The Meta-Project, Eisenman, and Capital: Lessons for Critical Architectural Practice
The Meta-Project, Eisenman, and Capital: Lessons for Critical Architectural Practice | The Plan Journal
THE EISENMANIAN PROJECT, CAPITAL, AND A MIRROR
Eisenman returns to the AA School of Architecture in 2012. In this subsequent talk, the word “capital” does not emerge once. This is a trend in line with the other six Architectural Association lectures examined. Therein, Eisenman does touch upon topics related to global capitalism, including the impacts of finance upon project development; the impacts of media and branding upon the practice and experience of architecture; societal hierarchies, having upper-class clients, and so forth. However, within these other lectures he does not directly reference capital or capitalism—not on any single occasion.
How can Eisenman’s 2010 lecture then be understood? Is it an anomaly within the discourse to be discarded as a casual tangent, or is something else at play? In his subsequent 2012 return to the Architectural Association, Eisenman refers to his lecture as a much-needed therapy session. The key to critical psychoanalysis, he frames as follows:
My psychiatrist always used to say, “What we want to talk about, are all of those things you don’t want to talk about. In other words, the things that you want to fool me into thinking are problems [...] I really want to know what you don’t want to tell me.” In other words what was inside me, hot, and making me anxious.
Throughout most of Eisenman’s talks, there is a clear positioning of his body of work against the “phenomenological project.”
If Eisenman’s own depiction of critical psychoanalysis is taken into serious consideration, then his in-depth, personal, and seemingly uncharacteristic lecture two years prior should not be discarded as a discursive anomaly.
Rather, what it may indicate is that the anti-phenomenological positioning of the Eisenmanian project may be better placed under the “[what] you want to fool me into thinking [is a] problem” category, whereas his meta-project’s growingly lopsided relationship to capital may fall under the “what was inside me, hot, and making me anxious” $ ^{35} $ category.
Eisenman’s clearly articulated framing of architecture’s growingly lopsided relationship with capital across the twentieth century, may be best understood as a micro-variety of psychoanalytic transference. For while Eisenman does express exasperation over the loss of control over his own project, he cannot quite vocalize the details of the path that led him there. As a substitute discursive vessel, Eisenman focuses his analytical eye on the state of architecture at large, lamenting the devolving relationship between twentieth-century architecture and capital. This is done as a substitute for the analysis and articulation he cannot mobilize with regard to his own meta-project’s growingly lopsided politico-economic associations.
This narrative is in fact partially supported in the 2010 lecture itself. As Eisenman expresses frustration over the state of his own contemporary work, the powerlessness and loss of control he articulates is significantly akin to that which he ascribes to the relationship between architecture and capital within the Koolhaasian era. The question that remains is whether a look back upon Eisenman’s own meta-project via his lectures, unveils comparable earlier stages of the relationship between architecture and capital? In the first lecture given at the Conceptual Architecture Symposium in 1975, Eisenman spends most of his oration discussing the intricacies of the rhetorical deep structure underpinning his approach to conceptual architecture. He confirms a stern detachment from contemporary global socio-political dynamics, and with due resolve underscores that for him, the sole area of interest is competence – i.e., the well-crafted execution and refinement of said rhetorical deep structure. $ ^{36} $
[Eisenman speaking:] I don’t have any commentary about middle-class second houses, or upper-middle-class second houses, or radical professors who build second houses on two-hundred acre sites while pretending to be North Vietnamese supporters; I don’t know about conspicuous consumption. I don’t have anything to say about those things. [...] I’m only concerned with competence.
[Moderator speaking:] And clients who can afford to build your houses.
[Eisenman speaking:] Ahh... I guess [inaudible]. $ ^{37} $
Here, the Corbusian stage of the relationship between architecture and capital is clearly at play. As the question and answer regarding the clientele
behind his work indicates, it is understood that the financial structures underpinning Eisenman’s oeuvre are pronouncedly coming from points of higher affluence within the global socioeconomic system – i.e., clients who can afford to build [his] houses. However, at this moment in time, Eisenman frames the resources of his clients effectively as a resource to be extracted, harvested for the purposes of setting in motion the autonomous meta-project; the meta-project which lies under his complete authorship, effectively insulated from the influence of the clients underwriting its manifestations in the built world. By the time of the next Architectural Association lecture, “Architecture and the Problem of Weak Image” in 1989, this relationship has shifted. The insulation of Eisenman’s authorship over the meta-project has begun to partially lose its seal. While Eisenman still appears to have significant control over the reins of the project, his work (and he himself as an architect) is beginning to be transformed into a marketable product suitable for consumption via points of power within the growing network of capital.
What happened was, one of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Mellon was a developer in Pittsburgh who said “Holy God this [the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute] is wild. I want one of these buildings too.” [...] We said, “Look Mr. Lewis, we love you, and it is really nice that you want to build one of these, but you can’t afford this.” He said, “No, no, no, I can afford it. I want to try it. I know that [...] this is something people are going to be very excited about.” 38
There are a few points to underscore within this quote.
First, there is a pronounced commodification of Eisenman’s work. The noted developer wants to pursue the replication of the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute – that “wild building” – as a product that will entice the intrigue of the public and potential future tenants. He vocalizes that he “wants” (a copy of) the product, not on the basis of its architectural merit, but rather on the merit of its consumability.
Second, is the corporatization and exchangeability of program. The developer is requesting that Eisenman take an architectural work produced specifically as an academic research institute and simply replicate it as leasable office space. 39 The shift in program does not lead to a significant shift in architecture. Neither does the shift in site. The “wild building” is simply replicated in full for the new proposed site and program.
These dynamics clearly point to the Miesian phase in operation. While Eisenman still has control over the authorship of the meta-project, it does not function with the same level of insularity as observed in the Corbusian phase. Eisenman has not only accepted the consumability of the products of the meta-project, but has allowed for that consumability to impact how the
meta-project manifests in the built world – i.e., in copy+paste format. A key dynamic of the Venturi-Brownian phase also appears to be seeded here with the collapse of the significance of genius loci, as a shift in locus does not trigger any shift in the architecture being produced. Given that the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute and the spin-off development were seemingly being designed for the same city, however (as opposed to being designed for different countries), there is some allowance that can be granted that this dynamic has not quite achieved full maturity.
By 1993, Eisenman’s meta-project has been thoroughly propelled into the Venturi-Brownian phase. Here, the “project” actively embraces and engages in discussion with the phenomena and zeitgeist of capital.
That slide I showed with the lasers. [...] Architecture as event, we haven’t really come to terms with how you deal with the rock concert, the rave movement, and how that is integrated. That is, sound, light, color, movement [...] how they become integrated into physical environments. [...] One of the great challenges to me is the shopping mall. [...] Disney world is a really interesting thing, because it truly is a mediated environment.
Here, Eisenman’s framing of the meta-project, rather than achieving a discursive and practical separation from the dynamics of capital, has become refocused as the study and, by extension, a manifestation of the dynamics and phenomena of capital. The project has become the “accommodation with Capital” that Eisenman had attributed to Learning from Las Vegas in the Venturi-Brownian phase,
At this point, Eisenman has also become acutely aware of his growingly lopsided relationship to media, branding, and marketability.
Media has in fact turned architecture into what it is. I am here, because I happened to be mediatable. Not necessarily because I do interesting architecture or good architecture. And if you merely do what you do ordinarily, the media chews you up and spits you out, and needs something new all the time. [...] The career that you sustain and develop is totally dependent upon media.
This commodification and consumability of the architect, as well as the architect’s oeuvre, is of course an extension of the dynamics previously observed in the Miesian phase. However, here, capital has reached a much more thorough and intricate grain of control over the trajectory and nature of the meta-project – incidentally echoing the words of Adorno and Horkheimer put forth decades prior:
It is still possible to make one’s way in entertainment, if one is not too obstinate about one’s own concerns, and proves appropriately pliable. Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the land-reformer to the capitalist.