Deconstructivism

Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture stands in opposition to the ordered rationality of Modernism. Its relationship with Postmodernism is also decidedly contrary. Though postmodernist and nascent deconstructivist architects published theories alongside each other in the journal Oppositions (published 1973–84), that journal's contents mark the beginning of a decisive break between the two movements. Deconstruction took a confrontational stance toward much of architecture and architectural history, wanting to disjoin and disassemble architecture.[2] While postmodernism returned to embrace— often slyly or ironically—the historical references that modernism had shunned, deconstructivism rejects the postmodern acceptance of such references. It also rejects the idea of ornament as an after-thought or decoration. These principles have meant that deconstructivism aligns itself somewhat with the sensibilities of modernist anti-historicism.

In addition to Oppositions, another text that separated deconstructivism from the fray of modernism and postmodernism was the publication of Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in architecture (1966). A defining point for both postmodernism and for deconstructivism, Complexity and Contradiction argues against the purity, clarity and simplicity of modernism. With its publication, functionalism and rationalism, the two main branches of modernism, were overturned as paradigms according to postmodernist and deconstructivist readings, with differing readings. The postmodern reading of Venturi (who was himself a postmodernist) was that ornament and historical allusion added a richness to architecture that modernism had foregone. Some Postmodern architects endeavored to reapply ornaments even to economical and minimal buildings, an effort best illustrated by Venturi's concept of "the decorated shed." Rationalism of design was dismissed but the functionalism of the building was still somewhat intact. This is close to the thesis of Venturi's next major work,[3] that signs and ornament can be applied to a pragmatic architecture, and instill the philosophic complexities of semiology.
Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, Weil am Rhein

The deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is quite different. The basic building was the subject of problematics and intricacies in deconstructivism, with no detachment for ornament. Rather than separating ornament and function, like postmodernists such as Venturi, the functional aspects of buildings were called into question. Geometry was to deconstructivists what ornament was to postmodernists, the subject of complication, and this complication of geometry was in turn, applied to the functional, structural, and spacial aspects of deconstructivist buildings. One example of deconstructivist complexity is Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, which takes the typical unadorned white cube of modernist art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism. This subverts the functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism, particularly the international style, of which its white stucco skin is reminiscent, as a starting point. Another example of the deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center for the Arts. The Wexner Center takes the archetypal form of the castle, which it then imbues with complexity in a series of cuts and fragmentations. A three-dimensional grid, runs somewhat arbitrarily through the building. The grid, as a reference to modernism, of which it is an accoutrement, collides with the medieval antiquity of a castle. Some of the grid's columns intentionally don't reach the ground, hovering over stairways creating a sense of neurotic unease and contradicting the structural purpose of the column. The Wexner Center deconstructs the archetype of the castle and renders its spaces and structure with conflict and difference.