Peter Eisenman

TEN

CANONICAL

BUILDINGS

1950-2000

Foreword by Stan Allen

Edited by Ariane Lourie

'%1:9lo:!
 CA

First published in the ruted tates of America in 2008 by

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t:> 2 Rizwli International Publications

e> 2 Peter Eisenman
"Eisenman" Canon: Counter-Memory of the Modern" Cl
tan Allen

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Ei. enman. Peter

Ten anonical Buildings
I B1'-13: 978-0-847 ~304S-0 (alk. paper)
1. Po. tmodern Architec re
2. Critical Architecture
n. Title.
NA2760. E45 2006
720.1--dc22
2007921092
1. Luigi J1.1oretti, Ca.~a "Il Girasole." Rome, Ita y,1947-.50.
1. Pr'ofiles of Text
Luigi Moretti, Casa "II Girasole," 1947-50

One of the first critical articles to appear in English on Luigi Moretti'

Casa "II Girasole" was written by Peter Reyner Banham in 1953. Hanham'
article, published in the February issue of Architecttf.Jral Review, labeled
Casa "II Girasole" the defining mOnUlTIent of "Roman eclecticism," which
was an eclecticism that Banham considered operated within the confines
of the vestiges of modernism. If the label eclecticisrn has different con
notations today, in 1953 it implied that Moretti's work could be seen as a
haphazard collection of classical tropes and aJ'chitectural strategies lack
ing any single organizing principle other than having been assembled by
Moretti in a single building. In this sense Banham's argument was pro
phetic, though his use of the term eclecticism, it will be argued here, wa
flawed. It is interesting to note that as early as 1953, Banham proposed
that modern architecture had already become a style, and thus he \vas able
to cite Moretti as deviating from its formal and supposed social impera
tives. Moretti's Casa "II Girasole" would subsequently earn an important
citation in Robert Venturi's 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture, a citation that would become physically manifest in Venturi's
own Vanna Venturi House (see chapter 5). One important distinction
between Banhmu's conclusion and a possible present reading is that prior to
1968, and the rethinking of the idea ofa text proposed by Jacques DerI1da's
OfGramrnatology, it was not possible to propose a textual reading of what
appeared to Banham to be mere eclecticism. Post-structuralism offered
methods of analysis and composition as a new lens through which to under
stand complex phenomena; in certain cases, these phenomena defY a clear
reading altogether, and instead represent a condition of what can be now
called undecidability.
2. Ca. a "Il Gil'asole,", outh elewlion. . . Ca 'a "U Gira.,;ole," north elevation.

In this context, Moretti becom ~ neither an eclectic de cribed as thefOl'mal, the distinctions between
nor a modernist: rather; hi work defies any easy the formal and the textual in \\"hat follows will be
categorization. even as one of the fu t, if rarely een to be important. The termformal de cribe~
acknowledged. postmodern architects. It i~ this conditions in architecture that can be read not
condition of what can be termed undecidability nece. ,arily in terms ofmeanin or ae thetics, ut
that emerges in hi Casa"Il Girasole" and will in terms of their own internal consistency. Thi~
develop as one of the defining themes of this book. internal coherence involve'" strategies that ha\'e
ompleted in 195 Moretti' asa "11 othing to do 'i\ith the Pl' ary optical a pect~
Girasole" incorporated the fu~t appearanceo; f the aesthetic (proportion..~hape. color, tex
of historical allu ion in the wake of modernist ture, materia1it~ ) but rather ha\"e to do \\ith the
abstraction. This overture to hi tory is not. how interna trucLure go\"erning their interrelation.
ever, why Casa "ll Giraso e" i~ the first building in Formal analysi looks at architectul'e ou 'ide
this book. Rather, it is because Ca a "U Gira ole" f it nece<:sarily hi torical, programmatic. and
represent one f the first po twar buildings to symbolic conte.'t.
manife, t a hybrid condition of both abstraction The term textual can be defined in relation
and literal figured representation. These simul hip to one of post- tructurali -m's key concepts in
taneous 'et eemi gl . antithetical position' are the Derridian idea of text. Den'ida suggests that
ne\'er reo olved as a single narrati\"e, meaning. a text' not a ingle linear narratiye, but a web
or image. Rather it i the dialectiC<'11 relation~hip or a tis ue of traces. While a narrati \'e i . unitary,
between the two po ition. that i questioned in a continuou . and directional, a text i multivalent,
postwar climate that challenged the innate value discontinuous, and nondil'ectional. In the context
ofsuch a dialectic. Furthermore. it could be argued of thi book. the id a of a text, like the idea of a
that asa" II Girasole" represent. one of the first diagram, helps to initiate a change from he idea
buildings after World War II to embod~' the unde of l' ading a work a..: a unitary ntity to under
cidable nature of truth in attempting the parall I 'tanding a work as an und idable r suIt of \"ary
'e of both ab tract and figured trope. It i, here ing fOl'ce~. In my work on Giu eppe Terragni. for
that an idea of what might be con. idered a text example, the idea of a text reori nted my analy
in architecture might b introduced. While the :::js of a Giuliani-Frigelio from es en ialh" for
ab tract and the figured refer to \yhat is u ually malist interpretation - to a more textuall'eading.
Ca:::a "II Gira:::olc" ~)

4. Ca,sa "Il Girasole, -, west elemtion. 5. Casa "j[ Girasole,." section, ~w11.h-south.

Texts, therefore, do not deploy the same internal fOlm in Italy through neorealist cinema and it
consistency as in the formaL unvarnished ,-iew of Italy and the detritus of
In addition to provoking formal reading, five years oh:ar. 1\eorealist films like Open City
buildings can equally be read as textual, offer and The Bicycle Thief \vere a form of empirical
ing different modes of reading, \vhich may chal existentialism, in that they represented attempt
lenge established architectural vocabularies. For to move the language of abstraction toward a
example, Alberti's superposition of the Arch of language more closel~r associated "'ith what could
Titus over the vemacular Greek temple-front at be considered "the rea1." ~Ioretti's postwar work.
ant'Andrea becomes textual, because this mon which also proposed a didactic view of architec
tage of architectural forms from different histori ure that now critiqued abstraction, evolyed out
cal periods destabilizes a singular meaning. The of such a neorealist sensibility. However, it is to
textual provokes a reading outside of the facts of Moretti's credit that Iittle of his fir:5l postwar work
an object's physical presence, or the underlying can be considerecl neorealist, just as it cannot be
structures which govern its being; in the ca!';e dismissed as eclectic.
of Alberti's Sant'Andrea, the superposition of he subtlety of "Moretti's critique of mod
historical tropes creates this distill'bance in pres ernist abstraction was articulated in his now
ence that takes the building out of the category much sought-after magazine Spazio (Space) in
of the conventionally formal. If the formal begin the early 1950s. Spazio followed in the tradition
from a conception of presence that is both a linear of architects' little magazines, which began with
narrative and ,,-hat can be called fLxed or decid Le Corbusier's magazine L'Esprit Nouveau in
able, then the te:>-.-tual suspends the narrative of 1920 and Mies "an del' Rohe's magazine G, with
presence. in \\'hich a hierarchy is implicit, and Theo van Doesberg and El Lissitzky, in 1923.
offers instead undecidable relations rather than VV'hile Le COl'busier's magazine referred to a
a single static condition. It is this undecidability new spirit, and the G on1ies's magazine stood for
of relations v.ith both historical and modernist Gegenstand (object) and effectively addressed
tropes that Moretti invokes to produce an initial ideas about objecthood, Morelli's Spazio made
critique of modernism. an important distinction between the object
The abstract languages of cubism and futill' thing and the object of containment as space or
ism \vere subjected to a critique, which first took volume, An object can be seen and analyzed a
30 Catia "I! Gil'ai'ole"

6. Casa "Il Girasole, " ground-floo?'plan. 7. Casa "Il Girasole, " second-floor' plan.

a geometric abstraction, but space is difficult to the edge of a volume seen against the sky is a
analyze as a physical entity because it is usually literal profile. This means that all architecture,
defined by other things. While space is a concep because it is three-dimensional, will have some
tual entity, its container is formal. Such a redefi sort of profile. While in architecture a profile is
nition of the modeling of space was among the the edge of a plane or the edge of a surface, it
issues Moretti broached in Spazio. is also either the edge of the containing surface
It was Moretti's article "Valori della or the edge of the exterior space in relationship
Modanatura," (The Value of Modeling) in Spazio to the containing surface of the interior. In either
6 (1952) that challenged the modernist concep case, profile tends to be the result of figured form,
tion of space. The article suggested that surface which in turn produces shadows. Moretti was not
had the capacity to be modeled in such a way as referring to a literal profile per se but to a con
to create a dialogue between volume and flat ceptual profile, which was made thematic in the
ness, and therefore that the modeled surface design. Moretti made profile thematic in his work
could engage the affective potential of light by suggesting that profile becomes more than
and shadow. The article challenged the boxlike just the edge of a three-dimensional volume and
abstractions of modern architecture by raising instead serves to question the clarity of boundar
the issue of profile, which is articulated through ies between edge and volume. In Moretti's terms,
both hard edge and figured form. profile is not a narrative device, revealing shape
Profile is the edge of afigure-in other or figure, but rather can be disassociated from
words, how a surface in architecture meets space: any shape or figure; this disassociation is not
Ca~a "II Gjra~ole" 81

.,

- i_ 'I
--...

8. Casa uIl Gimsole, " thi~'d-flool' plan. 9. Casa uIl GiTasole,"roofplan.

merely a line but can be, for example, the dark and defined physically-linear elements such as
edge of cast shadows. By calling attention to pro structure and walls-and subsequently broaches
file in architecture, Moretti suggests its role as a the spatial, that which is contained within physical
marker of undecidable relationships and engages boundaries. The history of architecture has been
space as an object for close reading. As hierarchy largely defined by this progression from object
and singularity of meaning are made problematic, or geometry to space. Moretti's models inverted
the rhetoric becomes textual rather than formal. this convention by taking space, rather than its
The idea ofspace as volume was illustrated in enclosing surface, as a starting point for analysis.
Spazio by Moretti's series of cast models of histor On the one hand Moretti deals with the edge of the
ical buildings, churches, and villas. Moretti broke surface-its profile-and on the other he engages
with the conventions of architectural models by volume without surface in these model studies.
representing a building's interior space as a solid Moretti's notion of profile and space, as articu
volume and dispensing entirely with its exterior lated in his volumetric models, raises formal and
enclosure, structure, facades, or any other indica conceptual issues that refuse resolution as a single
tions of an exterior skin. These volumetric models narrative or meaning. These models prefigure a
seemed to deny a relationship to the exterior. radically new diagram of space that Moretti fur
Rather, they embodied space itself, conceptualiz ther developed in Casa "II Girasole."
ing space by turning void into solid. In the history The first impression of Casa "II Girasole"
of architecture, analysis usually begins from the is a dynamic tension between volume and edge.
geometric, and from elements that can be touched The cut in the center of the front facade is the
 Casa "I1 Girasole"

10. Casa uIl Gintsole," northwest corner.

first postwar use of the aedicular motif, whereby dominant motif of the neoclassical, and if the
a spatial division occurs between two solids, frontal picture plane was a dominant motif of the
which nevertheless remain related across its modern, then Moretti's Casa "II Girasole" uses
void. Moretti's use ofthe aedicule comes out of an elements of each while breaking with both tradi
historical tradition, from the Palladian window tions. The corners of Casa "II Girasole" are sites
to Carlo Rainaldi's Santa Maria in Campitelli. of fracture: both the front and rear facades over
Moretti's facade cannot be considered a pastiche hang the main mass ofthe building as thin screens,
of history, however, because he uses historical separated from the main volume of the building.
motifs in a new way. The aedicule divides the The corner is also shadowed by an undecidability
planar surface of the facade of Casa "II Girasole" as an assembly of concrete solids and voids. This
into two volumetric pieces which, though paired, develops from the idea of profile that Moretti put
are not identical, nor do their edges align across forward in Spazio, yet the layered character of
the void. The physicality of the facade is equally the facade creates a different understanding of
ambiguous, in that it appears to be a cleft profile. Casa "II Girasole" is no longer a building
volume when viewed frontally, but when viewed where profile can be said to define a continuity, as
obliquely, the facade becomes attenuated at the would be the case in classical architecture where
edges, resembling a screen. profile and shape were one and the arne thing.
The tension between the facade seen as a One of the important theoretical propositions set
screen and as a volume is further developed at into play at Casa "II Girasole" is that the profile
the corners of the facade. If the corner was a does not equate to the shape of the building.
Ca"a "I! Gira!:'ole" 33

Another theoretical proposition resides in

the problematic of the corner: Casa "II Girasole"
does not present a clearly subjective view of the
object, seen perspectively as Greek space, nor
does it offer a frontal view as modern Roman
space. It is something other, and makes an argu
ment of its otherness, similar to the manner in
which Adolf Loos disarticulated the exterior
envelope from inner volumes. For Moretti, the
play of solid, void, and edge are simultaneous
conditions. Thus Casa "II Girasole" is one of the
first didactic examples of the idea ofthe profile as
breaking up the regular outline of the modernist
box: the modernist envelope is confronted by its
opposite in the idea of contained volume.
In modern architecture's free plan, columns
were usually the same size and shape as functional
grounding elements. At Casa "II Girasole," the
columns become figured, changing shape and
size as they move through the buDding, signaling
difference. The paired volumes and paired sets of
11. Casa "Il Girasole, "fl'Ont facade profile.
columns speak to a formal order that is different
from an abstract or neutral column grid. The Zumthor's use of stone or wood. Rather, material
pairing of the columns creates a play between functions here as notation, articulating difference
symmetries in two different axes while at the in a manner reminiscent of Loos's turn-of-the-cen
same time disrupting an abstract nine-square tury Viennese interiors. Loosjuxtaposed marbles,
grid and a plaid grid of servant and served spaces. granites, woods, metals, and stuccos to articulate
In this, Moretti's plan critiques the uniformity of their iconic value as individual materials. Loos's
space in the free plan. The importance of these interiors are not about the richness of the materi
two forms of notation lies in the breaking down als but their juxtaposition.
of historical continuity, which for Moretti was The lobby of Casa "II Girasole" is a riot of
the Renaissance villa, the baroque palazzo, and materials-metal, stone, glass, wood-that obeys
the nineteenth-century h8tel-de-ville. This is an no structural or compositional logic. No dominant
evolution of the idea of the whole as a consistent material system can be discerned, and there is
relationship of parts, as would be the case with no governing color palette. The use of material
any idea of type to a condition no longer described is both notational and didactic, to call attention
by a dominant whole. to the possibility of material as text. Material
The materiality of Casa "II Girasole" lodges elements refer back and forth to one another, yet
another critique ofmodernist abstraction. Material they do not represent anything other than the
here is used rhetorically, but not in the tradition mere fact of their existence. While this could be
of formal rhetoric, as material in and of itself, nor considered a form of neorealism in architecture,
for its purely phenomenological value, as in Peter in their refusal to refer to any external systems
34 Casa "II Girasole"

12. Casa uIl Gimsole, " base ofwest facade. 13. Casa "Il Girasole, " entrance.

of material meaning, the materials function patterns that deny their structural logic. The
textually. sculpted remnant of a human leg is incorporated
The stonework of the base takes on a into a window jamb as if a relic from an early
notational quality in its use of fal e rustica classical sculpture had found its way into the
tion, varied patterns, and sculptural motifs. In fabric of Casa "II Girasole." This historicizing
Casa "II Girasole," the "rusticated" base turns motif triggers a thought about the past, but it
out to be a play on rustication. Rustication in a is not aimed at a nostalgic or adulatory remem
Florentine palazzo follows a logic of mass: heavi brance. Rather these sculptural elements are
est at the base and increasingly thinner at upper archaic and anarchic, as if the arbitrariness
levels. Countering this convention, the rustica of everyday life, as portrayed in neorealist
tion at Casa "II Girasole" harkens back to Giulio film, informs what Banham might consider the
Romano's sixteenth-century Palazzo del Te in arbitrary, whimsical, and unsystematic use of
Mantua, whose paper-thin rustication does not materials. The sculptural leg has no meaning
look like stone and whose keystones seem to and could be considered purely arbitrary, but
drop out of their holding positions, questioning this is an order of arbitrariness divorced from
how the stone arch is structurally supported. an expression of will, historicism, and expres
The state of suspension between support and sionism. Moretti's calibrated arbitrariness calls
collapse, between heavy and paper-thin rustica attention to its own condition as arbitrary in an
tion, calls the materiality of stone into question. internal referencing that is textual rather than
Moretti inverts the conventions of rusti purely meaningful.
cation by putting heavy stones on thin stones, Moretti's Casa "II Girasole" uses histori
incorporating stony blocks within window open cal motifs to make a critical commentary on the
ings, or cutting rusticated stone in chevron formal coherence of architecture. Historicizing
Ca~a .. II Gira~ole" 35

14. Casa ull GiTasole, " rusticated base ofwest facade.

references such as the aedicular motif of the which may explain one reason why Moretti's
facade and the rusticated textures of the base work has gone almost unnoticed in the interven
point toward postmodern practices, yet at Casa ing years. Moretti's Casa "II Girasole" rewrites
"II Girasole" these belong to a wholly different the conditions that suggest architecture itself,
order. Such conditions make Casa "II Girasole" and which this book argues, relate canonic build
both formal and textual; certain formal coher ings to close reading. While Moretti's building
ences are emphasized and simultaneously dis transitions from the abstractions of modernism to
placed. In Casa "II Girasole" Moretti does not a sensibility more closely related to neorealism,
thematize proportions, materials do not cohere it proposes methods of close reading of a differ
into narrative, and the masses of the build ent kind, methods no longer tied to modernism's
ing remain a series of juxtaposed volumes and formal lexicon but rather to an undecidability of
screens, if not random notations, which replace the text. Casa "II Girasole" is the first and per
the formal conventions of the plan. Many of the haps the earliest exemplar of such a discourse.
possible readings are undercut by other read
ings, and therefore do not provide any synthesis.
If the notion of a text posits the breakdown of a
decidability leading to closure or sY11thesis, then .
the textual in architecture suggests a breakdown
in the notion of the meaningful organization of a
single narrative.
Casa "II Girasole" has many possible con
tingent readings as a textual work; it does not
sustain a single, dominant view of architecture,
CLEMSON UNlVERSI1Y UBRARV
46 Casa "11 Gil'asole"

31. Casa "ll GiTasole, " seconclflo01~ axonometTic view.

Lt
4 Ca~a "II Girasole"

SS. Casa uIl Girasole," axonometric view.

290 Bibliography

1. Profiles of Text
Luigi Moretti, Casa "II Girasole." Rome, Italy, 1947-1950.

Banham, Reyner. "Casa del Girasole: Rationalism and Eclecticism in Italian Architecture."
Architectural Review 113 (February 1953): 73-77.

Bucci, Federico and Marco Mulazzani. Luigi Moretti: Works and W'ritings. Translated by Marina
deConciliis. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.

Eisenman, Peter. "Luigi Moretti and the Culture of Fragments." Area 74 (May/June 2004):
170-181.

Eisenman, Peter. "La Casa 'II Girasole,' Moretti visto da Moretti. Rome: Palombi, 2007.

Finelli, Luciana. Luigi Moretti, la prornessa e il debito: architettu1"e 1926-1973. Rome: Officina,
1989,2005.

Moretti, Luigi. "Valori della Modanatura." Spazio 6 (1951-2). Translated by Thomas Stevens as "The
Values of Profiles." Oppositions 4 (October 1974): 109-139.

Moretti, Luigi. "Strutture e sequenze di spazi," Spazio 7 (1952-3). Translated by Thomas Stevens as
"The Structures and Sequences of Space." Oppositions 4 (October 1974): 109-139.

Stirling, James. "'The Functional Tradition' and Expression," Perspecta 6 (1960): 88-97.

Venturi, Robert. Cornplexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern
Art,1966.