Translations of Philosophical Ideas into Architectural Thought – Late Modernism
In 1988 Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley curated the exhibition ‘Deconstructivist Architecture’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition included the work of seven architects who grappled (in Johnson's words), with the "pleasures of unease." Obsessed with diagonals, arcs, and warped planes, they intentionally violate the cubes and right angles of modernism. This was the third of five exhibitions at the MoMA that opened to discuss the contemporary architecture of the time. An influential publication accompanied the exhibition which catapulted the careers of many of the architects whose works were covered. This study aims to examine the historical moment of this exhibition, re-reconsider its content and its aftermath in which many of the seven architects refuted that they were in fact ‘deconstructivist’. The study will outline the conceptual development of ‘deconstructivist’ architecture after the exhibition and consider the impact these ideas had on the discourse on architecture.
