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From Object to Relationship II: Casa Giuliani Frigerio: Giuseppe Terragni Casa Del Fascio
Author(s): Peter D. Eisenman
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Perspecta, Vol. 13/14 (1971), pp. 36-65
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566970 .
Accessed: 12/11/2012 16:50
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Before I went to Cambridge in the autumn of 1960, I did not know the work of the
Italian architect, Giuseppe Terragni. During that
year Colin St. J. (Sandy) Wilson gave me a copy of
Alberto Sartoris' 'Encyclopedie De L'Architecture
Nouvelle' which had a section devoted to Terrangni's work. The following summer, I travelled
with Colin Rowe to Como, where I saw much of
the work for the firsttime. For many of the intervening years I have been working almost intuitively, probing into the formal aspects of Terrangni's work, with few preconceived ideas as to
what might be the results. In order to give this
work a focus, in 1966 I began looking into other
disciplines
of form had beentprewherenproblems
took
some critical framework.This
sented within
me into linguistics, and more particularly to the
work of Noam Chomsky in syntax. From this repossible to make several analogies
search
language and architecture,and more spebetweenitawas
cifically to construct a crude hypothesis about the
syntactic aspects of architectural form. This then
helped to clarify some of the formal problems in
the work of Terragni. Equally, as work in both
these areas continued simultaneously, the empirical evidence gathered from the work on Terragni
helped to refineand restructurethe initial hypothesis. From this ratherunscientific method two separate theses have developed: one concerning a
theory of form in architecture; the other concerning the developing ofbideas about transformational
methods which can be interpretedfrom a formal
analysis of the work of Terragni. The following
article is two parts taken out of context from the
latterwork. Therefore, it is intended to be as much
an introductionas it is an exploration, in that it is
not a definitive presentation of a critical method;
it merely presents some fragments,without a general matrix,of work in progress.
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1 It is interestingto note in this contextthat this title 10 Empson, William, Seven Types of Ambiguity.New
is usually translated as The Non-Objective World
York, New Directions Press, n.d., pg. 234.
which seems to change the intent of Malevich's 11 While much of my initial research was given a certain direction by the publication of the Rowe and
original argument. In an announcement of Robert
Motherwell's Documents of Modern Art series in
Slutzky, "Transparancy'" article, it is necessary to
the understanding of this article to make a careful
1945 the book is referredto by the more appropridistinction on two points. Rowe and Slutzky infer
ate title The Objectless World.
that the meanings accrue from the "contradiction
2 "One mightinferthat at Garches, Le Corbusier had
of spatial dimensions", from the "dialectic beindeed succeeded in alienating architecture from
tween fact and implication", the resultant tension
its necessary three-dimensional existence . . ." See
Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, Transparency, in
enforcing readings. Here the argument is that in
any architecture, while meaning can be derived
Perspecta. The Journal of the School of Architecfrom the relationship of actual space to implied
ture, Yale University,No. 7, 1963, pg. 50.
3 Robert Slutzky, in a conversation, makes a clearer
space, it is only through the control of this reladistinction in this context. He says a more precise
tionship; throughthe relation of surface (physical)
phenomena, whether real or implied, to some
comparison would be between Cezanne and Monstructureof formal universals or deep syntax that
drian, or in the case of Leger and Gris, only their
earliest work. In their later work, both Leger and
readings can be given a possible interpretation.
The second distinction which is necessary to be
more specifically Gris initiatedtheircanvases with
made is that ambiguitymay not necessarily reside
an a priori conception of geometric structures
in the actual spatial dimension - the physical obnearlydevoid ofassociational references.Their concern with objects was only in the sense of object
ject - but ratherin the possible conceptual interas type, as opposed to object with a specific meanpretations of relationships between objects.
Again, these distinctions seem helpful in tryingto
ing. Cezanne, on the other hand, begins with an
isolate the differences in the use of syntax in the
object-oriented abstraction. Obviously, Mondrian
work of LeCorbusier and the work of Terragni.
stands in clear opposition to both approaches painting completely non-referentialstructures in 12 For a more detailed discussion of the Casa del
Fascio see my article "From Object to Relationno way relying on associations of a given object
context.
ship", Casabella, No. 344, January 1970.
See Kahnweiler, D. H., Juan Gris, His Life and 13 Chomsky, Noam, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
Work, (translated by Douglas Cooper), London,
Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, 1965, pp 18-27 and pg.
Lund Humphries, 1947, pp. 117-118.
94, Syntactic Structures,op. cit.
4 Chomsky, Noam, Syntactic Structures. The Hague,
"It is also quite clear that the major goal of grammatical theory is to replace this obscure reliance
Mouton & Co., 1965, pg. 17, footnote 4.
on intuition by some rigorous and objective
5 In their essay on Purism, Le Corbusier and Ozenfant make a similar distinction when they referto
approach."
the primaryand secondary sensations of a work of
art. "Primary sensations are constant for every
individual. They are determined by a fixed sensation released by a primaryform. Secondary sensations vary with the individual because they depend upon his cultural or heriditarycapital." While
their notion of primarysensations can be considered syntactic, their notion of secondary sensations is essentially semantic. They do not make a
distinction within the syntactic dimension which
seems to be an importantdifference.
See Herbert,Robert L., Ed., Modern Artistson Art,
Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1964, pp
58-73.
6 Chomsky, Noam, Syntactic Structures, op. cit.,
pg. 16.
7 Chomsky, Noam, Cartesian Linguistics. New York
& London, Harper and Row, 1966.
8 See Rowe, Colin, "The Mathematics of the Ideal
Villa", in The ArchitecturalReview, March, 1947,
pp 101-109.
9 In this context Le Corbusier and Ozenfant in their
essay on "Purism" say that certain objects such as
bottles, glasses, etc. are necessary to art because
they carry a certain semantic concerned with
maximum capacity, strength, and above all an
economy of material and an economy of effort.
They implythat because of this semantic, the particular object will also exhibit universal formal
properties. They say that rather than distorting
these properties and showing their "accidental
aspects", an error made by some of the Cubist
painters, their "invariable constitutents" should
be presented. However, they emphasize that these
universal aspects cannot be used in isolation without the semantic reference of the object. It is in
light of this argument that the difference in emphasis between the architecture of Le Corbusier
and Terragni can be understood.
See Herbert,Robert L., Ed., Modern Artistson Art,
pp. 58-73.
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