Abstract
This book is an attempt to elucidate and analyse the key thoughts of architect and thinker Peter Eisenman in his late oeuvre. The book thus does not follow all development and changes in Eisenman's thoughts from 1960s on; also the book focuses on written ideas only and separates them from his design and built work.
The book starts with a very short summary of Eisenman transformation from his early formalism and later development (chapter On the way to interiority) - and in contrast to these older positions presents the emergence of his late ideas of "interiority". The late period is roughly defined according a book of Eisenman's selected writings, called Written into the Void (New Haven and London, 2007), that starts in 1990.
As a way into the difficult thinking and, paraphrasing Eisenman's own words, into the heart of the discipline of architecture, the book starts with a chronological list of architects that made a break in development of architecture. These architects (F.
Brunelleschi, D. Bramante, L.
B. Alberti and others), each in his own way, re-establish their discipline (i. e. architecture) in contrast to another, older position.
History of architecture is in Eisenman rewritten as breaks. These breaks are either accepted into the mainstream architecture by other architects or fade away.
The historical excursion prepares position for explaining architecture as writing (from Derrida's écriture). The point of departure of his theoretical thinking seems to be refusal of any timeless essence of architecture and a will to "dislocate" architecture from influence of metaphysics.
Explaining the notion of metaphysics of presence and how it relates to architecture forms an important part of the chapter Architecture as writing. A way to this is "criticality", a notion constituted with three basic terms: interiority (interiority of architecture defines the discipline; what it is that makes architecture singular), exteriority (external concepts that change architecture by being internalised into the discipline and changing it) and anteriority (anteriority is a sedimented history of architecture; history of interiority).
According to Eisenman, these three terms are connected in the notion of "undecidability" that serves as a central criterion to criticality. Critical architecture may be said to be the most important interest in all Eisenman's effort and in the book is discussed among others in connection with architecture of Giuseppe Terragni (chapter Critical architecture).
Another notion discussed in the book is that of "diagram" that was at certain time meant as a way of overcoming metaphysical implications in architecture.