Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988; Essays by Alan Balfour, Yve-Alain Bois, Jean-Louis Cohen, Kurt W. Forster, K. Michael Hays, Arata Isozaki, Fredric Jameson
Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1994. First edition. Cloth over Boards. Quarto, pp. 236, illustrated with color and b/w photographs and drawings. Very Good in Very Good DJ. Item #21632
Between the Houses projects of the 1970s, which established Peter Eisenman as a leading architectural theorist, and his most recent, computer-aided explorations of complex geometries, lies a distinct phase in his work, a series of theoretical projects, competition submissions, and public commissions called the Cities of Artificial Excavation. This book is the first publication to document this important stage in Eisenman's career, when he not only turned his attention to the relationship between architecture and site but also reassessed, through the technique of scaling, the very idea of composition in architecture. This book presents four of the most representative and best documented of the artificial excavation projects: an urban design scheme for Cannaregio West in Venice (1978); a housing project near Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin (1980-1981, partially realized 1982-1986); a design for the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach (1986); and Chora L Works (1985-1986), a garden for the Parc de La Villette in Paris designed in collaboration with Jacques Derrida. Published on the occasion of the exhibition by the same name shown at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal in 1994.
Price: $85.00