GEORGE L. CLAFLEN, JR.
Temple University
ABSTRACT
An investigation of the translation and application of theoretical ideas from deconstruction, molecular, biology, and fractal geometry in Peter Eisenman's Frankfurt Biology Laboratories project as a case study to assess possible difficulties in such borrowing. Each borrowed concept is considered in both its original and architectural context. Alternative critical views toward the possibilities and role of borrowing in architecture are proposed and discussed.
INTRODUCTION:
BORROWING AS A PHENOMENON
Borrowing, appropriation, recontextualization, and displacement1 might each be employed, depending upon one's perspective, to describe the shifting of mature schemes of thought developed in one disciplinary context to another. As a coherent body of thought, the borrowed scheme often brings with it its own vocabulary, adherents, and critics. Tension often develops between the initiates and those previously unaware of the new position and its terminology. The confusion, excitement, and opportunity generated by the recent introduction in architecture of ideas associated with the philosophic movement known as deconstruction make this a particularly appropriate moment to review the circumstances of borrowing.
This study will focus upon one un-built project, the Biology Laboratories for the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, by Peter Eisenman, in which links to deconstruction, microbiological processes, and fractal geometry are all explicitly acknowledged in a detailed descriptive text, as a vehicle for this exploration. Eisenman proposed a double articulation interpreting both biological and architectural conditions geometrically, in the process "deconstructing" the conventional assumptions surrounding them to create "a project that is neither simply architectural nor simply biological, but one suspended between the two."2 The references to deconstruction, molecular biology and the geometric operations will each be considered in the contexts of both their source and their architectural manifestations. The evidence thus gathered will be considered in its impact upon the possible evolution of attitudes toward borrowing in architecture.
