"Anti-architecture and Deconstruction", by Nikos Salingaros

The Italian edition ANTIARCHITETTURA E DEMOLIZIONE is available in all major bookstores in Italy. Paperback: 228 pages, Publisher: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, Florence, Italy (April 2007), ISBN: 978-88-89264-87-4, chapters arranged differently from the English edition.

The Spanish edition is being prepared for publication by Nobuko Editorial, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Until this book is published, an incomplete translation is available for FREE DOWNLOAD.

OVERVIEW

ANTI-ARCHITECTURE AND DECONSTRUCTION is a collection of essays on deconstructivist architecture. This book raises questions about how the public can be indoctrinated to accept an architecture that is hostile to human sensibilities, and which often causes physiological and psychological distress. In trying to understand the adoption of an architectural fashion, writers often focus only on aesthetic points, and ignore psychological conditioning and the role of the media. I look at the dark underside of contemporary architecture, and the world that promotes and sustains it.

This book brings science, and the scientific way of thinking, to clear up some of the mysteries of architectural culture. I am able to cut through years of mysticism and confusion, and to expose some established practices for what they truly are. When they are no longer supported by an ambiguous pseudo-philosophy, they fall apart. My goal is to build emotionally-nourishing buildings, so every criticism developed here ultimately leads towards a new, more humane architecture. I am searching for an understanding of what architecture truly means: how to get beyond ephemeral fashions into a profound understanding of the built environment.

Some of the essays included in this book take a decidedly spiritual direction. Admittedly, both architects and scientists of our day may harbor some negative feelings towards organized religion. Nevertheless, I find myself drawn towards a new sympathy with humanistic (as opposed to industrial) philosophies. The world's religions offer positive means of connecting to the universe, and I utilize this as an antidote to the present disconnecting trend. Although most people succumb to indoctrination by the media, a few individuals look for a way out. For them, I offer strategies that help them to resist mind control so they do not conform through peer pressure.

FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

This book offers a critical analysis of deconstructivist architecture and its underlying philosophy. I have felt strongly enough about this topic to write a series of essays, previously published in a variety of online and paper journals. Some first appeared in different languages -- the present compilation brings them together in English for the first time. In the absence of any other book that is sufficiently analytical so as to make an impact on today's infatuation with this peculiar building style, I present instead this collection of essays.

The major change in this edition is the inclusion of three new essays originally written and published in Italian. They are made available here in English for the first time. The rest of the book is more or less the same, except for updating the references (and putting them into uniform format), and re-arranging the Parts to accommodate the new pieces in a coherent fashion. I have also added some new explanations of technical points, and cleared up one or two ambiguous sentences in the text. The Postscript to Part 7 and the Index are new. Michael Blowhard contributed Annotations to the three new Parts, and Michael Mehaffy an Endnote for the Second Edition.

Although only three years separate the First and Second editions, a lot has happened that is worth noting. This book has been unexpectedly influential, and its impact is growing. I am gratified that it received very positive and prominent reviews and was praised by many people, but -- perhaps more significant -- it has provoked a remarkably hostile over-reaction among some in the current architectural establishment. It seems to have struck a nerve.

The book began modestly as a collection of essays severely critical of the most fashionable and esteemed contemporary architects, published in English by a small architectural press in Germany. The book was unknown to general readers, since the major American and British bookstores (including the online ones) did not sell it. One prominent architectural bookstore in the US did carry it, but astonishingly, condemned it on its website! When my publisher complained that this did not make good sense for promoting sales, the bookstore in question promptly dropped the book. Despite such obstacles, the book has been translated into French, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and the first edition has now sold out.

(continues ... )

CHAPTER LIST

Author's Preface

Chapter Annotations by Michael Blowhard

Foreword by James Stevens Curl

"Some Thoughts on Culpability", by James Kalb

Introduction by Michael Blowhard

1. The Chessboard Model of Architectural Styles

2. The Danger of Deconstructivism

3. Charles Jencks and the New Paradigm in Architecture

4. Deconstructing The Decons: The World Trade Center Project Spotlights The Empire's Newest Clothes (with Michael Mehaffy)

5. Death, Life, and Libeskind (with Brian Hanson)
Postscript I: A Fate Worse Than Death?
Postscript II: A Letter from Hillel Schocken

6. Warped Space (review of Anthony Vidler's book)

7. Twentieth-Century Architecture as a Cult
Postscript: The Authority of the Gospels

8. Aggression in Architectural Education: The 'Coup' in Viseu

9. Anti-architecture and Religion

10. Contemporary Church Architecture and Saint Augustine's "The City of God"

11. The Derrida Virus

12. Background Material for 'The Derrida Virus' (includes sections co-authored with Terry M. Mikiten)

13. The New Ara Pacis Museum

14. The New Acropolis Museum
Postscript: Architectural Cannibalism in Athens

15. Architectural Theory and the Work of Bernard Tschumi

16. The Nature of Order (book review and interview with Christopher Alexander)

Endnote to the First Edition by Lucien Steil
Endnote to the Second Edition by Michael Mehaffy

Endnote to the Third Edition by James Kalb: "Why do we have horrible inhuman architecture?"

References

Index

BOOK REVIEWS

"The book comes at the end of many years of studies and debates, and at the beginning of new reflections on the topic of contemporary architecture... Definitely, the true importance of this text is to remove every support that modern Architecture has ever claimed from Science." Extract translated from a REVIEW IN ITALIAN by Raffaele Giovanelli, Il Covile, No. 411 (October 2007).

"Nikos A. Salingaros: A new Vitruvius for 21st-Century architecture and urbanism? ... Undoubtedly, this manuscript is a voice of logic and reason against anti-architecture norms, and the destructive attitudes of their followers. I would add my voice to other reviewers of this manuscript: that it must be a mandatory reading in schools of architecture worldwide." Extract from the REVIEW by Ashraf Salama, Archnet-IJAR, Volume 1, Issue 2 (July 2007), 114-131. [PDF]

"Less than twenty pages of text are enough to deprive Deconstruction of the complex scientific arguments that offer its exponents scientific authority and social approval." Extract from the REVIEW by Nikos Karydis, THE STRUCTURIST, No. 45/46 (2006), 119-123.

"[Nikos Salingaros' books are] three fundamental texts, among the most significant of the past few years." Vilma Torselli, 2006.

"A brilliant, head-clearing, scrupulous, and substantial takedown not just of hideous architecture but of the lousy philosophical (and 'scientific', ha ha) thinking that justifies it. Salingaros combines a sophisticated mind with a down-to-earth respect for common pleasures. Fans of Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander have got themselves a new thinker (and battler) to root for." Reviewer on Barnes & Noble, 2006.

"Nikos Salingaros thoroughly eviscerates the nonsense that passes for deconstructionist architectural 'theory', and goes on to explain why it won't just go away and die. With considerable precision and wit he characterises the deconstructionist meme as 'the Derrida virus' and shows how it propagates within society. This results in the cult that is the contemporary architectural establishment." Sajjad Afzal-Woodward, 2005

"I have just finished reading this long-awaited book. It's worth reading, even if you do not need convincing that Decon is a fraud. The sober revelation is the depth and extent of the fraud." Andrés Duany, 2004.

"A painful dissection of the pretentious, silly ramblings of Bernard Tschumi, the latest architectural wunderkind, by the brilliant Nikos Salingaros. Leaving these poseurs in universities was fine -- indeed it was even rather fun. However, lately, these architects have been let out of the universities and been allowed to design rather dysfunctional buildings. The mind boggles ..." Bilious Young Fogey, 2004.

"Another reality that Salingaros rediscovers is the existence of truth and its relevance for human community. The lack of a commonly-shared code of truth destroys a society." Giannozzo Pucci, 2003.

"Nikos Salingaros raises something that I think should be reasonable to anybody who has experienced the rituals of architecture school, and survived the perils of indoctrination with their sensible open mind intact." bRink on Archinect, 2002.

"This also explains why I get 'bad vibes'; the Decon sense of life reminds me of the bits and pieces of deconstructed style I've encountered in literature, history and art, and wherever I find it, its total rejection of beauty and truth gives me 'the deepest creeps'." Cybrarian at Large, 2002.

Armando Ermini, in ITALIAN 26 July 2008

Roger Scruton, in ITALIAN
Original ENGLISH version is published in
The New Criterion 26 March 2008

Raffaele Giovanelli, in ITALIAN 29 October 2007

Paul Grenier

27 April 2006

Konrad Perlman

10 May 2005

Isaac Meir, also in HEBREW
The Architectural Review, London.
This review was briefly reprinted by Builder Online,
but was taken off the web for reasons unknown.

1 February 2005

Francis Morrone
20 December 2004

Dirk Visser

24 November 2004

Michael Blowhard

2 October 2004

Thrasymachus

1 October 2004

READER FEEDBACK

"I wasn't aware that you were so feared!" -- Chris M., 2007
The first edition was briefly carried by a major architectural bookstore in the US, but generated such a controversy that caused the book to be dropped. This unbelievable story is on the web in two parts, HERE and HERE.

READ PORTIONS ONLINE

Read portions online on Google Books (First Edition). *Note that the Chapter numbering was changed in preparing the Second and Third Editions.

SALINGAROS ON GEHRY

"An architecture that reverses structural algorithms so as to create disorder -- the same algorithms that in an infinitely more detailed application generate living form -- ceases to be architecture. Deconstructivist buildings are the most visible symbols of actual deconstruction. The randomness they embody is the antithesis of nature’s organized complexity. This is despite effusive praise in the press for "exciting" new academic buildings, such as the Peter B. Lewis Management Building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and the Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences at MIT, all by Frank Gehry. Housing a scientific department at a university inside the symbol of its nemesis must be the ultimate irony.

An example of this vanguard deconstructivist architectural style is Frank Gehry's celebrated New Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which represents an unnatural imposition of free-flowing ribbon forms sheathed in a continuous, shiny metal skin. Besides the deliberate disorientation, which it produces visually through absence of a vertical, Gehry has eliminated or randomized components that would otherwise contribute to coherence.

Gehry's Bilbao Museum dispenses with components altogether. There is no translational or rotational symmetry. Similar is the case with an office building in Prague also designed by Gehry, where the windows are carefully misaligned in both vertical and horizontal directions, as well as in their depth and attachment to the façade (which itself is strangely distorted for no apparent reason), and their internal structure made inconsistent so as to avoid coherence. (This is known as the "Ginger & Fred" building). Gehry explains: "I worked very hard trying to devise a window that looked like it was attacking the form ... I thought of it like a swarm of bees coming at a wall." Gehry also reversed the natural progression of small to large as elements approach the ground, so that the windows actually get larger as they get higher.

The sense of incoherence is reinforced by the lack of substructure at decreasing scales. Gehry avoids any scaling similarity by using smooth metallic skin. In his Prague office building, each window could be roughly similar to the entire façade when scaled up by a factor of 10, but this is far too large a factor for the two scales to connect visually and thus generate a certain coherence, so the two scales remain visually disconnected."

ABOUT NIKOS SALINGAROS

Nikos Salingaros is a scientist/mathematician who has become a practicing urbanist and architectural theorist. He is the author of four books: "Anti-architecture and Deconstruction" (Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, 2004; 2007); "Principles of Urban Structure" (Techne Press, Amsterdam, 2005); "A Theory of Architecture" (Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, 2006), and the still incomplete "The Future of Cities" (forthcoming from Umbau-Verlag). After an early career as an artist, he obtained a Ph. D. in Physics and became Professor of Mathematics. Before turning his attention to architecture and urbanism, he published more than fifty research papers on mathematical physics and thermonuclear fusion. He is now applying his theoretical results to actual projects around the world, in collaboration with other well-known architects.