this brings us to deconstruct or deconstructivist arc which just almost feels like it's an oxymoron because it doesn't seem like something that needs to be constructed could be deconstructed but in fact and the the name and the idea come from an approach to literary criticism that actually first appears in the 1960s in France and it has this kind of transition into applied design and architecture over a period of years I mean a lot of it has to do with exploring its exploring a variety of relationships so very much like post-modernism it's it has to do with opening up in this case with taking systems apart with taking things apart maybe poetry or literature or a building and then reassembling it in a way that makes a different kind of logic that maybe explores relationships between parts in a different way and maybe ultimately might provide us with new answers with with new ideas one simple way to think of it is if we take for instance the numbers one through nine and we know the relationship of those numbers each one is progressively worth more than the one before and now just mix them all up throw them on a table mix them up and now organize them so that we've got all the numbers that have rectilinear elements in one pile and all the all the numbers that have curvilinear elements in another pile and suddenly we have a completely different organization of numbers now they're relating to each other in a different way maybe we would find something out about them maybe not but we would only be able to explore that by taking them out of their regular order and rearranging them according to different logic systems and in some ways deconstructivist architecture is exactly that taking something apart and reorganizing it in a way that maybe allows us to think about it in a new way the other thing that can make the approach to deconstructivism a little bit troublesome is that there are those architects that believe that they are d constructivists and those that don't and yet they're all sort of grouped together some more willingly than others Peter Eisenman is a deconstructivist and and we can look at his work really from that point of view quite purely here in the Wexner Center for visual arts we see a building that really looks from the top view as if somebody took some things apart and put them back together look for instance at the red brick portions of the building that really look an awful lot like a castle and yet they're in segments and then they have other types of architecture inserted in between them or that kind of trellis structure that runs all the way through the building from one end to the other that is part outside and part inside and then the other portions of the building as well look as if they've been taken apart and put back together now all of this has a logic it all relates to different parts of the campus because the Wexner Center is built on a much larger university campus and their axial relationships in terms of the orientation of elements in the building that trellis for instance has an axial relationship and if we could just sort of fantasize about what these things lead to we can think well one of those buildings probably has something to do with a larger structure somewhere else on the campus the axial direction of that trellis has something to do with the direction that one could follow to get to some important part of the campus and indeed that all is the case but we don't need to know that in order to experience the building and that's kind of the beauty of it is that it's both about the larger picture and the building itself and so when we're moving through the building we have the sense that there's logic that's not apparent to us and that's part of the experience of the architecture for instance why is the floor dipping on one side of the wall and staying level on the of the wall it brings up these ideas of contradiction and complexity and architecture that we first are introduced to through the work of Robert venturi and certainly it's being played out here there clearly are things that have been added or taken away that we're not sure of but we're but but we're asking the question and that's in part really the point of the building and we can see that as well here on these um trellis images it's taking us someplace we're not sure where and we're not sure why but if we want to explore further we can and we will find out why if we want to just experience what's there we're also able to do that Frank Gehry is one of the more reluctant architects that are grouped into this deconstructivist genre he actually considers himself just a person who explores someone who's experimental in them late 1970s he takes his own home which was a very kind of typical California bungalow and he explodes it essentially he cuts into it he takes it apart and then he builds onto it using materials that are all available in your normal lumber yard so nothing nothing special nothing custom-made and that's part of what he's actually experimenting with not only the idea of deconstructing and reconstructing the house and a new configuration but also the idea of incorporating these very kind of average materials so we see for instance the corrugated tin on the exterior of the building the incorporation of chain-link fencing and particle board and plywood being used throughout as we move around the exterior of the house you can see how in some places he takes the house apart and makes the construction of the building or the structure of the building more transparent as we can see in the upper story and in some places he actually builds on to the exterior of the house playing with ideas of architecture and form in ways that are both disturbing and intriguing here in the bedroom you can see how he's exposed the structure of the building up above the bed he's built onto it and extended into this kind of a trium space but look at the look at the floor under those two chairs it's actually clear glass so that you can now look down into a space that he's built on the exterior of the building and we see that from another side here here we're looking at the kitchen which is built outside or on the front of the building you can see the picture picture window that was the exterior of the building now actually lens transparency from the kitchen into the living room these ideas about building or designing with really common materials extend not just to Architecture but also to some exploration that he does in the design of chairs and we see this easy edges which is what he names this series of chairs on display at Bloomingdale's and in fact Bloomingdale's all through the 70s and 80s was the place for really avant-garde experimental design both from American designers and also from Europeans they had a whole series of model rooms that were changed out seasonally and the opening was something that the New York Times reviewed and certainly something as crazy as chairs that are made from corrugated cardboard was awfully avant-garde so what he does is he takes layers of cardboard they're all glued together very much like plywood only he then cuts into it and creates these forms he goes back to this idea in the 80s and creates much softer forms by using the cardboard from a different angle and you know that cardboard is very rigid and hard in one way and soft and another way and he utilizes both of these in these designs what he's probably best known for is his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao this is really the building that becomes internationally famous almost immediately changing Bilbao forever and also bringing Frank Gehry's designs to a very wide audience we see that same kind of playfulness we saw with the chairs and even with his own home but now it's refined into a kind of approach to architecture that has to do with movement and kind of irreverence for historical precedent and more about a sculptural form you can see here in this view down one of the streets of Bilbao how incongruent this building is with the rest of the city it really is a sculpture in the landscape and one that has absolutely no relationship in terms of scale or our ornament or detail or form but yet it's it's a building that becomes a destination and in some ways it's important to think about how architecture and design has become part of tourism because this is the way that buildings get built it is it is part of the way that we look at design now as icons as kind of focal points it's also important to think of this building in terms of the way that it's designed because the whole design process couldn't have taken place two or three decades earlier Frank Gehry still uses paper and cardboard when he when he does his initial designs it's how he goes through his process um so he rips up pieces of paper and he curls them around and throws them on to a table and crunches them up and finds a way that they look for him right sculpturally this is after a process of looking at the program and thinking about the shape of the building and making sure that all of that is actually taken care of and then he kind of sculpturally designs the exterior of the building to go along with that but all of that process is done with paper once he's satisfied with it it then is scanned with a kind of handheld scanner that allows the computer to read every point on the surface of those pieces of paper and cardboard and then that information is refined into the kind of modeling that we see here now the reason that this is important is because without that staff of being able to enter that information into the computer with a computer graphic system that was actually developed for the military and the design of jet planes it would be extraordinarily difficult and expensive to build one of these buildings not that they're inexpensive by any any means but may be so expensive that they wouldn't get built at all by mapping all the points on the surface of his design and then of course it goes through a series of refinements he's then able to have all of the elements that are made to build this building and to cover this building with all these little plates of metal and sheets of glass very very precisely they're produced extremely precisely because all of the information about the angle and the shape is there in the computer and the other thing that they're able to do is to think about the way that the surfaces of the building direct wind and light which in the case of a building that is this large and has such an extraordinary shape is actually quite important interestingly the interior of Bilbao has a much more ancient quality than the exterior so once inside there's a lot of reference being made to ancient architecture the use of this of this very soft warm stone and the reference to palm trees and nature are made very clear he also uses a lot of glass elements on the interior that almost have a feeling of water to them and this kind of rippling glass is another thing that really needs to be determined before installation and this is all done again through the use of computer design systems and we can see that here in the interior of the Conde Nast cafeteria in New York City where again he's used this curving glass and it curves in two directions so really a very point of complex glass form that would be very difficult to map out if one was not using computers to do that the installation of it has to be quite precise you can see how it's very much integrated into the interior architecture and the result is the sense that water is kind of washing down on those walls it almost it's almost like sitting inside of a fountain another architect working in this deconstructivist oil is Daniel Lee Biskind who's responsible for the design of the jewish museum in berlin germany now the program for this museum is very clear in that it's it's a museum that is actually holding a collection of artifacts and art that represent the kind of cultural continuity of the Jewish community in Germany and Berlin and and of course part of that story is also about the Holocaust and what Libas Kenned was given to work with was the design of a new building but it also needed to integrate with an older building so we've got an 18th century building that is connected and works along with the newer building and the newer building is this kind of zigzagging structure that we see that's that's just alongside the older building it's kind of a fascinating building and that it doesn't represent anything that has to do with architecture as we know it there is no relationship between this building and really anything else in terms of style and yet there's a there building is very closely related to some ideas about the city of Berlin what liebe skin' does in order to create the footprint of this building is that he he draws lines across the map of Berlin intersecting at this site and the points of the lines are really representing major elements of the Jewish community through the history of the city of Berlin so at one end might be a major synagogue and in another end of the line might be a major cultural center there might be a hospital at one end and a public swimming pool at the other there might be an important Jewish community at one end and maybe a much poor Jewish community at the other they are the lines by which the Jewish community would have transversed the city and connected itself from one from one part of the city to the other and this is important because Berlin was in fact a very rich Jewish City a very high percentage of the population were Jewish and a lot of the cultural elements of the city were based on Jewish Jewish funds Jewish heritage Jewish tradition once he had that laid out he took that and sort of segmented it and so all of the intersections are actually expressed in the shape of this building and then he trina-- cated them in places in order to create this solid line and that we see running through another element is the kind of gashing that happens on this building and you can see it on the side of the building you can also see it in the landscaping around the building these kinds of reps or gashes that come through and these express both what we what we meet immediately when we look at it which is the kind of horror of something being ripped apart and also represents in many cases lines that if we continue them would take us to other parts of the city and express loss know of course the Holocaust is a time of tremendous loss so while the building itself represents kind of the travels of the Jewish community back and forth across the city the gashing represents the kind of ripping a part of that and as we get to the interior of the building we see that quasi structural elements because these are not in fact support beams are used in order in a way to create a feeling of unrest so in this very long narrow staircase especially as you're coming down the staircase you're given the sense that the building is falling apart there are many points inside of this building where one feels that the structure of the building is precarious and it's like that because he wants to translate those ideas of uncertainty that one must have felt during the Holocaust to the viewer so while the collection that's schon for the most part is actually reflective of a very stable Jewish community in Germany the architecture itself always keeps us on edge always reminds us of how things can fall apart things can shift and you can see that very much for instance in the exhibition room here to the right where those gashes that are seen from the exterior now seen from the interior I'm interrupt in a sense the viewing of the objects that are in the cases and that exhibition is much more about the everyday life of Jewish families in Germany and then the wall behind it reminds us that that will all come to an end in the image on the Left what we have is the lower portion of that new built building and there the floors are at very peculiar angles really always keeping a person sort of off-balance and there are lots of spaces throughout that lower level that do that sometimes the viewer is isolated in a room that's dimly or not lit at all sometimes the viewer is in a room where the where the floor is counted in such a way that one constantly feels off-balance and all of this again is to express the kind of disease that the Holocaust brought and even the horror of the Holocaust and that lower level of the building holds an exhibition of Holocaust material now what's interesting in this building in particular is that it was experienced as pure architecture for at least a year before it was opened as a museum once the building was completed it was open to the public before it had any collections installed and visiting the building at that time was in some ways even more moving than visiting it once the installation had been brought in in part because liebe skinned was able through his use of the architectural space to really bring home ideas about the destruction of continuity and about the unpredictability of being in wartime that are almost confused by the by the collection it's really quite extraordinary of how how he was able to do that architectural II and part of that has to do with his use of these ideas of deconstructivism of being able to take things apart and rearrange them in new ways to create new systems of logic