Philosophies and Space and Place connected - A piece of Jewellery and a War Monument

摘要

Amidst the pulsating heart of Berlin, the blooming capital of economics and culture, we find ourselves suddenly in a vacuum of Space and Place. We walk into architect Peter Eisenman's “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”, an overwhelming field of grey; a field of algorithmically undulating “stelae” that intentionally unsettle the horizontal and vertical references by which we as individuals rationally locate ourselves.Moving beyond this pure architectural form to examine scalar geometry, we realize the embodied experience of Space and Place. This is a Place embodied what Eisenman refers to as: Deep Structure; through which he attempts to explore the notion of visual syntax. It is from within this Space that we reconsider another architectural form; Eisenman’s jewellery. What is behind, what are the language of his jewellery, which Eisenman refers to as archetypal symbols of the decentered man and his unconsciousness? Do these objects propose a new relationship with the one who wear them? They are not emulating human body or proportions, neither decorative nor figurative. They have their own life, but are they part of a continuum?We follow Eisenman through an elaboration of the theories and philosophies embodied in his Jewellery and the War Monument, applying his distinctly personal variant of de-constructivism. We further address Eisenmans unique interdisciplinary encounter with the philosopher Jacques Derrida, analysing their conversations concerning the ontological significance of spatiality and the philosophical notion “Chora”. Digging deeper into Eisenman's task to develop a practice that come “from outside” - a new type of layered modernist adversarial practice launched from a placeless but volatile "steppe" home of disembodied fluxes, we notice both philosophical and destabilizing forces of historical change. Why does Eisenman’s works remain as a tactical enterprise in Space and Place? Works, which force from the outset are drafted from that of the enemy - classicism - but also often turned aggressively against it like in his jewellery that also refers to - past, present and future. We examine Eisenmans Architectural Forms that seems to deny any connection to or embellishment of human form being part of a scale continuum of objects from the ring to a building and we connect them to Philosophies and Space and Place.