Design
The building is meant to be a "record of design process," where the structure that results is the methodical manipulation of a grid. To start, Eisenman created a form from the intersection of four planes, subsequently manipulating the structures again and again, until coherent spaces began to emerge. In this way, the fragmented slabs and columns lack a traditional purpose, or even a conventional modernist one. The envelope and structure of the building are just a manifestation of the changed elements of the original four slabs, with some limited modifications. The purely conceptual design meant that the architecture is strictly plastic, bearing no relationship to construction techniques or purely ornamental form.
Consequently, the use of the building was intentionally ignored - not fought against. Eisenman grudgingly permitted a handful of compromises, such as a bathroom, but the staircase lacks a handrail, there is a column abutting the kitchen table, and a glass strip originally divided the bedroom, preventing the installation of a double bed.
Read more about this topic: House VI
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)