I C A R C H 

  A HOUSE FOR PETER EISENMAN

in Haiti

 

 

We remember Peter Eisenman’s “En Terror Firma.“

 

His cozy appeal to terror, to firmly “anchoring” ourselves in terror.

 

Flirting with the earthquake, flirting with disaster!

 

He was not and he is not, alone. Other architects, from the opulent West in particular, did and do the same thing.

 

But to do it from Greenwich Village in New York, where Mr. Eisenman lives (although New York is not quite safe either, lately) is different from doing it from Haiti, especially that Haiti devastated just one year ago by a very real (not imagined), earthquake.

 

The cozy New York intelligentsia, quite comfortable in most cases, flirted for a long time with disaster, from afar.

 

But how would one build a House for Peter Eisenman in Haiti, the post - real earthquake Haiti…????????

 

Would it still be willing to be firmly “anchored” in terror…??????

 

Would it still long for that terror…????????

 

We doubt it.

 

We all want what we do not have. And a life without disasters, perhaps quite strangely, seems to want even what is against itself. From here, the appetizing discomfort advocated by many, in today’s world.

 

While their sofas are quite comfortable, at home.

 

To imagine a house for Peter Eisenman in Haiti we do not consider an “academic exercise,” but a necessity, if a quest for trying to build in a true way, is not avoided.

 

Whose truth though…????????

 

Certain things do not change. Perhaps, we like to think, Vitruvius is still valid. Maybe even Peter Eisenman would read him with renewed interest, in Haiti!

 

So yes, let’s try to imagine how Peter Eisenman would build, in Haiti, now. Would he still slant the walls and the columns and the roofs and the floors, as if smitten by a wild earthquake…?

 

We doubt it. We think the dialectician Peter Eisenman would not do it. It is enough to contemplate for a second an image with the post-real earthquake Haiti to realize this.

 

But who knows…? Maybe alternatives are still possible.

 

Some kind of oxymoronic meeting between Vitruvius and Eisenman…?

 

Design (?) a House for Peter Eisenman, in Haiti.

 

Design (?) a terror-welcoming (apparently) house in the land of terror.

 

Please send us ANY work, ANY size and ANY format to works@icarch.us. We will publish all the works received on our website. The deadline is March 1st 2011. If you have any questions, please let us know.

 

Thank you,

 

ICARCH Gallery