For Peter Eisenman, “practice” is set in opposition to “project,” […] project critiques the status quo of the discipline and the world […] An insider-game, Eisenman’s “meta-project” can only be advanced successively through certain individual projects (commissions and buildings whether built or unbuilt), those whose parameters are such that the architect can resist or challenge specific, local demands. The architect’s project should resist and avoid consumption by the normative constraints of the profession.
(Marc Manack) ¹ 

Within the contemporary discourse of architecture, the concept of the metaphysical project, oftentimes simply shortened to project, is significantly interwoven with the oeuvre of Peter Eisenman. Both in terms of realized/unrealized projects, as well as academic texts, his body of work tends to be directly associated with the discursive landscapes of grammar and syntax, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, literature, the notion of conceptual architecture, and psychoanalysis. The domain that is noticeably missing from this list is the discourse of contemporary political economics. While many of the above domains themselves are anchored around significant critiques of contemporary politico-economic systems, there does not appear to be any direct evidence that Eisenman’s meta-project adopted or was shaped around such a politico-economic critique. 

A lecture given by Peter Eisenman at the AA School of Architecture in 2010, titled “Lateness and the Crisis of Modernity,” however, appears to upend this politico-economic disassociation. Within this talk, Eisenman devotes a significant portion of his time to the politico-economic sphere—and more specifically to the growing impacts of capital and globalized capitalism upon architecture. What is meant by capital? Eisenman’s definition of the term appears to be in line with the conventional Marxist lexicon. Namely, wealth accumulated via, and for the purposes of, continuous global circulation, and the perpetual buying and selling of commodities and labor. With no end or limit in theoretical sight, this “never-ending augmentation of exchange-value,” leads to increased concentrations of accumulated wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer stakeholders, and inversely, the exacerbation and expansion of inequities within and upon a wider and wider population.² Tracing the relationship between capital and project over several eras, Eisenman frames the gradual digestion of project via the growing reach and intricacy of capital. Culminating in a reflection upon the impact of capital within his own meta-project, Eisenman concludes with the note: “At what point do you retire? […] I’m not convinced that we are any longer in control.” ³ 

Three questions emerge from this lecture. First, what are the details of Eisenman’s conception of the relationship between architecture and capital? Second, is Eisenman’s project significantly tied to capital in ways that have not previously been understood? In other words, is the consistent disassociation of Eisenman from politico-economic discursive domains inaccurate? Or is this lecture simply a tangential anomaly which can be discarded from the Eisenmanian discourse? Finally, third, are there lessons that can be derived from Eisenman’s framing of project that might be of use to contemporary architects attempting, in the context of late-stage capitalism, to sustain a long-term critical body of work?

The primary source data analyzed through this research were extracted via the digital archives of the Architectural Association. Individual lectures were the points of focus, as opposed to panel discussions, round tables, and interviews. There were three assumptions underpinning these restrictions: 

• Orators who give a series of lectures over a series of locations, oftentimes can recycle content from locus to locus without issue However, an orator giving a series of lectures, over an extended period of time, at a singular location, is more likely to try not to repeat themselves—particularly if the lectures are being recorded and archived. Keeping a stability of location allows for an increased likelihood of observing the evolution of a lecturer’s articulated discourse over time. 

• Keeping a stability of location also allows for the relative stabilization of an audience type (e.g., the students and faculty of the AA School of Architecture). Orators who lecture across different sets of listeners will often reshape content to accommodate the perceived (or actual) presumptions of the shifting audience type.

Keeping the audience stable allows for shifts in lecture material to be more cleanly (but not entirely) attributed to the orator’s own intrinsic reflections upon the state of their articulated discourse. 

• A similar presumption pervades the reasoning for avoiding panel or group discussions, or interview formats. The nature of these non-singular formats may similarly impress certain extrinsic motivations upon a speaker. These motivations may lead to anomalous deviations of discursive content, set in motion by the speaker to satisfy actual or perceived group-think dynamics.

With these restrictions anchoring this investigation, a series of seven lectures which Peter Eisenman delivered at the Architectural Association across four decades became the point of focus for this paper:

• The 1975 lecture given within the Conceptual Architectural Symposium.¹⁶

• The 1989 lecture titled “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image.” ¹⁷

• The 1990 lecture given within the Symposium on the City.¹⁸

• The 1993 lecture titled “Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media.” ¹⁹

• The 1994 lecture given within the Architecture and Complexity Symposium.²⁰

• The 2010 lecture titled “Lateness and the Crisis of Modernity.” ²¹

• The 2012 untitled lecture simply archived under the title of “Lecture.” ²²

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.³³

Throughout most of Eisenman’s talks, there is a clear positioning of his body of work against the “phenomenological project.” ³⁴ Yet throughout all of these lectures, even within the 2012 address wherein this subject reemerges, Eisenman seems quite resolute in his efforts. He never concedes the potential of defeat in the face of the reemerging derivatives of the phenomenological project. By contrast, in 2010, when he proclaims a significant degree of powerlessness and loss of control in the face of capital, it is at this point that that the most unexpected question concerning retirement arises. 

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.⁴⁰

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,⁴¹ with capital effectively taking over the philosophic arguments at play.⁴²

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.⁴³

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.⁴⁴ 

The discursive landscape has broadly relegated Peter Eisenman and his work to non-politico-economic domains. This is a discursive positioning that Eisenman himself helped author. However, the depth and detail to which Eisenman frames the evolving relationship between architecture and capital in his 2010 lecture, indicates that he is not only quite well versed with the intricacies of global capitalism but quite conscious of the relationship between global capitalism and his own discipline. Are there other layers to Eisenman’s meta-project that connect to capital that have been overlooked? 

A point of focus for Eisenman that reemerges across all the lectures examined is his critical refutation of phenomenology. In 1975, for instance, Eisenman posits the conceptual as a distinct counterpoint to the phenomenological domain: 

I am trying to produce an object whereby you have a physical experience A […] but out of that physical experience, you begin to get a concept, an idea which has nothing to do with that physical experience. In fact, it is conceived of from a totally different attitude. And the only way you can truly understand the concept is to be in a relationship with the object which can never be physical. In other words, the conceptual structure is designed from a point where you can never physically experience it. You physically experience the object, you put together the conceptual structure. Then, when you go back into the object, my premise […] or at least my intention is that the physical experience is then modified. […] [this is] something which for me, is conceptual.⁴⁶

Thirty-eight years later, Eisenman still echoes this point: 

My work, and the work of many architects, stands against the possibility of meaning from actual phenomena. That is, meaning from its materiality, etc. […] So it is purposefully going right at the phenomenological project of site specificity, genius loci, that in the  site is some idea of a transcendental condition. […] And I would argue that from the first consciousness of architecture, the idea of real being is always to be put into question by architects. That is, to disturb the easy idea that the subject and object relate to one another on a prima facie basis.⁴⁷

At certain moments, the critique is more blunt – e.g., “What many people are doing is designing buildings to be taken as photographs, rather than real buildings.” ⁴⁸ And at certain moments, Eisenman also asserts a comparable stance against the idealization of functionality.⁴⁹ Taken in tandem, this critique of pure phenomenology and pure functionality appear to echo the stance of Manfredo Tafuri, who asserted that capital’s appropriation of architecture and the city would produce two outcomes, masked as opposing polarities, but in fact functioning as two sides of the same coin—the radical top-down reorganization of the city as capitalist machine at large, epitomized by Le Corbusier’s proposal for Algiers, and the emergence of the hyper-commodified and hyper-phenomenological urban environment, epitomized by Carnaby Street. 

Thus two levels of intervention within the unified city must be distinguished: the cycles of production and consumption. […] 

Carnaby Street and the new utopianism are thus different aspects of one phenomenon. Architectural and super-technological utopianism;

the rediscovery of the “game” as a condition for the public’s involvement […] invitations to establish the “primacy of the imagination”: such are the proposals of the new urban ideologies.⁵⁰

A significant overlap emerges between Eisenman and Tafuri within the timeframe of the latter’s vocalization of this critique. Eisenman underscores the 1960s and 70s as a critical epoch within the maturation of his discursive worldview, specifically in the context of the polarization of the discursive camps concerning phenomenology and genius loci on the one hand, and zeitgeist on the other. The year 1963 is critical within this timeframe, as it is at this time that Eisenman completes his doctoral dissertation, The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, but not before he first reads the initial 1963 publication of Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Intentions in Architecture ⁵¹ which, Eisenman asserts, behaves as a significant foil for his own maturing ideas. A second critical event within these years is Eisenman’s inclusion in the Tafuri-sponsored “Ten Projects for Cannaregio” exhibition, which Tafuri structured as a refutation of the phenomenology/genius loci-focused Roma Interrotta exhibit of 1978. Given Tafuri’s overt tie of the anti-phenomenological stance to an anti-capitalist positioning, the Cannaregio exhibition’s questioning and critique of the phenomenological project is clearly significantly anchored around a critique of capital. 

The critical question here is whether the specificities of Eisenman’s positioning against the phenomenological project, within the 1960s and ‘70s, stretch into the current day. Or whether his discursive stance during that time period was simply insular to that era. In his own framing of his anti-phenomenological positioning, in his 2012 lecture, Eisenman indicates an unbroken discursive thread from his initial reaction to Norberg-Schulz, to his inclusion in Cannaregio, to his latest positioning against the second revival of phenomenology under the domains of digital processes and self-organizing parametric systems.⁵² For Eisenman, these occupy the same lineage of discursive thought that can be traced without break from 2012 back to 1963.

Eisenman’s 2010 lecture at the Architectural Association, “Lateness and the Crisis of Modernity,” further supports this conception of discursive continuity across the past decades. He first frames the evolution of the genius loci and zeitgeist debate across the twentieth century, starting with Walter Gropius and ending with Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi,⁵³ and then immediately ties this timeline, without any buffer, into an analysis of the evolution of the relationship between architecture and capital, starting with Le Corbusier and ending with Rem Koolhaas.⁵⁴ For Eisenman, the continued conflicts between the genius loci/phenomenology project on the one hand, and the zeitgeist project on the other, offer an unbroken narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century architecture. Furthermore, this narrative is deeply intertwined with the narrative concerning architecture’s relationship to capital. For Eisenman, these are the critical narratives of architecture in the modern era. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, for instance, are not only critical figures pursuing the continuation of the zeitgeist movement,⁵⁵ but in so doing, are figures shaping formulations concerned with “the emergence of Capital as a phenomenon in culture, in media, in the arts, and in architecture.” ⁵⁶