Architectural education P. Aizenman received at Cornell University (Bachelor of Architecture), Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University (Master of Architecture), as well as thesis at Cambridge.
In 1967 he founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Development (Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies - IAUS), which was headed until 1982. At various times, PA Aizenman taught at Cooper Union, Princeton and Yale universities, he was a teacher, Daniel Libeskind, the architectural office of his left leaders blobmeysterov "- Greg Lynn (Greg Lynn), Jeff Kipnis (Jeff Kipnis), Mark Wigley (Mark Wigley), Quintero Sanford (Sanford Kwinter).
Creative Path At the beginning of his career Peter Eisenman was a member of the New York Five "(also a group known as the" five white "), which in addition to him were: Charles Guotmi (Charles Gwathmey), John Heydak (John Hejduk), Richard Meier and Michael Graves (Michael Graves). The group was organized on the basis of a conference devoted to the study of urban environmental protection, held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1969. The work group represented by the so-called. New York architectural school [1]. During this period, Aizenman works with geometric abstract compositions and the artistic legacy of Le Corbusier.
Crisis 1978 From this period, P. Aizenman departs from a purely rationalist searches and moves into the region of the irrational. External event, triggering this change, was treated at Eisenman psychoanalyst. "That's when I started traveling in their subconscious. Go into introspection and less focus on rationalistic brain function. This caused a shift in my architecture. My buildings were to burrow in the ground and in the area of the subconscious. "
This period of searching Eisenman can be designated as dekonstruktivistsky, despite the fact that the architect himself in every way waives any clear definitions. Sam himself, he declared in different periods postfunktsionalistom, postmodernist, deconstructivists. This lack of a clear position - and have a position Eisenman. He believes that man is free to choose from the variety offered by this world, without any limitations, all that seems to him personally close to the moment that resonates raises questions about yourself. And do not be afraid if tomorrow you will start to adhere to the opposite point of view.
Working as deconstructivists, Aizenman primarily explores architecture as an idea, but the main sources of inspiration for him are the texts of Derrida and psychoanalysis. Together with Derrida, he created the project "choral work", which includes literary and architectural discourse. Thus Derrida made as a designer, and Aizenman - as a writer. These were two parallel works, which were simultaneously and independently from each other, and in close correlation with each other. The result was a sample vociferous, mnogoyazykoy "polyglot architecture. "The verbal design" includes choreography, music, singing, rhythmic experiments.
According to Eisenman, architecture must be critical, it must meet the needs of the customer and solve their problems, the contrary, - architecture poses problems. In accordance with this concept, Aizenman builds not only theory, but real structures, often shocking customer. For example, in the project Gordiola House, "he told the customer that, according to his theory, the windows of the house should not go to the ocean (as dreamed customer); at Wexner Center, designed for the exhibition of works by artists, it is very difficult to hang on the wall now ( least because the walls as there are none). The building makes artists look for other ways to express myself, not work with empty walls, but not a very simple context.
All studies Aizenman declares in their texts. To understand its architecture in isolation from the theory is very difficult, because of what Charles Jencks classifies it to the modernists, what makes the world adapt to their ideas. Aizenman, however, he argues that in this case, not abstract ideas, but what has always been built into the architecture itself, but until now has been hidden. The task of the architect - to reveal what has been suppressed, the help will be expressed that it was considered nonfunctional, useless, etc. "If there is a matrimonial bed gap - says Aizenman, - which can fail - it does not bother me. If a family has a child - it does not bother me if it turns out that from the dining table in the dining room sticks out post - I do not care if people can not see the ocean from his home through a window - so let ".
To get rid of the prejudices of tradition, he uses the method of "reading in the gaps", which largely coincides with the postmodern concept of "folds" (G. Deleuze. Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. 1988). In his view, the traditional opposition between structure and ornament (decoration), abstract and figurative, form and function can be abolished. Architecture can begin to explain "between" those categories (without breaking them completely).
The crisis of autumn 1988 Since 1990, P. Aizenman finally refuses dekonstruktivistskogo discourse and shifts its search in the field of nonlinear architecture. As a turning point can be designated a crisis of autumn 1988, when Aizenman finally realized "the death of deconstruction" (which helped organized with the support of Philip Johnson's famous exhibition "Dekonstruktivistskaya architecture" in the New York Museum of Modern Art), and before him stood the question: "What what next? ". New inspiration came from the modern discoveries in science, the idea of self-assembled organic structures, the theory of folds G. Deleuze, the theory of fractals.
