Lecture date: 1975-01-17
At ARTNET
Day 1 AM – Speakers Peter Cook and Peter Eisenman
PETER COOK: I want to invent buildings that contradict those ideas of the buildings I admire. There is a necessary distinction between two possible uses of the term conceptual, or concept, in architecture, associated to the historical use of the word concept. There is a concept stage, as we first understood in the school of architecture and something completely different: a conceptual approach. Any disruption of the more comfortable architectural notions has a direct relationship to the disruption of any set of values in society, politics or morality.
As Colin Rowe said yesterday, the concern with process rather than with product is to do with gilt. I have a fascination for the business of dynamics, as part of any kind of architecture erected. One of the most irritating practices to him is the recreation of the symbols of a dead dynamic. The exaltation of dematerialization, the high of dematerialization: everything is possible because nothing needs to actually happen. It is essential to see a cultural distance between architecture culture and art culture. Paradoxically, the architect does not have a tactile experience with the building as it emerges. The artist is a different cultural animal; a centrifugal, very egocentric animal. He is highly tactile involved, such a difference could suggest that the architect, as a traditional culture apparatus is a culture conceptualizer.
Three kinds of architecture might exist: the first, called building; the second, knitting and the third one is conceptual architecture.
PETER EISENMAN: If you are not paranoid today, you must be crazy. I confess to be at the Symposium almost by accident, my involvement with conceptual architecture is almost accidental, I wonder if a lot of what it is called conceptual is almost an excuse for a lot of accidents that happen. Conceptual must have something to do on the one hand with intentions and on the second hand with context. The first time I encountered the word concept related to architecture was in an article that labelled Archizoom, Superstudio and Archigram as examples of conceptual practice. Then I wrote a critique on it: eight blank pages and a series of footnotes. People catalogued it as a conceptual gesture. Since I became involved with the UK, I’ve  been trying to write theory. I thought it was the thing that you did in England. His current interest has much more to do with an inquiry into meaning and changes of meaning. I am intrigued by how an image besides a text can trigger a conceptual process. Conceptual architecture has something to do with process. There is a project I did, which I’m particularly proud of: a design of a house that I never actually visited. That is to me truly conceptual architecture.
Symposium over two days speakers include; Will Alsop, Peter Eisenman, Charles Jencks, Peter Cook, Cedric Price, Bernard Tschumi, David Stezaker, Colin Rowe, Dalibor Vesely, Jo Rykwert, Rosalee Goldberg. Chairman Bob Maxwell.
