Book Review: Derrida for Architects

Even the most prosaic oppositions of architecture can be cast in terms that indicate something is really at stake. This is Derrida for architects. There is always something at issue, and the stakes are high. One of Derridas terms for the problematic conditions is the aporia, a word in Ancient Greek relating to perplexity. The key is to keep perplexity and ambiguity alive rather than to resolve it. It is to show that any putative resolution is itself fraught with further ambiguity and complexity.

-From Chapter One, Thinking About Architecture

Routledge Press (2014)

At a time when it seems all human endeavour has become tied to technology and obsessed with compiling mountains of meaningless data, perhaps pressing refresh on our philosophical underpinnings could provide a means to remove ourselves from this digitopia. And who better than Jacques Derrida to give us an alternative perspective, ifonly for a brief moment. Such is the case with architect and professor Richard Coynes Derrida for Architects,part ofa larger series published by Routledge called Thinkers for Architects,with other volumes on Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Walter Benjamin. In its brief 98 pages, the book examines in six chapters the way that the current practice of architecture could learn a thing or two from the late, great post-structuralist.

As any architect will recall from theirarchitecture history classes atschool, there was a symbiotic moment in the 1980s when modern philosophy and architecture briefly coalesced, a movement which would later become known as Deconstructivism in architecture.Its philosophical origin, Deconstruction,wasa term coinedbyDerrida himself, as he was the first to use it in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Architects like Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi found hisquestioning of western belief systemsthose political,scientific and religious underpinningswhichhe called metaphysics as a point of departure for a new architecture more critical of its meaning and context.

Coynes writing style is clear and his narrative straightforward. This is essentialgiven the complexity of the material he discusses, with numerous citations to support his text throughout. In the introductory prologue, he introduces us to his subject not as an academic (he teaches architecture theory at the University of Edinburgh), or even a philosopher, but simply a writer whose works Coyne just happens to have read extensively.We then are the beneficiaries of this erudition, as to accomplish a similar feat would require not just reading Derridas texts of which there are over 40 but all the commentary that has been written about him, as well.

The first chapter, Thinking About Architecture, develops Derridas thinking from an architectural perspective,beginning with a quick lesson onStructuralism and introducing us to its founder, Ferdinand de Saussure. This lays the basis by which one can understand Derrida, as of all the great thinkers he deconstructed, it is Saussure who is the origin. Coyne is alsoconsiderate of the readers attention spanon the subject, breaking each chapter into smaller partswith architectural afterthoughts. In one instance, a discussion of the historical linguistspoint of view isgiven an architectural analogy, questioning what a volute means beyond its reference in an Ionic capital.

The first chapter of the booklays the foundation for Derrida by introducing us tothe notionsof juxtaposition and opposition, concepts that architecturesimilarly has to deal with on a day-to-day basis. This is as well counterpointed withDerridas rebellion against the Structuralist notion that language is not meant to represent reality, butmerely signify it. The reality that language does not reference the real world, but some other world beyond language does not bode well with him, and perhaps is a contributing factor to his sense of urgency.

In the books second chapter, Language and Architecturethe author gives usa brief history of linguistics, from its origins in philology, to the notion of historical linguistics forwhich Saussure created his ownelaborate system to overcome. He explains that while the historical model of linguistics looks at links between languages in a linear progression, the structuralist looks at the similar structures in all languages, regardless of their evolution. This was a notion very much in the same spirit as the High Modernistperiodof architecture,which sought to distill the gestalt from the program, turning simple brick and mortar into somethingsublime and imbued with a meaning greater than the sum of the parts.

Read more:
Book Review: Derrida for Architects