In 1982 renewed architects and theorists Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman met at Harvard University — Graduate School of Design — to debate on the concept of harmony in architecture: ‘Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture’ was the argument of that witty, biting, and ironic debate, which was originally published in the magazine Lotus International n° 40 (1983), and later reprinted in Studio Works 7, by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2000).[1] For the present article, I have used the text of the debate available at the internet website Katarxis N°3, where, in the editors’ introduction, we read that the debate happened after Eisenman listened to a tape of Alexanders’ presentation of the ideas that would have constituted his opus magnum — ‘The Nature of Order’ —, which contained Alexander’s new paradigm of architecture; this circumstance, which influenced the argument of the debate, was happening at the same time as Eisenman was presenting his ‘competing, diametrically opposed, deconstructivist claim for such a Paradigm.’ [2]
After presenting the transcription of the debate, in the second part of the article, the commentary, I will try to show you how that debate can be framed within the spatial hypothesis of a clash between concepts of place and space. I will also be more explicit on the limits of the positions maintained by the two authors within the hypothesis I am arguing for at RSaP — a hypothesis which aims at the reconciliation of the contrast between concepts of space and place by arguing for their ontological and epistemological separation and continuity, at the same time; that is, I am arguing for their correlation rather than their reciprocal exclusion, trying to surpass the bias that architect have for one concept instead of the other, as it results from the debate. The embracing position I argue for, which takes both Alexander’s and Eisenman’s opposite perspectives under the same reformed placial-and-spatial hypothesis requires the reformulation of the traditional way we understand concepts of space and place, attributing place a fundamental metaphysical value, and space a correlate, no less important, epistemological value. Both concepts are necessary to square the circle of reality between the concrete and the abstract, body and mind, feeling and thinking, which the two authors seem to exclude reciprocally, adopting one perspective or the other.
The Debate: Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture
Peter Eisenman: I met Christopher Alexander for the first time just two minutes ago, but I feel I have known him for a long time. I suddenly sense that we have been placed in a circus-like atmosphere, where the adversarial relationship which we might have — which already exists — might be blown out of proportion. I do not know who the Christian is and who the lion, but I always get nervous in a situation like this. I guess it is disingenuous on my part to think that with Chris Alexander here something other than a performance would be possible.
Back in 1959, I was working in Cambridge, U.S.A., for Ben Thompson and The Architects Collaborative [Gropius’s firm]. I believe Chris Alexander was at Harvard. I then went to Cambridge, England, again not knowing that he had already been there. He had studied mathematics at Cambridge and turned to architecture. I was there for no particular reason, except that Michael McKinnell told me that I was uninformed and that I should go to England to become more intelligent.
Christopher Alexander: I’m very glad you volunteered that information. It clears things up.
Audience: (Laughter)
Eisenman: In any case, Sandy [Colin St. John] Wilson, who was then a colleague of mine on the faculty at Cambridge and is now professor at the School of Architecture at Cambridge, gave me a manuscript that he said I should read. It was Alexander’s Ph.D. thesis, which was to become the text of Chris’s first book, ‘Notes on the Synthesis of Form’. The text so infuriated me, that I was moved to do a Ph.D. thesis myself. It was called ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’ and was an attempt to dialectically refute the arguments made in his book. He got his book published; my thesis was so primitive that I never even thought of publishing it.
In any case, I thought that today we could deal with some of my problems with his book. But then I listened to the tape of his lecture last night, and again I find myself in a very similar situation. Christopher Alexander, who is not quite as frightening as I thought — he seems a very nice man — again presents an argument which I find the need to contest. Since I have never met him prior to this occasion, it cannot be personal; it must have something to do with his ideas.
Chris, you said we need to change our cosmology, that it is a cosmology that grew out of physics and the sciences in the past and is, in a sense, 300 years old. I probably agree with every word of that. You said that only certain kinds of order can be understood, given that cosmology. You said the order of a Coke machine is available to us because of our causal, mechanistic view of the world. And then you brought up that the order of a Mozart symphony is not available to us. Don’t you think that the activity of the French ‘Structuralists’ is an attempt to find out the order of things as opposed to the order of mechanisms, the ontology of things as opposed to the epistemology of things, i.e., their internal structure? This kind of philosophical inquiry has been part of current French thought for the last 20 years. Don’t you think that it is something like what you’re talking about?
Alexander: I don’t know the people you are talking about.
Eisenman: I am talking about people like Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida.
Alexander: What do they say?
Eisenman: They say that there are structures, in things like a Mozart symphony or a piece of literature, and that we can get beyond the function of a symphony or the function of a piece of literature to provide a story of knowledge, that we can get beyond those functions to talk about the innate structure or order of these things. And that this order has little to do with the hierarchical, mechanistic, and deterministic order of the past 300 years. Rather it is based on an alternative to Western values as determined by metaphysics. This order suggests not so much an opposition as an alternative view, which suggests that structures are not dialectical in nature but, rather, that they are made up of differences.
I was very much in sympathy with the things you were saying in your lecture. In fact, I would like to think that for the past 10 or 15 years of my life I have been engaged in the same kind of work. My postfunctionalist essay in ‘Oppositions 6’ proposed another aspect of architecture outside of function.
Alexander: I am not sure I know what you are driving at. See if this is right? One of the people on our faculty, I think, would probably espouse your point of view in some way. His attitude reflects a whole school of thought that has developed — crudely called Post-Modernism or whatever. Anyway, there is a school of thought, a serious group of theorists who have begun to talk about architecture in a quite new way in the last 10 years. And this faculty member says to me, from time to time, something like this: ‘Essentially, Chris, they’re saying exactly the same thing you are. Why are you riding your horse as though you are some lone messenger when, in fact, everybody is talking about the same thing.’
But what these Postmodernists and Structuralists are saying is not the same thing as what I said last night at all. Of course, I think there are people who are very serious and want to move the many with the privileged view of architecture that they have in their heads. But words are very, very cheap. And one can participate in intellectual discussions, right, left, and center, and you can go this way or you can go that way. Now then, I look at the buildings which purport to come from a point of view similar to the one I’ve expressed, and the main thing I recognize is, that whatever the words are — the intellectual argument behind that stuff — the actual buildings are totally different. Diametrically opposed. Dealing with entirely different matters. Actually, I don’t even know what that work is dealing with, but I do know that it is not dealing with feelings. And in that sense those buildings are very similar to the alienated series of constructions that preceded them since 1930. All I see is: number one, new and very fanciful language; and two, vague references to the history of architecture but transformed into cunning feats and quaint mannerisms. So, the games of the Structuralists, and the games of the Post Modernists are in my mind nothing but intellectualisms which have little to do with the core of architecture. This depends, as it always has, on feeling.
Eisenman: Let us just back off for a minute. I wish we had some pictures here. I don’t want to polarize this between the heavy, Eastern intellectual and the California joy boy. You cannot ask people, as you did last night, to believe you because you have done 25 years of intellectual work — which I have followed very carefully and which is very intellectual — and then say ‘I am California magic’. So, I want to get away from these kinds of caricatures because we are not going to get anywhere with them. That is number one. Number two: for you to plead ignorance of ideas that are in current use, does not make me an intellectual and you not, or vice versa; it means that you are interested in your cosmology, and I am interested in mine. So that is a wash. I did not come here to play ‘do you know’ and get anxious about things. I am very interested in the whole self. In the Jungian cosmology, you may be a feeling type and I may be a thinking type. And I will never be able to have the kind of feeling that you have, and vice versa. We all live with the tyranny of the opposite. So, I don’t want to get into that game, because you win all the time. So why not start over.
[…]
Alexander: I appreciate the very charming way you are bringing this into a slightly nicer state. Actually, with regard to what you said a moment ago, the business of the feeling type and the thinking type does need to be talked about. I know something about Jung’s classifications. That we have different make-ups is probably an undeniable fact. But, somehow, the substantive core of the matter, to me, is the essence of what the debate about architecture must lead to. If you say: ‘Well, look, you’re a feeling type, and I’m a thinking type, so let’s not discuss that because we are always going to be on different sides’, then it removes from this discussion what I feel to be the absolute heart and soul of the matter when it comes to buildings. Now I don’t want to deny at all what you are saying about personalities. But I really cannot conceive of a properly formed attitude towards buildings, as an artist or a builder, or in any way, if it doesn’t ultimately confront the fact that buildings work in the realm of feeling. So, when you say, ‘Look you’re that type, and I’m this type, and let’s agree not to talk with one another about that fact’, what’s the implication? Is the implication that you think that feeling is not related to buildings? Perhaps you could answer that.
Eisenman: Of course, if you are a feeling type, you would think that feelings are the essence of the matter; and I cannot help thinking, as a thinking type, that ideas are the essence of the matter. It is not something that I can walk away from. We all have a shadow, and my shadow is feeling. I accept that you are that way. I am asking you to accept me the way I am rather than dismissing what I say as not being at the heart of the matter. For you, feeling is the heart of the matter, because it is the only way you can configure the world. I cannot configure the way you do because then I would not be me, and you would not want me to do that.
Alexander: I’m not so sure about that.
Eisenman: It is not I who is into tyranny. Let’s see if we can discuss substantive issues. All I am saying is: do not put people down who cannot get at ideas through feeling. At least 50% of the people here cannot.
Alexander: You’re saying to me, on the level of personal decency and person-to-person respect, let each of us recognize that we have our different attitudes towards the world, and let’s not mix them up with the central, substantive matter at hand. That’s what you’re inviting me to do.
Eisenman: That’s what I was hoping.
Alexander: I will suspend that, if you can’t deal with that. I fully understand that what you’re saying concerns you, and I’m quite comfortable with the person-to-person respect, given our different attitudes and so forth. The trouble is that we also happen to be dealing with a matter that I believe intellectually is the central issue. Intellectually, not from the point of view of feeling. It’s very, very difficult for me to stay away from this issue because, if I don’t talk about it with you to some extent, I will actually never know what you’re really talking about. So, if you will permit me, I’d like to go into this matter and see where we come to. You see, there is a debate going on here, and there is also a disagreement — I believe of substance. I’m not even sure whether we work in the same way. That’s why I would like to check out a couple of examples, buildings. Now, I will pick a building, let’s take Chartres for example. We probably don’t disagree that it’s a great building.
Image 01: Notre-Dame de Chartres (Chartres Cathedral), Chartres, France, XII century onwards.
Eisenman: Well, we do actually, I think it is a boring building. Chartres, for me, is one of the least interesting cathedrals. In fact, I have gone to Chartres a number of times to eat in the restaurant across the street — had a 1934 red Mersault wine, which was exquisite — I never went into the cathedral. The cathedral was done en passant. Once you’ve seen one Gothic cathedral, you have seen them all.
Alexander: Well, pick a building you like. Pick another.
Eisenman: Let’s pick something that we can agree on — Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericati. For me, one of the things that qualifies it in an incredible way, is precisely because it is more intellectual and less emotional. It makes me feel high in my mind, not in my gut. Things that make me feel high in my gut are very suspicious, because that is my psychological problem. So, I keep it in the mind, because I’m happier with that.
Image 02: Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza, Italy, 1550-1680. Architect: Andrea Palladio
You see, the Mies and Chiericati thing was far greater than Moore and [Chartres], because Moore is just a pasticheur.[3] We agree on that. But Mies and Chiericati is a very interesting example, and I find much of what is in Palladio — that is the contamination of wholeness — also in Mies. I also find alternation, as opposed to simple repetition. And you said things which are very close to my heart. I am very interested in the arguments you presented in your lecture. You said something about the significance of spaces between elements being repeated. Not only the element itself being repeated, but the space between. I’m very interested in the space between. That is where we come together. Now the space between is not part of classical unity, wholeness, completeness; it is another typology.
It is not a typology of sameness or wholeness; it’s a typology of differences. It is a typology which transgresses wholeness and contaminates it. If you say A/B A/B, that is an alternation of wholes outside of the classical canon, which tries to take A and B and bring them into symmetry — as in B/A/B/A/B. In other words, there are three B’s with one in the center, and two A’s as minor chords. When you have A/B/A/B/ you have alternating pairs with no center, closure or hierarchy. A/B/A/B/A is complete. A/B/A/B is not. What is interesting about serial structures is the spaces between, not the elements themselves, but the differences between the two. You were talking about that last night when you gave an example of something that was not dealing with wholeness at all in the classical sense. Maybe we would benefit from talking more about this. Or not?
Alexander: I don’t fully follow what you’re saying. It never occurred to me that someone could so explicitly reject the core experience of something like Chartres. It’s very interesting to have this conversation. If this weren’t a public situation, I’d be tempted to get into this on a psychiatric level. I’m actually quite serious about this. What I’m saying is that I understand how one could be very panicked by these kinds of feelings. Actually, it’s been my impression that a large part of the history of modern architecture has been a kind of panicked withdrawal from these kinds of feelings, which have governed the formation of buildings over the last 2000 years or so.
Why that panicked withdrawal occurred, I’m still trying to find out. It’s not clear to me. But I’ve never heard somebody say, until a few moments ago, someone say explicitly: “Yes, I find that stuff freaky. I don’t like to deal with feelings. I like to deal with ideas.” Then, of course, what follows is very clear. You would like the Palladio building; you would not be particularly happy with Chartres, and so forth. And Mies …
Eisenman: The panicked withdrawal of the alienated self was dealt with in Modernism — which was concerned with the alienation of the self from the collective.
Alexander: However painful it is, we are doing pretty well right now. We’re not being rude to each other, and things are moving along really nicely. It does seem to me, since we have locked into this particular discussion, that we ought to stay with it. […] I will give you another example, a slightly absurd example. A group of students under my direction was designing houses for about a dozen people, each student doing one house. In order to speed things up (we only had a few weeks to do this project), I said: ‘We are going to concentrate on the layout and cooperation of these buildings, so the building system is not going to be under discussion.’ So, I gave them the building system, and it happened to include pitched roofs, fairly steep pitched roofs. The following week, after people had looked at the notes, I handed out about the building system, somebody raised his hand and said: ‘Look, you know everything is going along fine, but could we discuss the roofs?’ So, I said: ‘Yes, what would you like to discuss about the roofs?’ And the person said: ‘Could we make the roofs a little different?’ I had told them to make just ordinary pitched roofs. I asked, ‘What’s the issue about the roofs?’ And the person responded: ‘Well, I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny.’ Then that conversation died down a bit. Five minutes later, somebody else popped up his hand and said: ‘Look, I feel fine about the building system, except the roofs. Could we discuss the roofs?’ I said: ‘What’s the matter with the roofs?’ He said, ‘Well, I have been talking to my wife about the roofs, and she likes the roofs’ — and then he sniggered. I said: ‘What’s so funny or odd about that?’ And he said: ‘Well, I don’t know, I …’. Well, to cut a long story short, it became clear that … [Alexander goes to the blackboard and draws different types of roofs]. Now, all of you who are educated in the modernist canon know that as an architect, a respectable architect of the 1980s, it is quite okay to do this, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this, but please [he points to a pitched roof design] do not do this.
So, the question is, why not? Why does this taboo exist? What is this funny business about having to prove you are a modem architect and having to do something other than a pitched roof? The simplest explanation is that you have to do these others to prove your membership in the fraternity of modern architecture. You have to do something more far out, otherwise people will think you are a simpleton. But I do not think that is the whole story. I think the more crucial explanation — very strongly related to what I was talking about last night — is that the pitched roof contains a very, very primitive power of feeling. Not a low pitched, tract house roof, but a beautifully shaped, fully pitched roof. That kind of roof has a very primitive essence as a shape, which reaches into a very vulnerable part of you. But the version that is okay among the architectural fraternity is the one which does not have the feeling: the weird angle, the butterfly, the asymmetrically steep shed, etc. — all the shapes which look interesting but which lack feeling altogether. The roof issue is a simple example. But I do believe the history of architecture in the last few decades has been one of specifically and repeatedly trying to avoid any primitive feeling whatsoever. Why this has taken place, I don’t know.
Eisenman: This is a wonderful coincidence, because I too am concerned with the subject of roofs. Let me answer it in a very deep way. I would argue that the pitched roof is — as Gaston Bachelard points out — one of the essential characteristics of “houseness”. It was the extension of the vertebrate structure which sheltered and enclosed man. Michel Foucault has said that when man began to study man in the 19th century, there was a displacement of man from the center. The representation of the fact that man was no longer the center of the world, no longer the arbiter, and, therefore, no longer controlling artifacts, was reflected in a change from the vertebrate-center type of structure to the center-as-void. That distance, which you call alienation or lack of feeling, may have been merely a natural product of this new cosmology.
The non-vertebrate structure is an attempt to express that change in the cosmology. It is not merely a stylistic issue, or one that goes against feeling, or the alienation that man feels. When man began to study himself, he began to lose his position in the center. The loss of center is expressed by that alienation. Whether understood by modern architecture or not, what Modernism was attempting to explain by its form was that alienation. Now that technology has gone rampant, maybe we need to rethink the cosmology. Can we go back to a cosmology of anthropocentrism? I am not convinced that it is appropriate.
Alexander: Let me just inject one thing. This is a pretty interesting subject. I just want to make one thing clear. I am not suggesting that it would be good idea to romantically go back and pick up the pitched roof, and say: ‘Well, it did a certain job for several hundred years, why don’t we keep it, or use it again?’ I am talking about a totally different language than that.
I think I am going to have to give a rather more elaborate explanation Up until about 1600, most of the world views that existed in different cultures did see man and the universe as more or less intertwined and inseparable … either through the medium of what they called God or in some other way. But all that was understood. The particular intellectual game that led us to discover all the wonders of science forced us to abandon temporarily that idea. In other words, in order to do physics, to do biology, we were actually taught to pretend that things were like little machines because only then could you tinker with them and find out what makes them tick. That’s all fine. It was a tremendous endeavor, and it paid off.
But it may have been factually wrong. That is, the constitution of the universe may be such that the human self and the substance that things made out of, the spatial matter or whatever you call it, are much more inextricably related than we realized. Now, I am not talking about some kind of aboriginal primitivism. I am saying that it may actually be a matter of fact that those things are more related than we realize. And that we have been trained to play a trick on ourselves for the last 300 years in order to discover certain things. Now, if that’s true — there are plenty of people in the world who are beginning to say it is, by the way, certainly in physics and other related subjects — then my own contribution to that line of thought has to do with these structures of sameness that I have been talking about.
In other words, the order I was sketching out last night is ultimately, fundamentally an order produced by centers or wholes which are reinforcing each other and creating each other. Now, if all of that is so, then the pitched roof would simply come about as a consequence of all that — not as an antecedent. It would turn out that, in circumstances where one is putting a roof on a building, in the absence of other very strong forces that are forcing you to do something different, that is the most natural and simple roof to do. And, therefore, that kind of order would tend to reappear — of course, in a completely different, modern technological style — simply because that is the nature of order, not because of a romantic harkening back to past years. You probably understand this.
Eisenman: What we have not been able to get at yet is that it is possible to project a totally different cosmology that deals with the feelings of the self. Alternative views of the world might suggest that it is not wholeness that will evoke our truest feelings and that it is precisely the wholeness of the anthropocentric world that it might be the presence of absence, that is, the nonwhole, the fragment which might produce a condition that would more closely approximate our innate feelings today.
Let me be more specific. Last night, you gave two examples of structural relationships that evoke feelings of wholeness — of an arcade around a court, which was too large, and of a window frame which is also too large. Le Corbusier once defined architecture as having to do with a window which is either too large or too small, but never the right size. Once it was the right size it was no longer functioning. When it is the right size, that building is merely a building. The only way in the presence of architecture that is that feeling, that need for something other, when the window was either too large or too small.
I was reminded of this when I went to Spain this summer to see the town hall at Logrono by Rafael Moneo. He made an arcade where the columns were too thin. It was profoundly disturbing to me when I first saw photographs of the building. The columns seemed too thin for an arcade around the court of a public space. And then, when I went to see the building, I realized what he was doing. He was taking away from something that was too large, achieving an effect that expresses the separation and fragility that man feels today in relationship to the technological scale of life, to machines, and the car-dominated environment we live in. I had a feeling with that attenuated colonnade of precisely what I think you are talking about. Now, I am curious if you can admit, in your idea of wholeness, the idea of separation — wholeness for you might be separation for me. The idea that the too-small might also satisfy a feeling as well as the too-large. Because if it is only the too-large that you will admit, then we have a real problem.
Image 03: Town Hall, Logrono, ES, 1976. Architect: Rafael Moneo.
Alexander: I didn’t say too large, by the way, I just said large. Quite a different matter.
Eisenman: You said a boundary larger than the entity it surrounds. I think you said too large.
Alexander: I said large in relation to the entity. Not too large.
Eisenman: Large, meaning larger than it needs be?
Alexander: No, I didn’t mean that.
Peter Eisenman: Well, could it be smaller than it needs be?
Alexander: Unfortunately, I don’t know the building you just described. Your description sounds horrendous to me. Of course, without actually seeing it, I can’t tell. But if your words convey anything like what the thing is actually like, then it sounds to me that this is exactly this kind of prickly, weird place, that for some reason some groups of people have chosen to go to nowadays. Now, why are they going there? Don’t ask me.
Eisenman: I guess what I am saying is that I believe that there is an alternate cosmology to the one which you suggest. The cosmology of the last 300 years has changed and there is now the potential for expressing those feelings that you speak of in other ways than through largeness — your boundaries — and the alternating repetition of architectural elements. You had 12 or 15 points. Precisely because I believe that the old cosmology is no longer an effective basis on which to build, I begin to want to invert your conditions — to search for their negative — to say that for every positive condition you suggest, if you could propose a negative you might more closely approximate the cosmology of today. In other words, if I could find the negative of your 12 points, we would come closer to approximating a cosmology that would deal with both of us than does the one you are proposing.
Alexander: Can we just go back to the arcade for a moment? The reason Moneo’s arcade sounded prickly and strange was, when I make an arcade, I have a very simple purpose, and that is to try to make it feel absolutely comfortable — physically, emotionally, practically, and absolutely. This is pretty hard to do. Much, much harder to do than most of the present generation of architects will admit to. Let’s just talk about the simple matter of making an arcade. I find in my own practical work that in order to find out what’s really comfortable, it is necessary to mock up the design at full scale. This is what I normally do. So, I will take pieces of lumber, scrap material, and I’ll start mocking up. How big are the columns? What is the space between them? At what height is the ceiling above? How wide is the thing? When you actually get all those elements correct, at a certain point you begin to feel that they are in harmony.
Of course, harmony is a product not only of yourself, but of the surroundings. In other words, what is harmonious in one place will not be in another. So, it is very, very much a question of what application creates harmony in that place. It is a simple objective matter. At least my experience tells me, that when a group of different people set out to try and find out what is harmonious, what feels most comfortable in such and such a situation, their opinions about it will tend to converge, if they are mocking up full-scale, real stuff. Of course, if they’re making sketches or throwing out ideas, they won’t agree. But if you start making the real thing, one tends to reach agreement. My only concern is to produce that kind of harmony. The things that I was talking about last night — I was doing empirical observation about — as a matter of fact, it turns out that these certain structures need to be in there to produce that harmony.
The thing that strikes me about your friend’s building — if I understood you correctly — is that somehow in some intentional way it is not harmonious. That is, Moneo intentionally wants to produce an effect of disharmony. Maybe even of incongruity.
Eisenman: That is correct.
Alexander: I find that incomprehensible. I find it very irresponsible. I find it nutty. I feel sorry for the man. I also feel incredibly angry because he is fucking up the world.
Audience: (Applause)
Eisenman: Precisely the reaction that you elicited from the group. That is, they feel comfortable clapping. The need to clap worries me because it means that mass psychology is taking over.
Someone from the audience: Why should architects feel comfortable with a cosmology you are not even sure exists?
Eisenman: Let’s say if I went out in certain places in the United States and asked people about the music, they would feel comfortable with, a lot of people would come up with Mantovani. And I’m not convinced that that is something I should have to live with all my life, just because the majority of people feel comfortable with it. I want to go back to the notion of needing to feel comfortable. Why does Chris need to feel comfortable, and I do not? Why does he feel the need for harmony, and I do not? Why does he see incongruity as irresponsible, and why does he get angry? I do not get angry when he feels the need for harmony. I just feel I have a different view of it.
Someone from the audience: He is not screwing up the world.
Eisenman: I would like to suggest that if I were not here agitating nobody would know what Chris’s idea of harmony is, and you all would not realize how much you agree with him … Walter Benjamin talks about “the destructive character”, which, he says, is reliability itself, because it is always constant. If you repress the destructive nature, it is going to come out in some way. If you are only searching for harmony, the disharmonies and incongruencies which define harmony and make it understandable will never be seen. A world of total harmony is no harmony at all. Because I exist, you can go along and understand your need for harmony, but do not say that I am being irresponsible or make a moral judgement that I am screwing up the world, because I would not want to have to defend myself as a moral imperative for you.
Alexander: Good God!
Eisenman: Nor should you feel angry. I think you should just feel this harmony is something that the majority of the people need and want. But equally there must be people out there like myself who feel the need for incongruity, disharmony, etc.
Alexander: If you were an unimportant person, I would feel quite comfortable letting you go your own way. But the fact is that people who believe as you do are really fucking up the whole profession of architecture right now by propagating these beliefs. Excuse me, I’m sorry, but I feel very, very strongly about this. It’s all very well to say: ‘Look, harmony here, disharmony there, harmony here — it’s all fine’. But the fact is that we as architects are entrusted with the creation of that harmony in the world. And if a group of very powerful people, yourself and others…
Eisenman: How does someone become so powerful if he is screwing up the world? I mean somebody is going to see through that …
Alexander: Yes, I think they will quite soon.
Eisenman: I would hope, Chris, that we are here to present arguments. These people here are not people who have rings in their noses, at least as far as I can see, and they can judge for themselves whether I am screwing up the world or not. If they choose to think I am screwing up the world, they certainly would not come here. These are open forums. For you to determine arbitrarily that I am screwing up the world seems self-righteous and arrogant. I have not had much of a chance to do so and neither have you. Precisely because I am uncomfortable with those situations which you describe as comfortable, I find myself having to live in New York. I do not live in San Francisco, even though I think it is a nice place. There is not enough grist there for me, not enough sand in the oyster. And my head starts — it may be my own psychological problem — but thank God, there is a loony bin called New York where eight million people who feel the way I do are allowed to be!
Alexander: Actually, New York is not created by that kind of madness. New York is certainly a very exciting place. When you compare it to Denmark or Sweden, I fully understand what you are saying. And I sympathize with you. Your observation seems to me a very reasonable one, objectively speaking. But that is quite a different matter. It’s quite different from the original question: why should I feel so strongly, why should I get angry, because you are preaching disharmony? I was trying to explain to you why I get angry about it.
Eisenman: I am not preaching disharmony. I am suggesting that disharmony might be part of the cosmology that we exist in. I am not saying right or wrong. My children live with an unconscious fear that they may not live out their natural lives. I am not saying that fear is good. I am trying to find a way to deal with that anxiety. An architecture that puts its head in the sand and goes back to neoclassicism, and Schinkel, Lutyens, and Ledoux, does not seem to be a way of dealing with the present anxiety. Most of what my colleagues are doing today does not seem to be the way to go. Equally, I do not believe that the way to go, as you suggest, is to put up structures to make people feel comfortable, to preclude that anxiety. What is a person to do if he cannot react against anxiety or see it pictured in his life? After all, that is what all those evil Struwwel Peter characters are for in German fairy tales.
Alexander: Don’t you think there is enough anxiety at present? Do you really think we need to manufacture more anxiety in the form of buildings?
Eisenman: Let me see if I can get it to you another way. Tolstoy wrote about the man who had so many modern conveniences in Russia that when he was adjusting the chair and the furniture, etc., that he was so comfortable and so nice and so pleasant that he didn’t know — he lost all control of his physical and mental reality. There was nothing. What I’m suggesting is that if we make people so comfortable in these nice little structures of yours, that we might lull them into thinking that everything’s all right, Jack, which it isn’t. And so, the role of art or architecture might be just to remind people that everything wasn’t all right. And I’m not convinced, by the way, that it is all right.
Alexander: I can’t, as a maker of things, I just can’t understand it. I do not have a concept of things in which I can even talk about making something in the frame of mind you are describing. I mean, to take a simple example, when I make a table I say to myself: ‘All right, I’m going to make a table, and I’m going to try to make a good table’. And of course, then from there on I go to the ultimate resources I have and what I know, how well I can make it. But for me to then introduce some kind of little edge, which starts trying to be a literary comment, and then somehow the table is supposed to be at the same time a good table, but it also is supposed to be I don’t know what; a comment on nuclear warfare, making a little joke, doing various other things … I’m practically naive; it doesn’t make sense to me.
Commentary: The Alexander-Eisenman Debate on the Background of Different Spatial Theories
First of all, I want to point out the fundamental observation made by Eisenman regarding Alexander’s works, as an introduction to the debate: ‘Chris, you said we need to change our cosmology, that it is a cosmology that grew out of physics and the sciences in the past and is, in a sense, 300 years old. I probably agree with every word of that.’ That observation helps us to give a proper framework to the Alexander-Eisenman debate.
That observation also offers the appropriate framework to the existence of this website RSaP, when I said that our spatial and placial understanding of the world is directly connected and conditioned by the new cosmological worldview that emerged at the beginning of the past century, after three hundred years of Newtonian cosmology, dominated by mechanistic and deterministic thinking. The alternative cosmological view, which I am presenting and which takes us to the adoption of a new conception of nature (see the articles Place, Space, and the Philosophy of Nature; Place, Space, and a New Conception of Nature, and Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence), is characterized by a ‘systemic’ or ‘organic’ understanding of the world, which negates dualisms and is based on concepts like ‘complexity’, ‘probability’, ‘process’, ‘relation’, ‘complementarity’, ‘entanglement’, etc. The Alexander-Eisenman debate has this important cosmological issue as a precondition: if we do not keep this in mind, I believe we may fail to offer an accurate interpretation of the thinking of the two authors.
However, contrarily to what will result from that debate, I would not reduce that contrast to mere opposition (as in the intention of Alexander) or simply different points of view (as expressed in different passages by Eisenman); rather I prefer to speak about the ‘correlation’ of competing models which can be both useful and beneficial to understanding phenomena at different scales or levels. One of the characteristic traits of the new worldview is the complexity that derives from the necessity to use different perspectives — the mechanistic and the systemic — for the analysis of phenomena. It is not merely a physical question (i.e., regarding the domain of physics) of dividing the world into subatomic and human scale phenomena where different physical laws hold – an aspect which may have very little or no interest at all for architects; more extendedly, it is a question to see to what degree old reductionist and mechanistic interpretations or reality (anchored to the development of classical physics) hold to explain new phenomena or phenomena which were not settled by those explanations or, even worst, phenomena that degenerated and escaped human control after the application of such reductionist and mechanistic models — e.g., environmental phenomena or human phenomena concerning economy, society, etc.
The important difference between competing models was exemplified by Alexander and taken up by Eisenman when he says that ‘the order of a Coke machine is available to us because of our causal, mechanistic view of the world. And then you brought up that the order of a Mozart symphony is not available to us’. If Eisenman, with his reference to the work of the French Structuralist, understands that gap between explanations simply as ‘differences’, Alexander does not so, fundamentally. He is more radical in the interpretation, and not as condescending as Eisenman (‘what these Postmodernists and Structuralists are saying is not the same thing as what I said’). Alexander wants to avoid the ambiguities behind the abstract philosophical approach attempted by Eisenman with the example of the Structuralists (‘words are very, very cheap’ — Alexander ironically says) and wants to go directly to the concrete point of architecture, bypassing Eisenman’s abstract intellectualism. To do that, to directly approach buildings and architecture, he is going to appeal to ‘feelings’: ‘Now then, I look at the buildings… and the main thing I recognize is, that whatever the words are — the intellectual argument behind that stuff — the actual buildings are totally different. Diametrically opposed. Dealing with entirely different matters. Actually, I don’t even know what that work is dealing with, but I do know that it is not dealing with feelings.’
In this debate, from the initial cosmological approach, we are immediately shifting to an argument connected to cosmology which more properly unfolds at an epistemological level of explanation: the difference between abstract and concrete approaches to the analysis of phenomena — in this case, architectural phenomena. On the one hand, the abstract intellectualism of Eisenman; on the other hand, the more pragmatic, sensible — that is, linked to senses and feelings — attitude of Alexander.
To offer the reader a framework to decipher the entire question, in-between cosmology, epistemology, and architecture, in-between intellectualism and pragmatism, thinking and feeling, mind and body, it comes to my mind (and aid) Plato’sTimaues: at the cost of extreme simplification, I synthetically remind architects, who are not so confident with that work, that according to Plato’s Timaeus (1) the evolving structure of the world we live in — i.e., the physical world of changing facts, sensible forms, feelings, and bodies — is (2) a copy of an ideal world of forms — the perfect world of immutable, universal, mathematical forms. Since physical bodies continually appear, move, change their places, and perish, there must be (3) a mediatory entity or realm between the two worlds while movements occur. Such must be the nature of the ‘receptacle’ (3) — the mediatory entity, ‘the scene of implacement’ in Plato’s model:[4] something which is neither space nor place, but, at the same time, can be recognized by modern interpreters both as space and place; actually, ‘chōra’ is the name chosen Plato, by which he calls that mediatory entity (‘chōra’ is a Greek term which is sometimes translated as space sometimes as place, but which I usually prefer not to translate, even if I often say that my reformed understanding of place is very much similar to Plato’s notion of ‘chōra’ since it puts together the concrete — the physical — and the abstract — the ideal — under the same hybrid domain, which is for me a placial domain out of which more abstract spatial domains may emerge). This is to say that there is an inextricable entanglement between cosmological questions, epistemological questions regarding the relation between the concrete and the abstract (which can be declined as oppositions: mind/body, the physical/the ideal, thought/feeling etc.), spatial questions (Where does everything takes place? Which is the scene where events happen? Is it space? Is it place?), and architecture, which is before all a question of space (this is a traditional wisdom since the final part of the XIX century, see the Appendix in the article On the Ambiguous Language of Space) and — I add, as a more up-to-date form of social and environmental wisdom — of place.[5]
I believe this kind of framework can offer the reader a handle to understand what Alexander and Eisenman are saying, what is their position with respect to those questions, and why one can be said to be the paladin of place, and of a concrete and more pragmatic attitude towards architecture, linked to body and feelings (Alexander), while the other can be called the paladin of space, and of a more intellectual approach to architecture linked to abstraction and thinking (Eisenman).
Concerning this specific spatial question, which suggested the present article and title, in the present debate, Eisenman’s interest in the concept of space is quite explicit when the American architect affirms: ‘I am very interested in the arguments you presented in your lecture. You said something about the significance of spaces between elements being repeated. Not only the element itself being repeated, but the space between. I’m very interested in the space between… Now the space between is not part of classical unity, wholeness, completeness; it is another typology.’
To make Alexander’s interest in place explicit, apart from some specific passages in the present debate (‘harmony is a product not only of yourself, but of the surroundings. In other words, what is harmonious in one place will not be in another’), among other works, we could refer to the explanations he gave to the construction process of his buildings: e.g., the Linz Café, Linz, AT, which is also published in Lotus International, N°40 (1983), or the Campus of Eishin Gakuen, Tokyo, JP, described in Alexander’s book ‘The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth’ (2012). In his account to the Linz Cafè, Alexander understands the process of construction of the building as the process of construction of a place: ‘I have decided that above all people would need a place to refresh themselves… a place, which, in virtue of its structure, seems somehow to contain a mirror of a person’s own self… The building was conceived from the outset, as a place which was just right for the feelings of the ordinary person – you and me – in which each room, each terrace, alcove, balcony, even each window and ornament, was chosen to be truly comfortable – a place in which one could feel completely at home and at peace.’[6] A place, not ‘space’ as almost any other architect would have characterized those rooms, alcoves, terraces, etc. (I have used the term ‘spatiophilia’ – see the article Spatiophilia – to express this bias that architects and common people have for the use of the term ‘space’ when they describe architectures or, more generally, any man-made environment). I am very, very sympathetic with that approach of Alexander, which I would call a ‘placial approach’.
Similarly, in Alexander’s preface to ‘The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth’– A New Architecture, A New Civilization — written thirty years after the abovementioned publication, he offers his view of life and architecture, which presents analogies (at least from a theoretical point of view) to what I am arguing for at RSaP, where I consider place within a systemic perspective, and were the focus – just like Alexander did in the past for his works — is on terms like ‘built environment’, ‘living environments’, ‘ambient physical surroundings’, ‘events’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘building and outdoor places’, or simply ‘places’ rather than on ‘space’.[7] Certainly, Alexander was one of the pioneering figures who contributed to the on-going shift of interest from space to place, which I have described nearly a decade ago in the paper From Space to Place, A Necessary Paradigm Shift in Architecture.
I referred to the Platonic argument to say that the Alexander-Eisenman debate on architecture and harmony is conditioned by entangled cosmological, epistemological, and spatial considerations: from cosmology to architecture passing through the difference between the abstract and the concrete, the Platonic argument can be used to solve the quagmire behind the Alexander-Eisenman debate (‘Who is wrong, who is right?’ To oversimplify the question that interests to architects), introducing the spatial argument as a key question, which has, at the same time, cosmological, epistemological, and architectural relevance and which offers us the possibility to considering Alexander and Eisenman the advocates of different spatial positions, one closer to a placial conception of life and the cosmos (Alexander), the other closer to a spatial, more abstract and intellectual conception of them.
Returning to the debate, in the introductory part, cards are immediately exposed on the table: on both theoretical and practical perspectives the ultimate battle here is between the abstract ‘intellectualism’ of Eisenman and ‘feelings’, which Alexander appeals to. A clash which, we have just seen, has many declinations apart from architecte: the extended horizon of those declinations is immediately hinted at by both Alexander and Eisenman when they touch the question of a new ‘cosmology’ and ‘the hierarchical, mechanistic, and deterministic order of the past 300 years’. It is this changing order of nature and the epistemologies attached to it that we are discussing, ultimately: architecture is the battlefield for Alexander and Eisenman to see which order should prevail.
Initially, Eisenman wants to avoid a face-to-face duel with Alexander: he is looking for a common ground of discussion for the epistemological battle between thinking and feeling. Even better, he wants to escape the logic of a dialectic battle: there is not a preferred or a favourable position from which to sustain a thesis; there are just different sides or positions, Eisenman is saying, and, for him, one position is not better than the other: this is the sense of ‘you may be a feeling type and I may be a thinking type.’ Let’s go further, is Eisenman’s wish (‘So, why not start over’).
However, Alexander is not as condescending as Eisenman: that is a question which cannot simply be reduced to different positions since those positions — mind or feelings? — determine the destiny of architecture. Alexander is resolute about that: ‘the business of the feeling type and the thinking type does need to be talked about’; it cannot be skipped easily because, otherwise, we remove from the discussion ‘the absolute heart and soul of the matter… the fact that buildings work in the realm of feeling’.
Therefore, Alexander offers no easy way out to Eisenman: ‘Do you think that feeling is not related to buildings? Perhaps you could answer that.’
Even if Eisenman at first proposes the same argument, saying that those are just different, personal positions (‘For you, feeling is the heart of the matter, because it is the only way you can configure the world. I cannot configure the way you do because then I would not be me’), when Alexander insists on the argument (‘The trouble is that we also happen to be dealing with a matter that I believe intellectually is the central issue … So, if you will permit me, I’d like to go into this matter and see where we come to’) picking a building as an example to finally enter the debate — ‘let’s take Chartres for example. We probably don’t disagree that it’s a great building…’ —, Eisenman accepts the challenge and their different, almost opposite approaches to architecture and life (ways of thinking) become apparent and irreconcilable (at least, it seems irreconcilable if we follow how the debate unfolds): ‘Well, we do actually [disagree], I think [Chartres cathedral] it is a boring building’, Eisenman says!
The debate comes alive.
Then, upon Alexander’s invitation, Eisenman picks up another building — Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericati, which is a better way for him to expose his spatial interest in architecture — when I say ‘spatial’ I specifically refer to Eisenman’s interest for the concept of space and for what it represents in architecture. Behind Palladio’s work, Eisenman is able to find those traces of an intellectual rather than emotional approach to architecture, which, for him, are the essence of the architectural phenomenon (‘Things that make me feel high in my mind, not in my gut’). Certain proportions, certain mathematical rules behind the appearance of façades and especially the space in-between which derives from certain applications of such abstract rules, are elements that destroy classical harmony; space is the element ‘which transgresses wholeness [of an architectural composition] and contaminates it.’ This is what Eisenman is interested in: ‘the contamination of the whole’ by means of space.
For Eisenman, space is the medium, the architectural medium to reach that scope — the contamination of the classical — since space, fundamentally, I have argued elsewhere, is what differentiates classical from modern architecture, and in this sense, certain works by Palladio, can be seen as precursors of modernity according to Eisenman. It is not by chance that Eisenman, immediately after Palladio, refers to Mies, the champion of space in architecture (as I tried to explain in the article ‘Anachronistic Interpretations of Space’, space, as an instrument for architecture, was not a tool at the disposition of architects before modernity: they used other architectural instruments to compose their architectures). Space ‘is another typology’ Eisenman says ‘it is not part of classic unity’.
Space — ‘the space between’— is a new tool in the hands of modern architects, but, maybe, I should say ‘in the minds’ given that, I am arguing at RSaP, space is exclusively an abstract/intellectual instrument which has nothing to do with the real environment of an architecture once this architecture has been built (this, in the majority of cases, would mean misplacing an abstract entity like space for place, which, to begin with, has a concrete nature – this is an important issue that Eisenman, like the greatest parts of contemporary architect, excluding Alexander, seems to ignore). The creation and invention of an architecture or building happens in the abstract realm of space — here, Eisenman is right —, while its actual construction happens in the realm of place and feelings — here Alexander is right. However, contrarily to what both authors maintain in the debate, holding opposite and apparently irreconcilable positions (surely irreconcilable for Alexander), the two positions — abstract/concrete, space/place, mind/feelings — are correlated and one position does not exclude the other.
So, space, here, in this part of the debate is clearly used by Eisenman as a tool to put architecture on an abstract intellectual basis (‘When you have A/B/A/B [he is referring to the rhythms and alternations of matter/void] you have alternating pairs with no center, closure or hierarchy. A/B/A/B/A is complete. A/B/A/B is not. What is interesting about serial structures is the spaces between, not the elements themselves’), which is not the direction Alexander wants to follow, or which he is confident with; that’s why he attacks Eisenman and modern architects (‘I don’t fully follow what you are saying. It never occurred to me that someone could so explicitly reject the core experience of something like Chartres. It’s very interesting to have this conversation. If this weren’t a public situation, I’d be tempted to get into this on a psychiatric level… What I’m saying is that I understand how one could be very panicked by these kinds of feelings. Actually, it’s been my impression that a large part of the history of modern architecture has been a kind of panicked withdrawal from these kinds of feelings, which have governed the formation of buildings over the last 2000 years or so.)
So, now, Alexander replies to Eisenman’s abstract spatial intellectualism making his pleading for a more concrete approach to architecture: an approach regarding feelings, harmony of the whole (wholeness), and a timeless way of building which, according to Alexander, results from the natural order of processes and forces relentlessly acting behind architectural phenomena. He does so by taking the example of a pitched roof in the context of an architectural design laboratory with students under Alexander’s direction — the pitched roof, a sort of taboo for modern architects Alexander says — ‘A group of students under my direction was designing houses… I gave them the building system, and it happened to include pitched roofs, fairly steep pitched roofs… somebody raised his hand and said: “could we discuss the roofs?” … I asked, ‘What’s the issue about the roofs?’ And the person responded: “Well, I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny”… Why does this taboo exist? What is this funny business about having to prove you are a modem architect and having to do something other than a pitched roof?… I think the more crucial explanation is that the pitched roof contains a very, very primitive power of feeling. The roof issue is a simple example. But I do believe the history of architecture in the last few decades has been one of specifically and repeatedly trying to avoid any primitive feeling whatsoever. Why this has taken place, I don’t know… I just want to make one thing clear. I am not suggesting that it would be a good idea to romantically go back and pick up the pitched roof… the pitched roof would simply come about as a consequence of […] the absence of other very strong forces that are forcing you to do something different, that is the most natural and simple roof to do. And, therefore, that kind of order would tend to reappear — of course, in a completely different, modern technological style — simply because that is the nature of order, not because of a romantic harkening back to past years.’
As a reply to the cosmological order behind phenomena and the related sense of wholeness and feelings evoked by Alexander with his architectural examples (‘you gave… examples of structural relationships that evoke feelings of wholeness …’), Eisenman proposes that ‘alternative views of the world might suggest that it is not wholeness that will evoke our truest feeling’, as maintained by Alexander, but that it is its absence — that is, the ‘nonwhole… which might produce a condition that would more closely approximate our innate feelings today.’ Space — I am saying with respect to Eisenman’s position — is the natural architectural tool to evoke that ‘nonwhole’, the negative as the correlative to the positive evoked by Alexander (Precisely because I believe that the old cosmology is no longer an effective basis on which to build, I begin to want to invert your conditions — to search for their negative — to say that for every positive condition you suggest, if you could propose a negative you might more closely approximate the cosmology of today.)
Eisenman also offers an architectural example to elucidate what he means by the absence of wholeness, which may arouse in us feelings as true as those evoked by Alexander through wholeness; feelings of a humanity alien to this world rather than belonging to it or in harmony with it, as proposed by Alexander. This alien condition of modernity was thus expressed by Eisenman in a passage of the debate: ‘When man began to study himself, he began to lose his position in the center. The loss of center is expressed by that alienation. Whether understood by modern architecture or not, what Modernism was attempting to explain by its form was that alienation’. So, Eisenman explicitly refers to the thin columns of the Town Hall designed by Rafael Moneo, in Logrono, Spain, which are intentionally designed too thin with respect to the whole building, as an example of the feelings aroused by a different type of order in architecture, that is, disorder, as a way to express that sort of alienation: according to the interpretation of Eisenman, the intention of the architect with such thin columns is to achieve ‘an effect that expresses the separation and fragility that man feels today in relationship to the technological scale of life, to machines, and the car-dominated environment we live in.’ So, Eisenman is proposing what I prefer to call an ‘epistemology of disorder’ (rather than a different cosmology as Eisenman calls it) instead of an epistemology of order and harmony, like in the intention of Alexander.[8]
Alexander couldn’t believe his ears when he heard, through the account of Eisenman, that architects can intentionally design parts without harmony with respect to the whole (‘if I understood you correctly… Moneo intentionally wants to produce an effect of disharmony. Maybe even of incongruity’), being guided by such abstract intellectual considerations offered by Eisenman to justify that work (a disharmony ‘that expresses the separation and fragility that man feels today…’). From an opposite perspective, more concrete and practical, and which necessarily involves a place-based attitude rather than the abstracting space-based attitude proclaimed by Eisenman, Alexander says that the scope of any architectural element (in this case an arcade) ‘is to try to make it feel absolutely comfortable — physically, emotionally, practically, and absolutely’ and that, of course, ‘harmony is a product not only of yourself, but of the surroundings. In other words, what is harmonious in one place will not be in another. So, it is very, very much a question of what application creates harmony in that place. It is a simple objective matter.’
So, we have reached the climax of the discussion, the contrast between two different, apparently irreconcilable world visions, when Alexanders says: ‘I find that incomprehensible. I find it very irresponsible. I find it nutty’ to conclude his frontal attack with this famous sentence: ‘I also feel incredibly angry because he is fucking up the world.’
Slideshow 01 (Images 04-05-06-07, below): House III, Lakeville, Connecticut, US, 1969-71. Architect: Eisenman Architects.
Slideshow 02 (Images 08-09-10-11, below): The Eishin Campus, Tokyo, JP, 1981-1985. Architect: Christopher Alexander. Images byTakeshi Kakeda.
This is exactly the direction of the debate Eisenman wanted to avoid since the beginning of the discussion. Therefore, he retires himself on the positions already expressed at the beginning of the debate: simply, difference between points of view, subjective differences, rather than ‘cosmological’, or objective differences as Alexander maintains (just a few moments before, Alexander said ‘It is a simple objective matter…’). Therefore, this is the sense of Eisenman’s observation: ‘I want to go back to the notion of needing to feel comfortable. Why does Chris need to feel comfortable, and I do not? Why does he feel the need for harmony, and I do not? Why does he see incongruity as irresponsible, and why does he get angry? I do not get angry when he feels the need for harmony. I just feel I have a different view of it.’ And while the audience seems to side with Alexander (‘He is not screwing up the world!’) Eisenman returns to an argumentwhich, this time, has a more ‘metaphysical’ or ‘cosmological’ flavour, and which regards the fundamental concept of opposition between things (concerning the metaphysical sense of ‘opposition’ see the article Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics — Part Two, The Limitation of Being): you need the presence of its opposite to understand the actual value of a thing, or in Eisenman’s words: ‘If you are only searching for harmony, the disharmonies and incongruencies which define harmony and make it understandable will never be seen. A world of total harmony is no harmony at all. Because I exist, you can go along and understand your need for harmony… I think you should just feel this harmony is something that the majority of the people need and want. But equally, there must be people out there like myself who feel the need for incongruity, disharmony, etc.’
Alexander rejects the argument: ‘the fact is that people who believe as you do are really fucking up the whole profession of architecture right now by propagating these beliefs… the fact is that we as architects are entrusted with the creation of that harmony in the world.’
The irreconcilability of the two positions is a fact and the gap is impossible to be filled; the debate is nearly over.
Fundamentally, Eisenman wants architecture to be grounded on abstract or intellectual considerations (thinking) that can determine its formal appearance (and they do as when Eisenman justifies the fundamental disharmonic character of the new architecture he professes — deconstructivism — as the result of men’s loss of the center in the modern world, a sense of alienation that cannot be expressed by the traditional or classical canons of architecture) minimizing the importance of traditional sensuous aspects (what Alexander calls ‘feelings’). Conversely, Alexander, from a diametrically opposite position, wants architecture to be the expression of ‘feelings’, which are eternal and not susceptible to variations since they are referred to the most intimate structures of human beings; intellectualisms of the kind maintained by Eisenman — Alexander believes — only destroys the natural order of things, which is timeless, and remove things off their traditional sense: ‘I can’t, as a maker of things, I just can’t understand it… I mean, to take a simple example, when I make a table I say to myself: “All right, I’m going to make a table, and I’m going to try to make a good table”… for me to then introduce some kind of little edge, which starts trying to be a literary comment, and then somehow the table is supposed to be at the same time a good table, but it also is supposed to be I don’t know what – a comment on nuclear warfare, making a little joke, doing various other things… it doesn’t make sense to me’.
To conclude this retrospective on the debate, I can see the limits and at the same time the opportunities offered by these two different positions, which I have called ‘place-based’, or ‘placial’, and space-based approaches – one more concrete and related to feeling, the other eminently abstract and related to thinking. The difficulty for architects in the present epoch is to reconcile such different standpoints, after having acknowledged that a new cosmology is emerging and with it a different conception of nature (on this important issue, see the articles Place, Space, and the Philosophy of Nature; Place, Space, and a New Conception of Nature, and Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence). The entire theoretical and practical work of Alexander was driven by the awareness of a changing cosmology and, with it, the emergence of a different concept of nature. However, I am arguing with my work, this fact, this changing paradigm, requires us to rethink the concepts of space and place (concepts of space and place, together with concepts of matter and time, are fundamental concepts to offer an opportune framework to any cosmological theory, and, as a consequence, to any architectural theory) so that place and feeling or concreteness, on the one hand, and space and thinking or abstraction, on the other hand, may recompose that unity or wholeness behind phenomena that Alexander calls for, but which is made of opposites, as Eisenman argues. Both visions present drawbacks as long as they consider one part of the whole (concreteness and feelings — Alexander; abstraction and thinking —Eisenman) to have ontological primacy over the other part: this means failing to acknowledge the intrinsic dualism persisting in those theories, in spite of the new cosmology and the systemic or organic world vision that it entails, which rejects dualisms, ultimately (see the article On the Structure of Reality). The dualistic approach (feelings versus thinking, body versus mind, concrete versus abstract, the physical versus the ideal, etc.), which, it seems to me, despite the appearances, is still present in the theories and attitudes of the two architects, is just another aspect or heritage of the old mechanistic and deterministic paradigm of the old cosmology they both want to condemn.
Notes
[1] Here you can download the .pdf version of the debate published by architectural magazine Lotus International.
[2] http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm
[3] I believe Eisenman’s reference, here, is to the post-modernist architect and theorist Charles Moore. It seems to me there are parts of the original dialogue which are missing: in the copy of Lotus International as well (see note [1] above), those parts of the dialogue are missing. The analogy here is between Mies van der Rohe and Palazzo Chiericati, on the one hand, and Charles Moore and Chartres Cathedral, on the other hand.
[4] Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 34.
[5] Actually, along with this diad – ‘space’ and ‘place’ — we also find ‘dwelling’ as a founding concept for architecture: in fact, dwelling is the ultimate scope of architecture, while space and place are the conditions for dwelling to be explicated by architects, at both abstract and concrete levels of reality. As I often say: ‘Architecture creates spaces and modifies places for dwelling’ — that is my definition of architecture (see On Architecture).
[6] Christopher Alexander, ‘Linz Café’, Lotus International, n°40, 1983, 45-59.
[7] Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth — A Struggle Between Two World-Systems, with Hans Joachim Neis and Maggie Moore Alexander. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 1-12.
[8] As far as I know about the theoretical and practical works of Alexander and Eisenman, it seems to me there is a different understanding of the term cosmology between the two: more technical – scientific and philosophical – Alexander, more intuitive in the sense of a generic vision of the world, Eisenman.
Works Cited
Alexander, Christopher. The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth – A Struggle Between Two World-Systems, with Hans Joachim Neis and Maggie Moore Alexander. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 1-12.
—. ‘Linz Café’. Lotus International, n°40, 1983, 45-59.
Alexander, Christopher and Eisenman Peter. ‘Contrasting concepts of Harmony in Architecture’. Lotus International, n°40, 1983, 60-68.
Calvi Rollino, Alessandro. From Space to Place: A Necessary Paradigm Shift in Architecture, 2014. < https://polimi.academia.edu/AlessandroRollino>
Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture: The 1982 Debate Between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman. < http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm >
Image Credits
Featured Image, The Eishin Campus, by Dan Klyn on archdaily.com
Image 01 Chartres Cathedral, Smarthistory, on youtube
Image 02 Palazzo Chiericati, on italia.it
Image 03: Town Hall, Logrono, ES, on rafaelmoneo.com
Images 04-05-06-07: House III, Lakeville, Connecticut, US, on eisenmanarchitects.com
Images 08-09-10-11: The Eishin Campus, by Takeshi Kakeda on flickr.com
