Gehry, Frank

Gehry, Frank (1929- ), American architect, a leader in the later phases of the postmodern movement in architecture. Gehry's distinctive style emerged in the 1970s with his dramatic use of ordinary building materials, such as chain-link fencing, plywood, and corrugated metal, and continued in the 1990s with his use of bold sculptural forms.
Born Ephraim Goldberg in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. There he studied architecture at the University of Southern California and worked for the architectural firm of Victor Gruen Associates. In 1956 Gehry studied urban planning at the Harvard School of Design and then returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen until 1960. After spending a year at the Paris office of French architect André Remondet, Gehry returned to Los Angeles where he opened his own practice in 1962.
Gehry's earliest independent designs reveal the strong influence of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. By 1972, however, he had begun to use nontraditional geometric forms in simple buildings constructed of corrugated metal and other ordinary materials. For example, the Ron Davis house in Malibu, California (1970-1972), has a trapezoid-shaped roof. Gehry's remodeling of his own house in Santa Monica, California, in 1979, became the focus of intense professional and journalistic attention. Gehry's new rooms were formed by sharp angular roofs sided with corrugated metal and decorated with angled panels of chain-link fence. He designed numerous private residences, each exploring the discordant possibilities of angled, colliding planes, bright colors, and ordinary industrial materials.
While continuing to design private residences, Gehry received important public commissions. The most notable of these is his strikingly original design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain, which opened to international acclaim in 1997. The dramatically curved forms of the museum are accentuated by a shimmering titanium surface. His other major public commissions include a new campus (1981-1984) for the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, the California Aerospace Museum (1982-1984) in Los Angeles, and the University of Toledo Art Museum (1990-1992) in Toledo, Ohio. His playful configuration for the Vitra Design Museum (1990) in Weil am Rhein, Germany, features an array of geometric volumes joined at unusual angles so that they appear to collide with one another. In 1989 Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, an international award recognizing professional excellence in architecture.

Antoni Gaudi

Antoni Gaudi is one of the most unique architects of the modern times. His style is a blend of neo-gothic and art-nouveau, but it also has surrealist and cubist elements. He is one of Spain’s most internationally recognized architects who left his mark throughout Barcelona and Catalonia. His unusual vision and creative designs worked as a magic to these historic regions. He brought a new movement into the world of architecture through his unique sense of art.
Antoni Gaudi was born in 1852, in Catalonia. He was the son of a copper smith and was the first in more than four generations to have left the family tradition of metal work. He obtained his diploma from the Provincial School of architecture in Barcelona, in 1878. He was involved in several small projects as a student. He was one of the only four students at Provincial School of Architecture to be granted the title of Architect by the school’s director. Gaudi was strongly influenced by Medieval books, Gothic art, Oriental structures, the Art Nouveau movement, and certainly the glory of nature.
Casa Vicens was one of his earliest major assignments. This house was built for Manuel Vicens Montaner on Carrer de les Carolines, in the Gracia quarter of Barcelona from 1883 to 1885. This building was mostly made up of straight faces but had vast decorations. Casa Vicens incorporates a brilliant display of ideas and an "enormous explosion of imagination." In his later projects, he used complex shapes and curves, but still kept his unique ornamentation. Many of Gaudi’s later work were commissioned by Guell family which helped him to become famous in Barcelona. These projects include residential mansions, estates and an urban park. Palau Guell (1886-1888), Pavellons Guell (1884-1887), Colonia Guell (1898-1908) and Guell Cellars (1895-1898) and Park Guell (1901-1914) are among these projects. Gaudi also made a new building for the Convent School Colegio Teresano (1888-1889) and remodeled an apartment building, Casa Batillo (1904-1906). Casa Mila, an apartment building designed for the Mila family, was Gaudi’s last civil building (1906-1910). Gaudi also worked outside of Barcelona but the outside world was not influenced by Gaudi’s work until long after his death.
Temple de La Sagrada Familia or Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family was considered Gaudi’s masterpiece and became his most famous structure. It was started by Francisco del Villar in Barcelona. Gaudi became the official architect and took over the construction in 1884. At this time, Gaudi was only 31 years old. Gaudi changed the plans, after some time, so that the temple was no longer being built in the Gothic Revival style. Since 1908, Gaudi centered all his efforts on the temple. He worked on the building until his tragic death in 1922, when he got hit by a streetcar.
In conclusion, Antoni Gaudi is an architect who dedicated his life in building extraordinary structures. His works have style of their own. Gaudi’s structures are sculpture-like with colorful ornamentations and details. His works reveal that he was greatly influenced by the Catalan movement and Art Nouveau. He succeeded in not only developing intricately designed exteriors but also fantastic interiors.

Stonehenge and Newgrange

Stonehenge and Newgrange are two prehistoric monuments. Stonehenge is found in the chalk uplands of southern England. It was believed to be a religious place. But cremation burials have also been discovered from this monument. Stonehenge have been rebuilt several times but the original design was always the same, except for a few additions. For example, the great horseshoe in the center was not always there. Stonehenge is made of chalk plain of Wiltshire. Stonehenge is one of the oldest surviving structures in England. Stonehenge I is thought to be built around 2750 B.C. The first stage of building made the circle of 97.50 meters (320 feet). After several centuries, the new building campaign started, Stonehenge II. A double ring of bleustones began to set up in the middle. These bluestones weighed up to 5 tons each and were brought from the Perscelly Mountains of Wales. For the Stonehenge III, the stones were put aside. Sarsen megaliths were now brought by movable track of oak rollers, perhaps. These stones were several times larger than bluestones. Bluestones were setup in front of the horseshoe trilithons. Later, they were interposed between the horseshoe and the sarsen circle. Two rings of pits were dug, may be for holding stone which was another addition to the structure that was arranged possibly as late as 1500 B.C. Many scholars thought it to be "an open-air observatory where a wide range of astronomical phenomena could be predicted with marvelous precision". There have been many disputes over the truth of it. Others thought that, that structure could be a celebration of celestial events and not merely a method of predicting them.
Newgrange is Ireland’s one of the prehistoric monument. Since the calibrated date of the radiocarbon specimen taken from the passage roof at the Newgrange worked out at around 3100 BC, Newgrange is thought to be as much as 500 years older than the pyramids. Similar to Stonehenge, this monument was thought to be made for a home of dead. Newgrange is 36 feet high and measures about 300 feet in diameter. The mound is made with a mixture of the earth, turves and stones. They are arranged in layers and can be compared to ‘cake’. The monument is heart-shaped mound and the roof is tilted downward from the center. This shape allows to drain off water sideways and prevent it percolating down into the burial chamber. There are three burial niches. The side walls leading to niches are decorated with a triple spiral and akin. Professor O’Kelly discovered in 1968 winter solstice that the tomb has a an opening in the roof called ‘roof box’ that allows the sun rays to enter the center of the chamber. This reveals the attention paid by the builder to provide comfort to the dead and their believe in life after death. Unlike Stonehenge, Newgrange is not Ireland’s earliest passage-tomb. "But it can be regarded as the climax of series of such toms because of its size, decoration and clever attention to constructional detail", according to the article. Similar to Stonehenge, Newgrange can be compared with the pyramids of Egypt, which is also man made burial chamber. But unlike pyramids which is the resting place for the single, divine Pharaoh, Newgrange is thought to be created for the community. Like Stonehenge, there have been additions to the original design of Newgrange, according to David Sweetman. The unhewn stones that form a part of a circle that once surrounded the mound at a distance was an added thousand years later by the Beaker people. The tomb was rediscovered in 1966 and thought to be regarded as ‘Seven Wonders’ of the local world. Both of these monuments, Stonehenge and Newgrange are extraordinary. The structures were made in such a way that leaves us wondering the purposes and methods used for their construction.

Three Major Orders of Greek Architecture

To determine the facade of the temple, the ancient Greeks developed three major architectural orders, or styles: Doric , Ionic and Corinthian. The Doric is the oldest and simplest order. Ionic and Corinthian are more decorative and added more details to the structure. These orders also added a base to the column and developed details in the column’s capital. Each order shows different entablature (the part that rested above the columns), also.
The Doric order developed by the end of the 6th century BC, on the Greek mainland and southern Italy ad Sicily. It was the most simplest of the three orders. The columns are tapered and rest directly on the stylobate. There is no base to the columns. Doric column is between five and six times its diameter. The columns are made to bulge slightly. There is an inward curve to make the columns look straight, due to the optical illusion. This convex dilation is called entasis. Similarly, the stylobate billows slightly to make drainage easier and to counteract the illusion of a concave dip made by a flat base. In the Doric order, the use of almost universally approved proportions is significant. The earliest example is the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, 490 BC. Parthenon is another example of the Doric order.
The Ionic order developed after the Doric order and adopted a lot from it. In the mature form of the Ionic order, the height was eight to nine times its diameter compared to the Doric. There were usually 24 flutes, even though the circumference was less. The column shaft usually had deeper flutes and is more slender than the Doric. Adjacent flutes were separated by a fillet and were rounded off at top and bottom. The typical ionic capital has two spiral volutes. Volutes are elements that look like partly unrolled scrolls. The Ionic capital looks different from the sides than from the front or the back. This difference caused problems in columns that stood at the corners. The volutes had to slant at the 45-degree angle so that their spiral pattern would look the same from the front of the temple as from the sides. The Ionic order is decorated with frieze and more carvings in the entablature. Ionic is more ornamental and graceful style than Doric but it lacks the clarity and power of the Doric style. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Temple of Athena Nike at the gateway of the Acropolis and the Temple of Artemis at Sardis in Asia Minor are some examples of the Ionic order.
The Corinthian order emerged late in the 5th century BC. It resembles the Ionic order in most aspects. The Corinthian capital makes a virtue of symmetry. The shape of the core is like an inverted bell. The volutes, borrowed from the Ionic order, are reduced to diagonally placed features at the corners. The rows of carved acanthus leaves are the main decorative effects achieved. The Corinthian column was at first used only for the interior columns and did not appeared externally until the 4th century BC. The Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens in the 6th century is an example of the Corinthian order, when the Greeks began to build the Corinthian columns on the exterior.
In conclusion, there are three major orders in Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Each order adapted a lot from the previous orders. Doric order was the simplest and the oldest. Ionic and Corinthian developed base to the columns and gave a decorative appearance to the columns.

Architecture of Guggenheim Museum

Museums have always been a center of attention for the art they display, but The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a center of attention for being a work of art itself, besides the art it displays. Guggenheim Museum is very unique in terms of its structure, design, shape and simplicity. Frank Lloyd Wright is the architect of this extraordinary building. It was built from1956 to 1959. This museum is located at 1071, Fifth Av., in New York City. This location carefully selected by Wright due to its proximity to Central Park. The exterior of the building contrasts with its surrounding. The interior of this building is designed in a way that makes the display of the art, easier and more interesting.
Since this museum is located in New York, it is surrounded by tall rectangular buildings. Solomon R. Guggenheim’s art advisor, Hilla Rebay, approached Frank Lloyd Wright and asked to create a building that would "stir the soul." Hilla Rebay wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright in 1943, "I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester, and a wise man... I want a temple of spirit, a monument!" Even though Wright did not like New York for its architecture personally, he ended up giving New York a spectacular monument. Wright preferred working in natural environment. He finally decided to locate this building in front of the Central Park. Wright intended to include the same function of the building as that in the world of nature, where the form follows a function unlike the main exposers of the modern movement.
This museum contrasts the surroundings completely with its circular shape. Its façade is clean and white, and the gaps between levels absorb the light into darkness. These create contrasting bands of white and black, and set an example to be followed by many others in the future. The building’s exterior is both simple and fascinating at the same time. The museum has also been compared to a ziggurat for its upside down spiral. The first floor has a large curved overhang which works as an invitation to the loggia underneath. A bridge links the outside to the inside.
The interior of the museum plays a major role in perfectly displaying the art collection. The inside space is a continual upwards movement using a six-floor spiral with galleries which spread out from the first ramp indicated by a large water fountain in the central room on the ground floor. Upon entrance in the building, the elevator takes to the highest level of the building. Then, the visitors can easily walk down the spiral while enjoying the art. The gentle slope of the spiral makes the display of art interesting by giving no interruption. It is also true that one is always on a slope while viewing art and some visitors and critiques object to it. But the slope is almost unnoticeable because of the fact that it is very gentle and makes its way down very slowly. Unlike the traditional museum with galleries, this museum provides a better display of it’s art collection. This spiral shape works as a system that solves a long-standing problem in the world of art.
The diameter of the spiral as it curves upwards allows for the entrance of light at each level installing in the visitor a sense of luminosity and tranquility. The central area is covered with a transparent dome. The continual spiral movement suggests a more closely natural bond between the creator and the exposed work of art seen along the path. The roof has a continual series of glass window slits, the main font of the illumination, which introduce an interesting co-efficiency of variability linked to the alternating of day and night.
The museum is named after the founder Solomon R Guggenheim.

Construction of Pantheon

The Roman Pantheon is a temple dedicated to all the gods. It is a well-preserved monument of the ancient Rome and thus, holds a significant importance in the architectural history. Pantheon was built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian between AD 120 and 124 from the original temple built in 25 BC by Agrippa, son-in-law to Augustus. The temple was converted into a church in the 7th century AD and is known as S. Maria Rotonda.
Portico is the porch attached to the building where the roof is supported by columns at regular intervals. This was the original temple built by Agrippa. The columns are made of granite and the Corinthian Columns rest on top. The rotunda is the main room with the dome built by Hadrian. This was the first round temple for its scale. The rotunda is consisted of eight recesses. One was the entrance and the rest provide shelter for the statues of the seven major Roman gods. The height of the stepped dome and the diameter of the drum are 147 Roman feet. Oculus is a round opening in the dome. It is 30 feet wide and used as a source of light to the interior. It also reduces the massive weight if the whole structure. The dome was covered by gilt bronze until 655, but it was later replaced by lead. The walls of the Pantheon were 21 feet thick and were made up of concrete. They were in between the layers of brick facings and the marble veneer. The dome was made with a thinner layer as it reaches the center, to reduce massive weight of the dome. The columns and walls were set in a technical way to bear weight of the structure.
The Pantheon or the S. Maria Rotonda is a unique surviving monument of the Ancient Rome. It was built with several techniques of reducing weight, and adding decor to the structure.

Architecture of Crete and Mycenae

Crete and Mycenae are two Aegean civilization that reached their peak for their spectacular architecture. Crete reached it’s zenith in the middle phase of the Bronze Age civilization, while Mycenae was developed in the mainland of Greece during the late phase of the Bronze Age civilization. Mycenae rose after the decline of Crete. The architecture of Crete and Mycenae share several similarities as well as differences.
The palace at Knossos and the palace at Phaistos are the best-known Cretan buildings. A major difference between the palace of Knossos and the palace of Mycenae is the complexity of the plan. Cretan palaces do not show any evidence of conscious planning. The plan of the palace of Knossos is organically evolved around the large central court. The proliferation of rooms at ground-floor level were unsuited for domestic purposes. It is thought that they were probably used for storage. The main entrance at the palace at Knossos was defended by a guard-house which is one of the few fortified structures in Crete. In the palace of Phaistos also, the great courtyard was surrounded by several rooms on different levels. Their proliferation was not balanced by a boundary wall. Crete’s palaces were unfortified which revealed that this society was relaxed and easy-going. This is also possible that the Cretans considered their supremacy at sea protection enough. The palaces in Crete ,as well as in Mycenae, were served as centers of worship as well as government. It has been thought that Crete’s near-divine kings were largely concerned with commerce.
In contrast, the palaces in Mycenae are very simple. The main entrance in the Palace of Mycenae is from the courtyard through the porch that has columns on each side. The principal apartments which were situated at the ground level, were the simple halls. Mycenae is inaccessible and easily defended because of it’s geographical location. Mycenaean architecture has several examples of fortification. The royal residence at Tiryns is one of the best-preserved Mycenaean fortifications. It was guarded by immensely thick walls and a series of gates. The Lion Gate proclaims the military pride of the Mycenaean tribal chiefs. The Lion Gate is in the outer wall that surrounds The palace of Mycenae. It is made up of limestone. In the Lion Gate, An arch is made by corbeled stones above the huge lintel which creates a triangle. Two lions are carved in relief on both sides of a sacred Minoan column in this triangle. The mainland sites at Mycenae were fortified with huge walls of cyclopean masonry, constructed of massive, irregular blocks. Mycenaean bureaucracies were less interested in architectural amenities than those of Crete. Mycenaean practiced on the scale of estate management rather than of empire.
Palaces in Crete and Mycenae have similar decorative art in their palaces. The painted reliefs and frescoes are very common decorative art in Cretan and Mycenaean palaces. The bull is the most common motif in all the forms of the Cretan art and probably had great religious significance. A charging bull is painted relief near the main gate of the palace at Knossos. The cypress wood columns tapered downward and the base and capitals were rudimentary or featureless. Cretans seem to love color. Most of their walls were sheathed in alabaster and the frescoes and painted reliefs. Mycenaean decorated their architecture with reliefs, also. The facade of the Treasury of the Atreus is decorated with contrasting red and green marbles in the form of columns and a frieze of spirals. The Mycenaean art recovered above the royal shaft graves contain both geometric and figural motifs.
In conclusion, it is clear that the Cretan and Mycenaean architecture shared several differences as well as similarities. Crete has more complex organization of the structure , while Mycenae has more simple and organized structures. Crete does not have fortification while Mycenae used fortification in most of it’s monuments. The type of government and it’s concern about the architecture was also different from each other. Both Mycenae and Crete share similar art forms. Frescoes and painted reliefs are common type of art used in the palaces for decoration.

The Structure of the Great Pyramid of Cheops: Gizeh

The Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was built as the tomb of Fourth Egyptian Dynasty. Formal architecture began in Egypt a hundred of years before the pyramids of Giza. This Pyramid is remarkably huge in scale but contains only one opening.
The entrance passage leads straight to the subterranean chamber. At almost ground level, the passage opens to another way that leads to the Queen’s chamber or straight up to Grand Gallery up to King’s chamber. The king’s chamber is about 70 feet high and made up with the post and lintel technique. The space beneath 5 large blocks, used for the ceiling of the king’s chamber, was 19 feet high and 17 feet wide. The structure is made this way to protect the treasures enclosed in the pyramid for the after life of the king and queen, entombed in this pyramid.
The material and method used in the construction of the pyramid of Gizeh is very durable which enabled it to survive for thousands of years. The Great Pyramid is perfectly proportioned and was once encased in smooth limestone skin. The pyramid is built partly upon a solid, large, bedrock core and a platform of limestone blocks. The limestone blocks were later removed. The passage ways are made in a way that would not be blocked because of the enormous weight of the blocks used to build the pyramid, since the load will not be directly upon the passage ways because they are not parallel to the ground. The method of post and lintel is used in the structure of the King’s chamber.
In conclusion, the structure, method and materials used in the pyramid of Gizeh was extraordinarily used, to create this monument. The construction of the pyramid of Gizeh is still a mystery because of it’s scale. The design used inside, to entomb the king and queen, is very simple and complex at a same time. Simple because there is only one opening, but complex because of the two passages inside; one leading downward to the subterranean chamber and the other actually to the kings and queen’s chamber. It is unfortunate that the thieves still succeeded in stealing from the pyramid.

Ziggurat of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerican temple-pyramid

Ziggurat was the principle form of religious edifice in Mesopotamia. The Great ziggurat tower was situated at Ur-of-the-Chaldees. It was built by Ur-Nammu and Shulgi, two Sumerian kings of the 3rd dynasty, 2113-2048 B.C.E. Mesoamericans built temple-pyramids to perform their religious obligations, also. The temple pyramid was built in the end of 12th century AD by Toltecs. There are several similarities as well as differences in the architecture of Ziggurat of Mesopotamia and the Mesoamerican temple-pyramid.
The Great ziggurat tower was built, when the Sumerians reestablished themselves after the fall of Akkadian Empire. Ziggurat was a pyramidal structure, built in slopped levels on a rectangular or square platform with a place of worship at the top. Ziggurat rose in stepped stages to a small temple or sanctuary at the highest level. A triple stairway with heavy bastions leads to the summit of the first stage, where one passed through a portal, perhaps covered by a dome. A fourth stairway gave access to the second and third stages. It was a religious monument made of baked and unbaked brick. The core of the ziggurat was sun-baked bricks, and the facing were of fired bricks that were glazed in different colors. The mud-bricks in the construction of Ziggurat was reinforced with thick layers of matting and cables of twisted reeds.
The Mesoamericans built similar structures. El Castillo is the most impressive monument of the Toltec-Maya city of Chichen Itza, in Yucatan. The Toltecs built this temple pyramid when they migrated there from their capital Tula, near Mexico City, in the 10th century. Stone and sun-baked bricks were used in the construction of this monument, similar to the construction of ziggurat in Mesopotamia. The temple pyramid had also similar religious significance. The motif of serpent appeared continuously on the balustrades of the stairways and on the temple columns. The staircases are richly carved and rise from all four sides of the temple pyramid. The temple is dedicated to the god Kukulcan (or Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent-god). The facade is carved with figures of Tula warriors. Facade is a deceptive outward appearance of the monument. The temple pyramid was used to perform the religious rituals of sacrifice and other important ceremonies.
In conclusion, the structure of Ziggurat of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerican temple pyramid have several similarities as well as differences. Both are made up of similar material and both had probably similar purpose for their construction. Also, both monuments used similar architectural design of stepped pyramid. In contrast, the temple pyramid had no interior opening except for on the top but ziggurat had several floors.

Deconstuctivism

Deconstructivism
As Post-Modernism became increasingly commercialized and appropriated by developers in the overheated construction market in Europe and America in the early 1980s, a new architectural avante - garde became increasingly restless, and the public began to expect something new. Post - Modernism fell victim to the consumer mentality it celebrated, only able to manage a lifecycle half as long as that of the modern canon it originally sought to displace. It was displaced by Deconstructivism, in which the pattern that Post-Modernism had established of using a polemic to explain and promote both built and unbuilt work was repeated with a subtle twist.In 1988, a seminal exhibition, Deconstructivism Architecture, curated by Mark Wigley and Philip Johnson - who effected his shift of loyalty from Post-Modernism as easily as he had formerly abandoned Modernism - was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the catalogue, Wigley defined the new movement as one which marked 'a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been disturbed. Form has become contaminated. Wigley and Johnson traced the roots of the movement to Russian Constructivism in the early twentieth century, which posed a threat to tradition by breaking the classical rules of composition, in which the balanced, hierarchical relationship between forms creates an unified whole. Pure forms were used to produce "impure", skewed, geometric compositions placed in conflict to produced an unstable, restless geometry. Similarly, Deconstructivism sought to challenge the values of 'harmony, unity, and stability', and proposed the view that 'the flaws are intrinsic to the structure'.The exhibition included projects by seven architects, of whom three were based in the United States, and four were European. Amongst them was the American Peter Eisenman, who, despite Wigley's claims that the projects ' did not derive from the mode of contemporary philosophy known as "deconstruction", was particularly influenced by the theoretical manifesto then being developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who explained that his philosophy of deconstruction: 'starts with the deconstruction of logocentrism [through] parasitology or virology the virus is in part a parasite that destroys, that introduces disorder into communication. From the biological standpoint a virus is a mechanism that derails communication, the body's ability to code and decode'. Derrida's philosophy had the added appeal of a tectonic promise: the potential of 'the interplay between architecture and the home in which philosophy, aesthetics and discourse are located'. By focusing on the destruction of logocentrism, the primacy of language and text, Derrida is obviously at odds with the entire semiotic structure of Post-Modernism. Even though it has been argued that deconstruction is an extension of the post-modern project in that it is critical of positivism, this difference of opinion over language is the crucial distinction.Peter Eisenman was the first to attempt to transform this idea of an ever -changing text into architecture, by emphasizing the 'de-centering ' of the human subject. Reacting to what Marshall Berman has described as the 'maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal', Eisenman began to search for an aesthetic that was not just a reflexive response to the consumer society. His Wexner Center for the Visual Arts at Ohio State University, 1989, represented the ideal opportunity to explore this issues because of its position between two existing buildings, and the memory of a pre-existing armory which might also be partially reconstructed as an additional source of commentary on the theme of disintegration and renewal. The scheme developed out of the idea of an excavation between the two buildings, resulting in a site which essentially represents other sites through a superimposition of grids: the grid of Ohio, the grid of Columbus, and the grid of the University campus. Historically, the university campus had maintained a distance from the city, but Eisenman extends the city street grid into the campus as a new pedestrian route forming a ramped east-west axis. A north-south passageway, half enclosed in glass, the other half in open scaffolding, undermining the traditional architectural symbolism of permanence and shelter, runs perpendicular to the east-west axis. The crossing of the two forms a literal 'center' for the visual arts.Eisenman employed the same theme in the Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1986, which is also wedged between two buildings. Like the Wexner Center, its form derives from this pre-existing context, but the central internal street is more decisive and legible and progressively etches into the ground plane, eventually becoming a ramped, sunken cavern illuminated by silvers of natural light sliding down the walls. The complex layered visual planes of the Wexner Center are accentuated even more in the Aronoff Center completely fulfilling the condition of 'betweenness' that Eisenman believes to be one of four key elements necessary to 'displace' the traditional way that architecture has been conceptualized. These included a seeking out of the 'uncanny', or a sense of unease and disquiet, through an anti-intuitive design process, the representation of 'absence' of previously existing traces in what he calls 'two-ness'; and a pursuit of 'interiority' as delineating the 'unseen or hollowed out'. In addition to these elements, 'betweenness' avoids dominant meaning in favour of: 'something which is almost this, or almost that, but not quite either. The displacing experience is the uncertainty of a partial knowing. Again, this between is not a between dialectically, but a between within'. Given Eisenman's expressed intention to displaced conventional representation using these four devices, the Wexner and Aronoff Centers become more understandable as deliberate manifestations of them.