He is a “master of hesitation, a virtuoso in indecision and a magician who keeps things in suspense”, writes the director of the Viennese Museum for Applied Arts, Peter Noever, on Peter Eisenman at the beginning of the book “Barefoot on white-hot walls”. The American, to whom the MAK, early in 2005, dedicated an exhibition and the catalogue reviewed here, is in the centre of attention at a time when other masterminds of architecture increasingly turn towards building and away from theorisation. But not Eisenman: during the 2004 Architecture Biennale in Venice he was awarded the Golden Lion for his life’s work, and probably, that can be assumed, rather for his theory than his realised work. Possibly the last real deconstructivist “removes space from its usual fictionalisation and purpose in order to rethink it without being able to reinvent it”, writes Noever in the introduction to the catalogue. Or in short: he places opinion above form.
For the Viennese exhibition Eisenman realised a field from 30 white cubes inside the museum’s exhibition hall, with each of them containing a “diagram” (in Eisenman’s terminology a kind of spatial conceptual sketch) of one of his buildings. His buildings also form the focus of the catalogue, which with its layout perfectly reflects Eisenman’s architecture: black-and-white, abstract, diagrammatic and additionally (with a format of 24 x 32 centimetres) extremely bulky. The presented mixture includes theoretical papers by Eisenman, description of realised and imaginary projects as well as appraisals by critics. The book is primarily addressed to an insider circle of Eisenman-experts and friends of profound theory. It is normal that more questions are raised than answered. Peter Noever shall be recited one last time in this respect: “Whoever proffers Eisenman cheap applause, naive approval or even an invitation to build in this city has missed the point and severely misunderstood the project.”