In this class we discuss the fact that the "New York Five" is largely a misnomer, grouping architects who are rather diverse, particularly with respect to their fidelity to the modernist tradition.

1. NewYork Five
ARCH 417

2. who are they?
• group of five architects
• John Hejduk
• CharlesGwathmey
• Richard Meier
• Peter Eisenman
• MichaelGraves
also known as the "whites" for the supposedly
purist stance toward modernism

3. John HEDJUK (1929-2000)
• influential professor and writer, with
some works built in Germany
• Professor of Architecture atThe Cooper
Union for the Advancement of Science
and Art, School of Architecture
beginning in 1964.
• Became Dean in 1975. Held that
position until his death.
• Brought many influential architects to
teach at the school: Ricardo Scofidio,
Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey,
Diana Agrest, Elizabeth Diller, and
many others .

4. John HEDJUK
KreuzbergTowers, International BauAufstellung (IBA)
Berlin, 1987

5. photo of the complex, 1988

7. John HEDJUK, "House forTwo Brothers," also part of the IBA commission, in the
Tegel district of Berlin, 1988

8. John Hedjuk,Wall House
designed 1973
built in Gröningen, the Netherlands,
2001

10. plan of first floor

11. Charles Gwathmey (1938-
2009)
• Born in Charlotte, NC and raised there and in NewYork City.
• College at University of Pennsylvania and then went toYale,
from which he graduated with a master's degree in
architecture in 1962.
• 2 years travel through Europe, special focus on works of Le
Corbusier.
• Built his parents’ house, in Amagansett, NY, which made his
reputation

12. Gwathmey House (1965)
• house for his parents
• Amagansett, NY
• designed at age 27

19. Gwathmey at the deMenil house in
East Hampton, NY, 1983

20. Steve Cohen
Penthouse
1 Beacon Court
east side of
Manhattan (2008)
combine 2 floors to
create an 8500
sq ft apartment

23. Gwathmey,ThreeTrees
Aspen, CO 2010
15,000sf on 9.4 acres on mountain slope.

29. Larry GagosianVilla, Saint
Barthélemy, Colombier,
FrenchWest Indies (2010)
• Has a stunning view of St. Maarten just a few miles away.
• Project architect was Kang Chang who finished it after Gwathmey's death.
• The plan has two levels:
– On the lower is six guest villas, one of which holds a living room, kitchen,
dining area, and gym.
– On the more private upper level is a master bedroom villa, plus another
containing a living room, dining room, and kitchen.
– Each level has its own pool and terrace.

30. Gustavia Harbor, St. Barth's, Colombier, FrenchWest Indies

38. Richard Meier (1934—
• born Newark, NJ
• selected works:
• Douglas House (1973)
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (1983)

39. Douglas House 1973
• Harbor Springs, MI
• small resort town in a protected harbor on the
northern edge of Lake Michigan
• starkly sloping site overlooking lake

48. High Museum of Art
Atlanta, GA (1983)
• clad in porcelain-enameled steel panels
• exterior ramp to approach structure and
interior ramp for circulation
• exhibition spaces, auditorium, cafe, museum
shop, and staff offices

53. Peter Eisenman
• Wexner Center for the Arts (1989)
• Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
(2005)

54. Wexner 1989/2005
Paul Goldberger, "The MuseumThatTheory Built," 1989
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/05/arts/architecture-view-the-museum-that-
theory-built.html
Robin Pogrebin, "Extreme Makeover, Museum Edition," 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/arts/design/extreme-makeover-museum-
edition.html

56. plan of site area
before building

58. composite drawing

59. model

68. IM PEI (1917—
• born Guangzhou, China
• emigrated to US at age 18
• attended MIT and Harvard GSD

69. National Gallery of Art,
EastWing
• Washington DC
• difficult site, both in terms of limitations and
requirements

70. I.M. PEI, early concept sketch for EastWing, 1968

71. working drawing, September 1968

72. working drawing, October 1968

77. model, 1971

82. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel-interview-with-holocaust-
monument-architect-peter-eisenman-how-long-does-one-feel-guilty-a-
355252.html

83. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you satisfied with the finished product? Does it look like you wanted it to look?
Eisenman: What is interesting to me is how much I have learned in doing the project. Just yesterday, I watched people walk into
it for the first time and it is amazing how these heads disappear -- like going under water. Primo Levi talks about a similar idea in
his book aboutAuschwitz. He writes that the prisoners were no longer alive but they weren't dead either. Rather, they seemed to
descend into a personal hell. I was suddenly reminded of that passage while watching these heads disappear into the monument.
You don't often see people disappear into something that appears to be flat.That was amazing, seeing them disappear.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:You hadn't thought of that effect when you designed the monument?
Eisenman: No, I hadn't.You pray and pray for such accidental results, because you really don't know what the finished product
will be like. For example I didn't realize that the sound would be so muted inside.You don't hear anything but the sound of your
footsteps. Also, the ground.We didn't want to use any materials that came out of the soil because the soil was for the Germans.
"Blood and Soil" was the ideological moment that separated the Jews from theGermans. And here, the ground is very uneven
and difficult. My wife yesterday got dizzy walking in the memorial because it slopes in several directions. It was really
extraordinary.

84. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there anything you don't like about the finished product?
Eisenman: I think it is a little too aesthetic. It's a little too good looking. It's not that I wanted something bad looking, but I didn't
want it to seem designed. I wanted the ordinary, the banal. If you want to show a picture, just show it -- don't spend too much
time arranging it.And unfortunately it looks a bit too arranged. SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people say it looks like a cemetery.
Eisenman: I can't think about it. If one person says it looks like a graveyard and the next says it looks like a ruined city and then
someone says it looks like it is from Mars -- everybody needs to make it look like something they know.There was an aerial shot
in the paper on Saturday -- a beautiful photo. I have never seen a graveyard that looks like that.And when you walk in, it certainly
doesn't feel like one. But if people see it like that, you can't stop them. It's fine.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a feeling or an emotion that you wanted to generate in the people who visit the monument?
Eisenman: I said all along that I wanted people to have a feeling of being in the present and an experience that they had never
had before.And one that was different and slightly unsettling.The world is too full of information and here is a place without
information.That is what I wanted.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:You were against the building of the Center of Information underneath the monument, weren't you?
Eisenman: I was. But as an architect you win some and you lose some.

85. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Now that the monument is finished and open to the public, it probably won't be long
before the first swastika is sprayed onto the monument.
Eisenman:Would that be a bad thing? I was against the graffiti coating from the start. If a swastika is painted
on it, it is a reflection of how people feel. And if it remains there, it is a reflection of how the German
government feels about people painting swastikas on the monument.That is something I have no control
over. When you turn a project over to clients, they do with it what they want -- it's theirs and they occupy your
work.You can't tell them what to do with it. If they want to knock the stones over tomorrow, honestly, that's
fine. People are going to picnic in the field. Children will play tag in the field.There will be fashion models
modeling there and films will be shot there. I can easily imagine some spy shoot 'em ups ending in the field.
What can I say? It's not a sacred place.

87. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/nov/24/easyjet-holocaust-fashion

89. Eisenman, Project Statement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/show
s/germans/memorial/eisenman.html

90. Architecture is about monuments and graves, said theViennese architect
Adolf Loos at the turn of the 20th century.This meant that an individual
human life could be commemorated by a single stone, slab, cross, or star.
The simplicity of this idea ended with the Holocaust and Hiroshima and the
mechanisms of mass death.Today an individual can no longer be certain to
die an individual death, and architecture can no longer remember life as it
once did.The markers that were formerly symbols of individual life and
death must be changed, and this has a profound effect on the idea of both
memory and the monument.The enormity and horror of the Holocaust are
such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably
inadequate.The memory of the Holocaust can never be a nostalgia.

91. The enormity of the banal is the context of our monument.The project
manifests the instability inherent in what seems to be a system, here a
rational grid, and its potential for dissolution in time. It suggests that when a
supposedly rational and ordered system grows too large and out of
proportion to its intended purpose, it in fact loses touch with human reason.
It then begins to reveal the innate disturbances and potential for chaos in all
systems of seeming order, the idea that all closed systems of a closed order
are bound to fail.

92. In searching for the instability inherent in an apparently stable system, the design begins from a
rigid grid structure composed of some 2,700 concrete pillars, or stelae, each 95 centimeters
wide and 2.375 meters long, with heights varying from zero to 4 meters. The pillars are spaced
95 centimeters apart to allow only for individual passage through the grid. Although the
difference between the ground plane and the top plane of the pillars may appear to be random
and arbitrary, a matter of pure expression, this is not the case. Each plane is determined by the
intersections of the voids of the pillar grid and the gridlines of the larger site context of Berlin. In
effect, a slippage in the grid structure occurs, causing indeterminate spaces to develop within
the seemingly rigid order of the monument. These spaces condense, narrow, and deepen to
provide a multilayered experience from any point.The agitation of the field shatters any notions
of absolute axiality and reveals instead an omnidirectional reality.The illusion of the order and
security in the internal grid and the frame of the street grid are thus destroyed.

93. Anish KAPOOR, Dirty Corner, 2015, sculptural installation at the Palace ofVersailles

94. •
Once again my work Dirty Corner has become a receptacle for the dirty politics of anti-Semitic vandals, racists and
right-wing royalists. The vandalised sculpture now looks like a graveyard, the stones are now gravestones marking
the ruinous politics of fundamentalist bigotry. Dirty Corner allows this dirty politics to expose itself fully, in full view
for all to see.
At this time, when we need to have compassion for the thousands of refugees on the road in Europe, the anti-
Semitic, racist attack on Dirty Corner at Chateau deVersailles in Paris, brings to the forefront the intolerance and
racism in our midst.
Dirty Corner has become the vehicle for the expression of our anxiety of "the other" and emphasis that Art is a focus
for our deepest longings and fears. It is urgent that we show our solidarity with the oppressed the downtrodden and
those of our brothers and sisters in need.
As the artist I have -for the second time- to ask myself what this act of violence means to my work.The sculpture will
now carry the scars of this renewed attack. I will not allow this act of violence and intolerance to be erased. Dirty
Corner will now be marked with hate and I will preserve these scars as a memory of this painful history. I am
determined that Art will triumph.
Anish Kapoor
6 September 2015

98. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/10/anish-kapoor-sued-racist-graffiti-
versailles-sculpture-queens-vagina

101. http://www.stolpersteine-gelsenkirchen.de/stumbling_stones_demnig.htm

103. Gunter Denmig,Stolpersteine ("Stumbling Blocks"), 1996—present
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/memory-blocks-173123976/?no-ist