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PETER EISENMAN
an interview by Kresimir Rogina held at MAK Vienna on December 14th 2004

related links
Work of Rogina&Penezic >>
Show of Eisenman in Wien original drawings >>

all pictures by K. Rogina 2004

- This interview is not for magazine but for newspapers...
- You know the magazine Zivot (Life)? I got early issues of Zivot maybe thirty years ago. They are beautiful magazines, so I know something of your culture...
- First of all I wanted to ask you about your position as architectural superstar...
- I don’t think I am an architectural superstar...
- But the general opinion is like that, you cannot avoid, it in a way.
- I think Frank Gehry is a superstar, Zaha Hadid is a superstar, I’m not a superstar. I am a very influential architect in term of ideas, but I don't think I am a superstar, I'm different.
- What's making you different from Frank Gehry and others?
- My position is different, what I say and do is not something that is easily consumed by media. My ideas are more problematic, not better, in a sense I'm dealing with different issues than Frank Gehry or Zaha. In one sense they are both sculptors; I am not. Their images are different. This is an anti-image exhibition, anti-star exhibition... Compare my exhibition to Zaha's exhibition last year, her exhibition was a superstar exhibition. I may be a superstar in a hundred years. I think what history records is different than superstars or media.
- Maybe generally speaking yes, but in an architectural family you are kind of, let's say, father...
- I am a father, yes, that's not a superstar... I think history will be kinder to me than the present.

- Interesting notion that you've sad is that books are lasting longer than architecture.
- I believe that history shows that. The villas of Palladio... How many people have seen those villas? I have, because I searched them out, but many people have read those books. To me they are more important than the villas. Several of my projects have already been torn down. Most of my important projects may never be built. So, building is important, the artifacts are important, but so are books. And I mean not just pictures of superstar books, but serious books. Now Passagen Verlag is publishing a second volume of my essays. The most important thing I have in Germany is the first book of essays that they published. Now the memorial is important, but together they make Peter Eisenman in German. Is it important to have Peter Eisenman in German? Yes. Let me put it this way - if you said to me would you like to build a building in Zagreb or have a book of your essays in Croatian? Every time ? a book!
- We can manage that.
- Let's do it!
- It's easier than to manage a building...
- Not a picture-book...

- It's a deal. Those types of books are kind of exclusive, hermetic, not for wide public and buildings could be populistic?
- Wait a minute! When James Joice wrote Ulysses or Finnegans Wake it wasn't for a wide public, but there was trickle down to the wide public, then became understandable and changed literature, lets say. When wide public goes to see Leonardo da Vinci's painting they don't understand anything about painting, they just smile and say “oh, Last Supper, right, painted here, bla-bla, I know the Last Supper”, by they don't know anything about the painting, why is it a good painting. To me the general public learns... it's a trickle down what we call, you know that always people who are artists, philosophers, poets lead society and then it comes down to the people. I'm not interested, I don't care what the people think of this exhibition, you know, I'm not serving the people, I am interested in what the culture thinks about it, and the culture is not necessarily always mass culture, there are other cultures, and to me the culture of architecture... look, I teach twelve students at Yale University, I don't want to teach five thousand, they will teach others, right? So the word gets out to people, right? You go to Venezia, the mass of people, all the tourists, they come from the Stazione Centrale, they go over the Rialto Bridge, and they go to San Marco, they take a photograph with the pigeons. They never see Palladio, they don't go to Redentore and San Giorgio, they don't know it, and they wouldn't understand it if they went. My students go to San Giorgio and Redentore, it's important, that's important, I don't care if the tourists go. The world isn't for tourists, right? The tourists eat Coca Cola with their pasta, they don't know how to drink good wine, they are frightened of anything strange. All the Americans in Venezia drink Coca Cola. I never... I cannot stand Coca Cola with pasta, so I drink wine, that's not obscure, it's different level of culture. I have to add - but. I go to football games which is mass culture.
- And your speech at Biennale was kind of speech of a superstar telling people what they wanted to hear in a way...
- You know, people were astonished that I would want to do an Autogrill...
- But isn't that populistic?
- No, I would love to do an Autogrill because it's a great project, because architects don't get a chance to do Autogrills. You know why I go to football games? Because I like to be in the crowd, anonymous. I really love football; I learn about culture from football games. When I arrive in Milano the first thing I want to do is go to San Siro. I don't care who plays, I'm really a “tifoso”. You think I'm being a superstar. No, I'm being Peter Eisenman, if you don't think that's the way I am.
- That was little provocation.
- I am truly a split person.
- Yes, that's what I wanted to hear, it's not only one side, there should be both sides...
- I am a teacher, I'm a father, a husband, I have a young son... I have four kids, I love my kids. My son was in a play in school today and yesterday, I missed this. Where would I rather be? There, but I have to be here; but this weekend my son and I will go to two football games. I've been to fifteen football matches this year with my son. Architects don't do this. Architects go to museums, they go to parties, etc.
- It's very interesting to see your architecture and you as a person. People could think that behind these “walls” is some kind of abstract person, but it's obvious that it's very honest, both people...
- They are both honest! What you saw down there in the exhibition is honest.
- There is some connection to Italy - Tafuri, New York Five, Terragni... Could you tell us something about it?
- My book on Terragni just came out in Italian. I came to Italy first in 1961, and as Colin Rowe, my mentor, said, I had an epiphany, a revelation when I saw Terragni for the first time. The book is like Aldo Rossi's Scientific Autobiography, the Terragni book is Eisenman's "Scientific Autobiography." The great contemporary French and German philosophers used other people as surrogates for their ideas. Heidegger wrote three volumes on Kant, Deleuze wrote on Spinoza, Derrida wrote on Husserl, etc. One philosopher would use other philosophers and writers as a vehicle for his own ideas. I've always used surrogates for my own ideas whether it's Terragni, Le Corbusier, etc. My work therefore is in the tradition of European contemporary thought. So Italy is a context for me, Tafuri was a context for me, Terragni, Aldo Rossi... context for putting forward my ideas, understanding my ideas. I've been in eight of the nine Biennales.
- That's another question...
- For me, Italy has a whole culture of architecture that's very different from the culture of architecture in the United States or even in Germany. Architecture is so much a part of the culture, it's not outside, it's everyday. I have great good feeling about Italy, I love the food, I love the wine, I couldn't live there because it's too crazy. I am too northern to live in Italy. But I am not pünclicht either like Vienna or Switzerland or Germany. It's part of the spirit, I can't explain it any better. I spoke at the Casa dell fascio on Sunday night, it was beautiful, first time I've ever spoken there on the 100th anniversary of Terragni's birth. With my book coming out in Italian, it was very symbolic for me.
- You said there were nine Biennales and you were eight times there. From late seventies when we started to study, different theories of architecture changed but most of theoreticians always had you or you were always with some kind of architectural fashion...
- Fashion of thought. How is that?

- Yes, how is that? Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, Folding, Unfolding...
- Every artist that I considered to be great grows up, Picasso grew up, Le Corbusier was doing funny chalets to start. Then he was doing white houses, then he was doing brut concrete, then he was doing free form. And the theories changed from Vers une architecture to Oeuvre Plastique. His painting even changed from analytic cubism to purism to late expressionism. All art is evolutionary, I am an evolutionary artist. I really think that my ideas have changed. This doesn't mean what was good before is no good now. I am evolving. I couldn't have written what I wrote about Terragni today, thirty years ago, because Post-Structuralism didn't exist. First of all I read Jean Paul Sartre, existentialism, then I read Foucault, then I read De Saussure, then I read Barthes, and existentialism changed to structuralism, and then we read Derrida and Deleuze, and suddenly I'm responding to what I feel in the air. It's like film, there was Visconti, realism, then Antonioni came along and blew it away, the movement of ‘63 in Italy, the Gruppo 63, then there was Godard, then there was Fassbinder. The same was painting, and everything is always moving, and so I move along too.
- I have no complaints. That's just what I wanted to hear.
- You did? Because I told you the truth.
- Grid, again grid?!
- No, diagram! Diagram, not grid, diagram. Diagram is really interesting. I'm having an exhibition in Modena in May called What is the Diagram? And the diagram to me is now finally understanding the difference between Deleuze's influence on architecture and Derrida. All of the Super-Dutch understand the diagram in Deleuzean sense. I'm presenting the diagram in Derridean sense. So that's the issue to me, the diagram is the focal point, not a grid.
- OK, but you were talking about ceiling, walls, floor, traditional...
- Yes, but I don't use them as traditional. I'm saying I'm using them in what I consider to be the diagrammatic way. The exhibition is a diagram of diagrams.
- That's nice end. Thank you!