The Machines - Studio Libeskind via Lebbeus Woods
By the mid-1980s, the reputation of Daniel Libeskind as a leading avant-garde figure in architecture was rapidly rising. This was based on his work as a teacherâhe was director and principal teacher at the Cranbrook Academy School of Architecture from 1978 to 1985, establishing it as one of the most creative schools in the worldâand on the publication and exhibition of a number of projects that, on their face, seemed to have little to do with architecture. Notable among these were his Memory Machine, Reading Machine, and Writing Machine.
Elaborately constructed and enigmatic in purpose, Libeskindâs machines are striking and sumptuous manifestations of ideas that were, at the time he made them, of obsessive interest to academics, critics and avant-gardists in architecture and out. Principal among these was the idea that architecture must be read, that is, understood, in the same way as a written text.
The chief structural features of written language, grammar and syntax, which organize the ways words are put together into a coherent, meaningful ensemble, clearly relate to architecture. Indeed, so traditional a modernist as Mies van der Rohe was fond of speaking of architectureâs âgrammarâ and declaring that an understanding of it was essential to design. However, when it comes to the meaning of word constructionsâtextsâit was believed, by the 70s and 80s, by leading linguistic and literary theorists, that written texts do not have a fixed meaning established by what its author intended to say, but rather multiple meanings that readers have to interpret for themselves by using various cultural codes and references. Peter Eisenman and the circle of architects and critics gathered around him, applied this to architecture, with the consequence that the âmeaningâ of architectureâsymbolically and in terms of human purposesâwas in their view not to be found in either the architectsâ or their clientsâ intentions. In short, form does not follow any a priori function but has autonomous existence that must, in the end, be âreadâ on its own terms. In short, the meaning of architecture is to be found only in architecture itself.
But the most important legacies of these machines are conceptual, and of equal or greater value today as when they were made. Their use of analogy to inform the field of architecture is a potent tool for exploring much-needed new ideas of space and its human purposes than are afforded by the ordinary design process based on history and accepted building typologies. In the past, architects such as Mies found architectural inspiration in works of art, while Le Corbusier produced his own paintings and sculptures to work out complex aesthetic problems in his architecture. Libeskindâs machines are in this tradition, though the problems are different. More architects today could benefit from such an analogous method, if they set for themselves problems not already solved. This method, like the machines themselves, opens architecture to a wide range of knowledge coming from different fields of thought and work, which is sorely needed in a time such as the present, characterized by increasing diversity in the human situation.
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