1998.11.23
"Eisenman should read this"
I also now have an article to write entitled "Peter Eisenman should read this." The first draft outline is as follows:
1. The free use of the descriptive adjective "piranesian" is used by Eisenman too freely and in so doing is misservicing the architectural community at large and Piranesi himself in particular. (There is also the Venturi 1982 reference to Piranesian which I want to work in here as well.)
2. In what I guess Eisenman is referring to as Piranesian is better refered to as Carcerian or Piranesi Prisonesque, because it is the Carceri that is most evocative of Eisenman's current architecture.
3. Eisenman's other reference/connection/interpretation of the interstitial within the Campo Marzio is a case of misidentification. There is an interstitial within the Campo Marzio, but it is not the smaller (vernacular) non-descript buildings that Eisenman points to.
4. the interstitial of the Campo Marzio are precisely the Latin labels that Piranesi intersperses throughout the large plan that holds the entire design of the large plan together.
5. it is ironic that Tafuri states that it is exactly language that is missing from the Campo Marzio, when, in fact, it is precisely language that congeals the large plan into a cohesive whole.
6. Eisenman wants to use his interpretation of the Campo Marzio to validate his own arbitrary and fragmentary designs.
7. If an interpretation is wrong, does the argument based on the interpretation then become totally void as well? Common sense would have to answer in the affirmative.
8. there is far more order than disorder in the Ichnographia.
9. I'm not sure how this will end until I study the direct quotations from Eisenman and Tafuri. I may delve into describing/translating the buildings that Eisenman calls interstitial.
10. I could end the "Eisenman should read this" article with a reference to the caption mix-up in Autonomy and Ideology.
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Pages 76-77 of Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde in America. There are two mistakes within the image caption here: first, the caption does not match the image, and, second, Piranesi is not the delineator of the Nolli Map of Rome. Keeping the image as is, the caption should be Piranesi, Campo Marzio, 1762.
Pages 78-79 of Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde in America. There are several mistakes within these two pages: the caption does not match the image, the image markers within the text do not direct the reader to the correct image, and Piranesi did not draw the Nolli Map of Rome (as Eisenman says he did in the text). Keeping the image as is, the caption should be Nolli, Nolli Map of Rome, 1754, the image markers in the text should be exchanged 1 for 2 and 2 for 1, and Giambattista Nolli was the delineator of the 1754 map of Rome.
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