Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004

by Peter Eisenman, Peter Eisenman

A prominent practitioner, an influential theorist, and an esteemed educator, the architect Peter Eisenman today stands at the center of architectural discourse and debate. This book, a companion volume to Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963–1988, gathers a generous selection of his later writings. In these texts Eisenman undertakes theoretical analyses, close readings of his own works, and innovative assessments of the designs and writings of other architects and critics.
 
In a major introduction to the volume, Jeffrey Kipnis looks closely at Eisenman’s approach toward language and writing, a practice in which architecture itself becomes a form of written theory, as well as at his context within a critical canon that includes Jacques Derrida and Rosalind Krauss. Presenting the range of Eisenman’s important contributions to architectural theory, this collection of nineteen essays provides insight into the architect’s own understandings and methodologies and offers provocative challenges for his readers.

Genres: Architecture

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2007

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.