by Ben Lima | 27 July 2010 | Architecture
The architect Günter Behnisch, who designed the 1972 Olympic Park in Munich together with engineer Frei Otto, died July 12th in Stuttgart, at the age of 88.
Peter Blundell Jones obituary in The Guardian, Anna Winston at BDOnline, Thorsten Dörting (Spiegel), and in German, W. J. Stock (SZ), Dieter Bartetzko (FAZ), Corinne Elsesser (NZZ).
Wikipedia commemorates the “Baumeister der Demokratie” only in English and German (by comparison, Jean Nouvel has entries in 30 languages, Sverre Fehn has 22, and Thom Mayne 19; even Snøhetta has six), and in fact, remarkably few of the projects listed on his page were completed outside North America or Germany.
Teachers of art history survey courses will be familiar with Behnisch’s 1987 Hysolar Institute at the University of Stuttgart, chosen to illustrate “Deconstructivism” on page 1011 of Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History (2009; Google Books; Flickr).
I had wondered about the choice of this particular building to represent Behnisch for first-year undergraduates. Although the obituaries uniformly mentioned Munich and his Bonn parliament as his greatest achievements, the Hysolar Institute is undoubtedly a better example of “Deconstructivism.” This is far from the only case in which the best monument to represent a key concept is not necessarily the peak of a particular artist’s achievement.
Deconstructivism seems to be the word of choice whenever we come across a building with a twisted order. You can’t help it but to wonder why DERRIDA him self didn’t reject the association between Deconstruction in Philosophy and what has come to be known as Deconstructivism in Architecture. He knew that his word is capable of prompting Morphological impressions, not only that, some ugly ones too. That’s why he always insisted that Deconstruction is not Destruction. I can say that it’s an attempt to distinguish between the interest in the Exteriority of a Phenomenon, which what the word Destruction denotes, and his deconstructive method which is purely historical.
Deconstruction is a method by which one can grasp Phenomenon; be it an Object, a Text or even Human Subjectivity. The method starts from the presumption that every Phenomenon has a history. In order to grasp any of that one has to read through the different layer that might have constructed this history in the first place. In Deconstruction reading takes various strategies mostly derived from various conflicting philosophical doctrines. What Deconstruction does is to reconcile such conflicts by presenting the various strategies as affirmative rather than dismissive of one another.
In Architecture the method was supposed to be used not just for reading but also for writing; that is the making of Architecture. I don’t see anything wrong with that because in Deconstruction oppositions are affirmative and not dismissive. This is to say that reading in some ways is writing. But what I find unsettling is the linking of Architectural motifs such Ordered Chaos or Fragmentation with Deconstruction. Being deeply entrenched in Methodology I See that as far as Architecture is concerned Deconstruction is to do with the Program of Architecture and not the straight forwardness in negotiating Morphology. As a matter of fact I can see no reason why can’t a Bauhaus building be based on Deconstructivist Methodology. Now if we are so interested in labeling styles and in this particular incident the work of GÜNTER BEHNISCH I suggest why not try Expressionism, I believe to large extent this is a theory of Morphology. And maybe a comparison between HANS SHARON and GÜNTER can be the relevant thing to do in this respect.