eisenman

Discussions about Eisenman and his architecture/writing always seem to generate the most questions. Isn't it then acting as a learning place even for those who have never been there? Are learning places capable of working through the filter of other forms of media? or does translation via text, images and video reduce the perception of the space into, as Dave notes, a non-placable blur?

Wesely's photos of MOMA and the train station provide startlingly contrasting ways in which archtitecture acts as an agent in the process of learning. In the first, the compression of three years of construction into a single moment creates an architecture of movement and temporality. Here, the architecture is literally changing - the built environment is overtly affecting the way in which it is perceived through its continual transformation. This is the space of becoming - the animate, emerging process described by Grosz.

In the case of the train station, the space is a static backdrop for the ghosted images of activity within. Here the architecture works in a far more subtle way - learning through confirmation. It is precisely the non-lminality of the train station that ensures its role as a learning place.

It seems to me, then, that there are two ways in which architecture relates to learning - one in which the architecture provides a suitable environment for one to learn from other media (i.e. read a book, study a drawing, etc.) or one in which the architecture is itself the media. Put another way, we have the capability to learn within architecture as well as learn from architecture (and hopefully about more than just architecture).