Peter Eisenman
Theoretical architect of Wexner Center, using grids and fragmentation to challenge norms.
Most quoted
"The problem with architecture today is that it's too concerned with solving problems. It should be about creating problems."
— from Lecture, 1980
"Architecture is a language, and like any language, it can be used to say things that are not immediately obvious."
— from Book: House X, 1977
"I'm interested in architecture that makes you think, not just architecture that makes you comfortable."
— from Interview, 1985
All quotes by Peter Eisenman (102)
In architecture, meaning is deferred, never fixed.
Buildings are texts to be read, not lived in.
I am an architect of instability.
Tradition in architecture is a chain; I prefer to break it.
The void is the true form of architecture.
Architecture must question the very ground it stands on.
I design against the user, not for them.
Every building is a critique of the previous one.
Deconstructivism is not chaos; it's controlled anarchy.
The skin of the building is its memory.
Architecture is a language without grammar.
I build to erase, not to add.
Function is the enemy of invention.
A house should be a provocation, not a solution.
In my work, the plan is a trace of what might have been.
Architecture resists closure; it opens possibilities.
I am not interested in beauty; I am interested in tension.
The city is a palimpsest of erasures.
Buildings speak through their fractures.
Deconstruction reveals the hidden instabilities of form.
Contemporaries of Peter Eisenman
Other Architectures born within 50 years of Peter Eisenman (1932).