: A Critical History (first edition 1980) there has been

8701-400: The message into text (including speaking, writing, drawing, music and physical movements) depends upon the knowledge of the sender . If the sender is not familiar with the current language, its codes and its culture, then he or she will not be able to say anything at all, whether as a visitor in a different language area or because of a medical condition such as aphasia . Modern theories deny

8814-525: The more pragmatic German architects fleeing Nazism, such as 'May Brigade' ( Ernst May , Mart Stam , Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky ), the 'Bauhaus Brigade' led by Hannes Meyer , and Bruno Taut . The city-planning of Le Corbusier found brief favour, with the architect writing a 'reply to Moscow' that later became the Ville Radieuse plan, and designing the Tsentrosoyuz government building with

8927-450: The object as the sign depends on the object . The interpretant, then, is a further sign of the object, and thus enables and determines still further interpretations, further interpretant signs. The process, called semiosis , is irreducibly triadic, Peirce held, and is logically structured to perpetuate itself. It is what defines sign, object and interpretant in general. As Jean-Jacques Nattiez put it, "the process of referring effected by

9040-432: The object determines the sign to determine an interpretant. Thirdness is representation or mediation, the category associated with signs, generality, rule, continuity, habit-taking and purpose. Here one forms an interpretant expressing a meaning or ramification of the sign about the object. When a second sign is considered, the initial interpretant may be confirmed, or new possible meanings may be identified. As each new sign

9153-437: The original Constructivist buildings are poorly preserved or in danger of imminent demolition. Russian Academy of Architecture. M., Editorial URSS, 2005 M., 2008 Sign (semiotics) In semiotics , a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when

9266-635: The originality and ambition of this new group. Melnikov would design the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts of 1925, which popularised the new style, with its rooms designed by Rodchenko and its jagged, mechanical form. Another glimpse of a Constructivist lived environment is visible in the popular science fiction film Aelita , which had interiors and exteriors modelled in angular, geometric fashion by Aleksandra Ekster . The state-run Mosselprom department store of 1924

9379-542: The past and presents no clear values as replacements and which often pursues strategies that are intentionally aggressive to human senses. Constructivist architecture Constructivist architecture was a constructivist style of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Abstract and austere, the movement aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space, while rejecting decorative stylization in favor of

9492-440: The possibilities of signification of a signifier are constrained by the compositionality of elements in the linguistic system (cf. Émile Benveniste 's paper on the arbitrariness of the sign in the first volume of his papers on general linguistics). In other words, a word is only available to acquire a new meaning if it is identifiably different from all the other words in the language and it has no existing meaning. Structuralism

9605-410: The production of meaning, and it rejects the idea of a static relationship between a sign and what it represents: its object . Peirce believed that signs are meaningful through recursive relationships that arise in sets of three. Even when a sign represents by a resemblance or factual connection independent of interpretation, the sign is a sign only insofar as it is at least potentially interpretable by

9718-677: The project for a new everyday life of the Soviet Union, then in the mixed economy of the New Economic Policy . State buildings were constructed like the huge Derzhprom complex in Kharkiv (designed by Serafimov, Folger and Kravets, 1926–1928) which was noted by Reyner Banham in his Theory and Design in the First Machine Age as being, along with the Dessau Bauhaus , the largest scale Modernist work of

9831-548: The real world often has a chaotic blur of language and signal exchange. Nevertheless, the implication that triadic relations are structured to perpetuate themselves leads to a level of complexity not usually experienced in the routine of message creation and interpretation. Hence, different ways of expressing the idea have developed. By 1903, Peirce came to classify signs by three universal trichotomies dependent on his three categories (quality, fact, habit). He classified any sign: Because of those classificatory interdependences,

9944-469: The senders. But, why might this happen? Neither the sender nor the receiver of a text has a perfect grasp of all language. Each individual's relatively small stock of knowledge is the product of personal experience and their attitude to learning. When the audience receives the message, there will always be an excess of connotations available to be applied to the particular signs in their context (no matter how relatively complete or incomplete their knowledge,

10057-406: The sign as a triadic relation as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity". This means that a sign is a relation between the sign vehicle (the specific physical form of the sign), a sign object (the aspect of the world that the sign carries meaning about) and an interpretant (the meaning of the sign as understood by an interpreter). According to Peirce, signs can be divided by

10170-420: The sign is infinite ." (Peirce used the word "determine" in the sense not of strict determinism, but of effectiveness that can vary like an influence. ) Peirce further characterized the three semiotic elements as follows: Peirce explained that signs mediate between their objects and their interpretants in semiosis, the triadic process of determination. In semiosis a first is determined or influenced to be

10283-437: The sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary (the principle of semiotic arbitrariness ), motivated only by social convention . Saussure's theory has been particularly influential in the study of linguistic signs. The other major semiotic theory , developed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), defines

10396-417: The sign to be the smallest semiotic unit, as he believed it possible to decompose it further; instead, he considered the "internal structure of language" to be a system of figurae , a concept somewhat related to that of figure of speech , which he considered to be the ultimate semiotic unit. This position implies that speaking is simply one more form of behaviour and changes the focus of attention from

10509-522: The social aspect, as in the work of Coop Himmelb(l)au . In the late 1970s Rem Koolhaas wrote a parable on the political trajectory of Constructivism called The Story of the Pool , in which Constructivists escape from the USSR in a self-powering Modernist swimming pool, only to die, after being criticised for much the same reasons as they were under Stalinism, soon after their arrival in the USA. Meanwhile, many of

10622-654: The style abroad with his 1930 book The Reconstruction of Architecture in Russia . The 1932 competition for the Palace of the Soviets , a grandiose project to rival the Empire State Building , featured entries from all the major Constructivists as well as Walter Gropius , Erich Mendelsohn and Le Corbusier . However, this coincided with widespread criticism of Modernism, which was always difficult to sustain in

10735-778: The support of the Proletkult and the magazine LEF , and later became the dominant influence of the architectural group O.S.A. The first and most famous Constructivist architectural project was the 1919 proposal for the headquarters of the Comintern in St Petersburg by the Futurist Vladimir Tatlin , often called Tatlin's Tower . Though it remained unbuilt, the materials—glass and steel—and its futuristic ethos and political slant (the movements of its internal volumes were meant to symbolise revolution and

10848-508: The tensions between individualism and utilitarianism in Constructivism. There were also projects for Suprematist skyscrapers called 'planits' or 'architektons' by Kasimir Malevich , Lazar Khikeidel – Cosmic Habitats (1921–1922), Architectons (1922–1927), Workers Club (1926), Communal Dwelling (Коммунальное Жилище)(1927), A. Nikolsky and L. Khidekel – Moscow Cooperative Institute (1929). The fantastical element also found expression in

10961-544: The term has stuck and has come to embrace a general trend within Contemporary architecture . Early antecedents of the architectural movement could be found in industrial design , notably in Ettore Sottsass ' design for the 1969 Olivetti Valentine typewriter, a non-conformist design that deconstructed what was typically the typewriter's bodywork, revealing elements normally concealed, using 'floating keys' and

11074-458: The text as language, to the text as a representation of purpose, a functional version of authorial intent . But, once the message has been transmitted, the text exists independently. Hence, although the writers who co-operated to produce this page exist, they can only be represented by the signs actually selected and presented here. The interpretation process in the receiver's mind may attribute meanings completely different from those intended by

11187-437: The three trichotomies intersect to form ten (rather than 27) classes of signs. There are also various kinds of meaningful combination. Signs can be attached to one another. A photograph is an index with a meaningfully attached icon. Arguments are composed of dicisigns, and dicisigns are composed of rhemes. In order to be embodied, legisigns (types) need sinsigns (tokens) as their individual replicas or instances. A symbol depends as

11300-408: The type of relation that holds the sign relation together as either icons , indices or symbols . Icons are those signs that signify by means of similarity between sign vehicle and sign object (e.g. a portrait or map), indices are those that signify by means of a direct relation of contiguity or causality between sign vehicle and sign object (e.g. a symptom), and symbols are those that signify through

11413-445: The unornamented Khrushchyovka apartments are in a sense a continuation of the aborted experiment, although under very different conditions. Outside the USSR, Constructivism has often been seen as an alternative, more radical modernism, and its legacy can be seen in designers as diverse as Team 10 , Archigram and Kenzo Tange , as well as in much Brutalist work. Their integration of the avant-garde and everyday life has parallels with

11526-439: The various architects whose work was usually more noted for their differences. The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been disturbed. It is the ability to disturb our thinking about form that makes these projects deconstructive. The show examines an episode, a point of intersection between several architects where each constructs an unsettling building by exploiting

11639-471: The wider Constructivist art movement , which grew out of Russian Futurism . Constructivist art had attempted to apply a three-dimensional cubist vision to wholly abstract non-objective 'constructions' with a kinetic element. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 , it turned its attentions to the new social demands and industrial tasks required of the new regime. Two distinct threads emerged,

11752-533: The work of Yakov Chernikhov , who produced several books of experimental designs—most famously Architectural Fantasies (1933)—earning him the epithet 'the Soviet Piranesi '. Despite the ambitiousness of many Constructivist proposals for reconstructed cities, there were fairly few examples of coherent Constructivist town planning. However, the Narvskaya Zastava district of Leningrad became

11865-766: The work of these architects a "movement" or a new "style" was out of context and showed a lack of understanding of their ideas, and believed that Deconstructivism was simply a move against the practice of PoMo , which he said involved "making Doric temple forms out of plywood". Other influential exhibitions include the 1989 opening of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus , designed by Peter Eisenman. The New York exhibition has featured works by Frank Gehry , Daniel Libeskind , Rem Koolhaas , Peter Eisenman , Zaha Hadid , Coop Himmelb(l)au , and Bernard Tschumi . Since their exhibitions, some architects associated with Deconstructivism have distanced themselves from it; nonetheless,

11978-485: The work; it is also the point of departure for a complex process of reception (the esthesic process that reconstructs a 'message'"). Molino's and Nattiez's diagram: Peirce's theory of the sign therefore offered a powerful analysis of the signification system, its codes, and its processes of inference and learning—because the focus was often on natural or cultural context rather than linguistics, which only analyses usage in slow time whereas human semiotic interaction in

12091-470: Was also an early modernist building for the new consumerism of the New Economic Policy , as was the Vesnin brothers' Mostorg store, built three years later. Modern offices for the mass press were also popular, such as the Izvestia headquarters. This was built in 1926–7 and designed by Grigori Barkhin A colder and more technological Constructivist style was introduced by the 1923/4 glass office project by

12204-686: Was called ASNOVA (association of new architects). The teaching methods were both functional and fantastic, reflecting an interest in Gestalt psychology , leading to daring experiments with form such as Simbirchev's glass-clad suspended restaurant. Among the architects affiliated to the ASNOVA (Association of New Architects) were El Lissitzky , Konstantin Melnikov , Vladimir Krinsky and the young Berthold Lubetkin . Projects from 1923 to 1935 like Lissitzky and Mart Stam 's Wolkenbügel horizontal skyscrapers and Konstantin Melnikov's temporary pavilions showed

12317-403: Was later based on this idea that it is only within a given system that one can define the distinction between the levels of system and use, or the semantic "value" of a sign. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) proposed a different theory. Unlike Saussure who approached the conceptual question from a study of linguistics and phonology , Peirce, considered the father of Pragmaticism , extended

12430-654: Was often seen as an avant-garde work and was, according to Walter Benjamin in his Moscow Diary, 'unlike any similar structure in the West'. Shukhov also collaborated with Melnikov on the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage and Novo-Ryazanskaya Street Garage . Many of these buildings are shown in Sergei Eisenstein 's film The General Line, which also featured a specially built mock-up Constructivist collective farm designed by Andrey Burov. A central aim of

12543-486: Was taken to a more extreme level by the OSA theorist Mikhail Okhitovich . His disurbanism proposed a system of one-person or one-family buildings connected by linear transport networks, spread over a huge area that traversed the boundaries between the urban and agricultural, in which it resembled a socialist equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright 's Broadacre City . The disurbanists and urbanists proposed projects for new cities such as Magnitogorsk were often rejected in favour of

12656-528: Was through the philosopher Jacques Derrida 's influence with Peter Eisenman . Eisenman drew some philosophical bases from the literary movement Deconstruction , and collaborated directly with Derrida on projects including an entry for the Parc de la Villette competition, documented in Chora l Works . Both Derrida and Eisenman, as well as Daniel Libeskind were concerned with the " metaphysics of presence ", and this

12769-568: Was to deconstructivists what ornament was to postmodernists, the subject of complication, and this complication of geometry was in turn, applied to the functional, structural, and spatial aspects of deconstructivist buildings. One example of deconstructivist complexity is Frank Gehry 's Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, which takes the typical unadorned white cube of modernist art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism. This subverts

#511488