Five architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier

by Peter Eisenman

Five Architects, originally published in 1975, grew out of a meeting of the CASE group (Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment) held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969. The purpose of this gathering was to exhibit and criticize the work of five architects--Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, and Meier--who constituted a New York school, and who are now among the most influential architects working today.
The buildings shown here have more diversity than one might expect from a school, but share certain properties of form, scale, and treatment of material. Collectively, their work makes a modest claim: it is only architecture, not the salvation of man and the redemption of the earth. No matter how varied their individual theories and visions, all five architects simply share a passion for the art of architecture.
Providing complete drawings and photographic documentation, this collection also includes a comparative critique by Kenneth Frampton, an Introduction by Colin Rowe that suggests a still broader context for the work as a whole, and two short texts in which individual positions are outlined. Now back in print, Five Architects serves as a reference to the early work of some of America's most important architects and provides us with a glimpse back at the direction of architecture as they saw it twenty years ago.

Genres: Architecture

137 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc. A certain fragmenting of forms visible in some of Eisenman's projects has been identified as characteristic of an eclectic group of architects that were (self-)labeled as deconstructivists, and who were featured in an exhibition by the same name at the Museum of Modern Art. The heading also refers to the storied relationship and collaborations between Peter Eisenman and post-structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic...and self-propagating piece!

[Francisco Palmeira]

Good and wide review of the processes of design made by Eisenman in 40 years