A presentation of writings by and about Peter Eisenman, arguably the most significant architect working today. The book analyzes the whole spectrum of subjects covered in the architect/philosopher's oeuvre. Seminal texts are included that show how his theories have developed over time.

Peter Eisenman is one of the most controversial protagonists of the architectural scene, who is known as much for his theoretical essays as he is for his architecture. While much has been written about his built works and his philosophies, most books focus on one or the other aspect. By structuring this volume around the concept of form, Stefano Corbo links together Eisenman’s architecture with his theory. From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman argues that form is the sphere of mediation between our body, our inner world and the exterior world and, as such, it enables connections to be made between philosophy and architecture. From the start of his career on, Eisenman has been deeply interested in the problem of form in architecture and has constantly challenged the classical concept of it. For him, form is not simply a cognitive tool that determines a physical structure, which discriminates all that is active from what is passive, what is inside from what is outside. He has always tried to connect his own work with the cultural manifestations of the time: firstly under the influence of Colin Rowe and his formalist studies; secondly, by re-interpreting Chomsky’s linguistic theories; in the 80’s, by collaborating with Derrida and his de-constructivist approach; more recently,by discovering Henri Bergson's idea of Time. These different moments underline different phases, different projects, different programmatic manifestos; and above all, an evolving notion of form. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach based on the intersections between architecture and philosophy, this book investigates all these definitions and, in doing so, provides new insights into and a deeper understanding of the complexity of Eisenman’s work.

Impregnated with "culture" in the broadest sense, the works of Peter Eisenman reflect many years of important study on the meaning and sense of design. Architecture understood as History, as Philosophy, as Art, as Mathematics, as Literature, Architecture understood - as it should be that is - as a strict discipline that aims to recover its operational fields, defining with precision its limits and the potential for a profession that must constantly face destabilising visual and technological systems. Within history and yet outside it so that it can continue, within Tradition yet outside of tradition in order to avoid becoming sterile, the architecture of Peter Eisenman does not aim to console with the simple suggestion of a difficult-to-define aesthetic or the illusion of an evanescent technique. The unpredictability of his work anchors design to individuation and the clarification of its objectives by focussing on the value of the sign understood as a fundamental conceptual expression and not as simple formal distortion. The validity of this formidable theoretical system intended to return a renewed and personal linguistic system to fields of architecture, is confirmed by examining the continued expansion of the territorial system, as evidenced by projects on a territorial scale such as the Memorial of Berlin or the Cultural Centre of Galizia, the most recent projects which demonstrate the vitality of a design system that is constantly renewing itself.

Featuring more than 300 new analytic drawings and models, this study explores the evolution of Palladio's villas from those that exhibit classical symmetrical volumetric bodies to others that exhibit no bodies at all, just fragments in a landscape.

Forty years in the making, "Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques" documents and investigates two of Italian rationalist architect Giuseppe Terragni's masterworks: the Casa del Fascio (1933-36) and the Casa Giuliani-Frigerio (1939-40), both in Como. This far-reaching study -- illustrated with more than five hundred original architectural diagrams and archival photographs -- employs what Eisenman calls critical and textual reading of both buildings. He attempts to broaden the definition of the formal from a narrow aesthetic and compositional view to include first the conceptual and then the textual. It is through this idea of the textual that Eisenman begins to define an idea of the critical in architecture. Eisenman's methodology is wholly removed from traditional approaches -- social, historical, aesthetic, functional. Instead, the various articulations and openings on the facades constitute a set of marks, notations that provide the basis for his analysis. In the Casa del Fascio, for example, each of the four sequential design schemes records the previous state, encoding the process of transformation in the final building. In the Casa Giuliani-Frigerio it is instead the process of decomposition that generates the facades. Also included in the book are an essay by Terragni and a critique by Manfredo Tafuri. In the end, it is the dual protagonists -- the architect and the author -- who together establish a new theoretical and analytical framework.

A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age," an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be "of the times"—lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment. Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis.

"A passionate quest for the historical James refigures Christian origins, … can be enjoyed as a thrilling essay in historical detection." —The Guardian James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James—the brother of Jesus, who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament.Drawing on long-overlooked early Church texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eisenman reveals in this groundbreaking exploration that James, not Peter, was the real successor to the movement we now call "Christianity." In an argument with enormous implications, Eisenman identifies Paul as deeply compromised by Roman contacts. James is presented as not simply the leader of Christianity of his day, but the popular Jewish leader of his time, whose death triggered the Uprising against Rome—a fact that creative rewriting of early Church documents has obscured. Eisenman reveals that characters such as "Judas Iscariot" and "the Apostle James" did not exist as such. In delineating the deliberate falsifications in New Testament dcouments, Eisenman shows how—as James was written out—anti-Semitism was written in. By rescuing James from the oblivion into which he was cast, the final conclusion of James the Brother of Jesus is, in the words of The Jerusalem Post, "apocalyptic" —who and whatever James was, so was Jesus.