►Deconstruction: Architecture and Design

The term “Deconstruction” which rose to prominence in the mid-1980s, has become a convenient label to pin on unorthodox design approaches within a seemingly diverse range of creative disciplines. From architecture to fashion and graphic design, asymmetric, chopped-up and fragmented forms are often the hallmarks of designs which are categorized by the term. Yet the concept of  ‘deconstruction’ is notoriously difficult to pin down and arose from the often difficult and at times, seemingly impenetrable work of a French philosopher and theorist, Jacques Derrida. How did deconstruction, with its origins in philosophy and literary academia, come to have such a profound effect on the wider spheres of art and science? And does deconstruction still have anything to offer the web designer looking for critical approaches to well established standardised industry practices? In attempting to answer these questions, I will show that deconstruction, if not in practise, then at least in spirit, still lives in some of the more exotic corners of the Web.

Jaques Derrida (1930 – 2004)

In many ways, Derrida, who experienced the institutionalized anti-Semitism endemic in French colonial Algeria as a young man ¹, had a special sensitivity to the themes of identification and the marginal which are at the core of his philosophical arguments ².  For him, most of Western philosophical thinking was founded on a series of generalized assumptions, which accorded a bogus privileged status to particular modes of thought and lines of enquiry. Deconstruction subjects to scrutiny many of these foundational concepts of Western “metaphysical” thinking. Derrida defines metaphysics thus:

“The enterprise of returning “strategically”, ideally, to an origin, or to a “priority” held to be simple, intact, normal, pure, standard, self-identical, in order, then to think in terms of derivation, complication, deterioration, accident, etc. All metaphysicians, from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way, conceiving good before evil, the positive before the negative, the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the essential before the accidental, the imitated before the imitation, etc. And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others: It is the metaphysical exigency, that which has been the most constant, most profound, and most potent.” ³

Such enquiries into abstract notions of essential being and truth are centred on a fundamental grounding principle, a fixed origin, or logos, hence logocentrism: a “system of speech, consciousness, meaning, presence, truth etc, which is itself an effect – an effect to be analysed – of a more and more powerful historical unfolding of general writing.” ^{4  5}

Derrida built on the work of Structuralists such as Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussaure, who identified the tendency for humans to establish meaning by thinking in terms of hierarchical opposites in his work on semiotics. These binary oppositions are key relationships in Structuralist analysis but Derrida takes them further: it is in the nature of metaphysical thinking, having established an opposing hierarchy, to favour one over the other and to accord it a positive, privileged status. Such binary opposites include:

• Life/Death
• True/False
• Being/Non-being
• Inside/Outside
• Original/Copy
• Presence/Absence
• Male/Female
• Real/Imaginary
• Speech/Writing

It is the speech/writing axis that Derrida confronts in Of Grammatology ⁶. Derrida argues that since Plato, philosophers have favoured speech as a purer, more authentic, representative expression of thought than writing: writing is derivative and inferior, a mere writing down of something that is already there. Thus speech is fully present to thought and to the self whereas writing is absent. However, for Derrida, writing is to be considered as more than the merely graphic or inscriptional, and is in fact the precondition of language ⁷. Derrida inverts the opposition: writing is itself a memory system, a type of speech that is capable of storing thought for future transmission. So Derrida disrupts the binary opposition: speech / writing is no longer an either/or structure but rather an “undecidable”.⁸

This appears to chime with Saussaure’s structuralist reading of linguistic meaning and signs. Here, the binary opposition is signifier vs. signified but for a sign to function, it needs the presence of both signifier andall meaning, is derived wholly from its difference to other sounds or letters. For Derrida, this difference is the ‘undecidabilty’ that destabilizes any notion of pure meaning, that is, it is at once, both within and absent from the signifier.⁹ signified. So one cannot be favoured, even if metaphysical interpretations would favour the signifier as ‘closer’ to pure thought. The signifer is the sonic sound of the spoken word or written letter, and is purely arbitrary: its meaning, hence

Deconstruction then, can be thought of as method of analytical enquiry, a procedure that seeks to uncover and decouple established hierarchical opposites through their inversion and subsequent destabilisation. The task is not yet complete however: the entire metaphysical edifice must be exposed and dismantled such that it may be in some way re-inscribed.

Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition that Deconstruction will provide itself a means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes… ¹⁰

Deconstruction seeks to derail the system of established order from within, for example, by inhabiting a text in order to subvert it. Not in order to provide definitive new interpretations, but to reveal layers of meaning whilst at the same time leaving space for ambiguity.

Deconstruction in Architecture

Deconstruction as a critical approach rapidly spread far beyond the rarefied spheres of cultural studies  and academic philosophy, where many of his ideas were met with fierce resistance. The politically charged university campuses of the late 1970s and early 1980s proved highly receptive to radical new theories that sought to overturn the established order ¹¹. Deconstruction was among the broader ‘post-structuralist’ field of critical studies that swept through academia, but its ambiguity and its preoccupations with language, knowledge, power, technology, media and institutions made its procedures widely applicable ¹². In any field, Derridian methods might be applied to unpack specific dominant themes: male/female and father/mother in feminist and gender studies and so on.

In architecture, such pairings might include:

• order/disorder
• structure/chaos
• ornament/purity
• rationality/sensuality
• form/function

These were identified in an article by Swiss architect, Bernard Tschumi ¹³, one of the seven architects who were featured in the 1988 landmark exhibition, “Deconstructivist Architecture” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). Curator Mark Wigley wrote the following in the programme notes:

“A deconstruction architect is not one who dismantles building but who locates the inherent dilemmas within the building. The deconstructive architect puts the pure forms of architectural tradition on the couch and identifies the symptoms of a repressed impurity. The impurity is drawn to the surface by a combination of gentle coaxing and violent torture. The form is interrogated”. ¹⁴

But how does Derrida’s inversions of textural structure lend itself to the construction of buildings? After all, a building must function first and foremost as a structure: it must have integrity. The answer lies in what another of the MoMA seven, Peter Eisenman terms, “the metaphysics of architecture” ¹⁵. By this he means breaking the rules of the established order. The use of Derridean terminology is explicit as he states:

“The need to overcome presence, the need to supplement an architecture that will always be and look like architecture, the need to break apart the strong bond between form and function, is what my architecture addresses. In its displacement of the traditional role of function it does not deny that architecture must function, but rather suggests that architecture may also function without necessarily symbolising that function, that the presentness of architecture is irreducible to the presence of its functions or its signs.” ¹⁶

Le Parc de la Vilette

Bernard Tschumi’s 1982 design for the regeneration of a run-down corner of suburban Paris was one of the first attempts at putting the concepts of Derridian theory into architectural practise. Tschumi labelled his scheme, “an architecture of disjunction” ¹⁷. It supports deconstructive concepts in that it inverts architectural assumptions about systems: points, surfaces and lines overlap and clash; the layout is ambiguous. In part, it deconstructs the Vitruvian values of commodity, firmness and delight ¹⁸. Derrida collaborated with Tschumi in the project and perhaps the clearest manifestation of deconstruction concepts is in the 41 pavilions or ‘folies’ (although only 35 were eventually built). These abstract, red steel structures were assigned a form before any function had been devised, thus applying an inversion to one of the tenets of modernist architecture.

Parc de la Villette, pavillion

As Tschumi writes:

“Theoretical architects – as they were called – wanted to confront the binary oppositions of traditional architecture: namely form versus function, or abstraction versus figuration. However, they also wanted to challenge the implied hierarchies hidden in these dualities, such as, “form follows function,” and “ornament is subservient to structure.” This repudiation of hierarchy led to a fascination with complex images that were simultaneously “both” and “neither/nor” – images that were the overlap or the superimposition of many other images. Superimposition became a key device.” ¹⁹

The collision of systems of lines, points and surfaces at Parc de la Villette is a means of avoiding any formal concept of compositions, such that any expression of hierarchy is avoided. The folies form an organising grid, an orienting device with no other meaning or purpose. Tschumi is setting in play spatial oppositions: presence/absence, inside/outside, norm/deviation.

Like Derrida, Tschumi and his contemporaries wanted to shake up the established order of things, to break the rules, not in a nihilistic way, but in a transformative engagement with the process: a way of reinterpreting the use of space, of “practising space” where:

“… concept and experience of space abruptly coincide, where architectural fragments collide and merge in delight, where the culture of architecture is endlessly deconstructed  and its rules transgressed. No metaphorical paradise here, but discomfort and unbalancing of expectations. Such architecture questions academic (and popular) assumptions, disturbs acquired taste and fond architectural memories. Typologies, morphologies, spatial compressions, logical constructions – all dissolve. Inarticulated forms collide in a staged and necessary conflict: repetition, discontinuity, quotes, clichés and neologism. Such architecture is perverse because its real significance lies outside any utility or purpose and ultimately is not even aimed at giving pleasure.”²⁰

With Parc de La Villete, Tschumi rejects the notion of park as landscape or as an image of nature. His space is more that of an urban grid, albeit one that occurs in green space farther than on a street map. His superimposition of grids looks more like an exploded plan of an airport terminal. That is its aim: the park as building – “one of the largest buildings ever constructed.”

Deconstruction in Graphic Design

As we have seen, deconstruction’s analytical framework has provided a guiding methodology for certain practitioners within architecture. Has the same been true for graphic design? Designer Ellen Lupton’s excellent article on deconstruction in graphic design describes how the Deconstructivist architectural design style, showcased at the MoMA show of that title, provided a ready-made visual vocabulary for graphic designers looking to capture the Zeitgeist.¹⁴

“By framing their exhibition around a new “ism,” Wigley and Johnson helped to canonize the elements of a period style, marked by twisted geometries, centerless plans, and shards of glass and metal. This cluster of stylistic features quickly emigrated from architecture to graphic design, just as the icons and colors of neo-classical post-modernism had travelled there shortly before. ¹⁴

Subsequently, much of what became labelled as ‘deconstruction’ or ‘deconstructivist’ in graphic design was purely stylistic in content, lacking the theoretical framework to underpin the label whose title it had appropriated.²¹

Yet Derrida had already provided a blueprint for graphic designers in his radical approach to layout and typographic communication with his 1974 book, Glas ²². In Glas, Derrida juxtaposed two texts, by philosopher Georg Hegel and writer Jean Genet, in facing parallel columns with free-floating ‘footnotes’, discordant typography, inconsistent layout, collapsing margins and so on. By forcing the two texts together in this way: the bawdy prose of Genet with the ‘scientific’, emotionally detached logical reasoning of Hegel, Derrida is asking us to look for the in-between, the uncertain, that which is neither literature or philosophy. Derrida has “juxtaposed a coherent, seemingly self-complete literary artefact with a situation where external forces aggressively interfere with the sacred interior of content.” ¹⁴

Jacques Derrida, Glas. 1974

He is again, calling into question a set of formal structures: “indexes and title pages, captions and colophons, folios and footnotes, leading and line lengths, margins and marginalia, spacing and punctuation” ¹⁴ that constitute a mode of representation, destabilizing the hierarchies: inside/outside, left/right, ordered/disordered and so on.

The pinoneering work of designers Katherine and Michael McCoy at the design department of Cranbrook Acadamy of Art has been well documented. There, deconstruction as a theoretical approach was put into action in order to decode the elements of design: typography, language, ideas, mage, words, values. By setting these in play, the desired effect was to unbalance expectations with a Utopian desire to liberate the modes of communication from purely functional or commercial imperatives. To

“…challenge the sterility of ‘Universal Design’… consciously breaking virtually all the rules of the deadly seriousness and antiseptic discipline of objective Swiss rationalism. The emerging ideas emphasized the construction of meaning between the audience and the graphic design piece, a visual transaction that parallels verbal communication… New experiments explored the relationships of text and image and the processes of reading and seeing, with texts and images meant to be read in detail, their meanings decoded. Students began to deconstruct the dynamics of visual language and understand it as a filter that inescapably manipulates the audience’s response. ²³

These approaches intended to destabilize concepts of authorship and meaning, placing the onus on the audience to construct its own, challenging them to “reconsider perceptions”.

Cranbrook graduate poster, 1989. Katherine McCoy: The use of binary oppositions in the text is explicit.

Allen Hori. Typography as Discourse. 1989

By the mid 1990s, the influence of the initial design pioneers had spread far beyond the design hothouses of the design departments like the one at Cranbrook, and the deconstruction or desconstructivist label began to be applied to a certain design aesthetic, devoid of its theoretical context. Often aided by newly available digital font authoring software such as Fontographer and desk-top publishing software based on the Macintosh platform, designers were free to create new bitmap type styles and a slew of ‘home-made’, ‘grunge’ fonts and experimental layouts became the basis for a new style anti-convention and the topic of heated debate within the wider design community and fought out in the pages of magazines such as Emigre. Criticized as the ‘cult of the ugly’ ²⁴ this new-wave look opened a schism later dubbed the ‘Legibility Wars’ in the design press. However, as the look began to be co-opted by the more commercial mainstream print media, the ideological loading of the deconstruction label lightened and the meaning became diluted, ultimately becoming a fashionable shorthand for any kind of ‘analysis’ or ‘breaking apart’ ²⁵.

Jeffery Keedy. Emigre Magazine. 1992.

Conclusion

As we have seen, the influence of deconstruction as a critical approach within the design fields has faded since its heyday in the 1990s: certainly the use of the term has declined since that era. However, the issues Derrida was concerned with still raise profound implications for today’s designer. Although web design is a relatively youthful design practice, it can draw lessons from both architecture and graphic design where deconstruction has had such an impact, even though the arguments it generated remain largely unresolved. Theoretical approaches are less commonly found in web design with its multi-disciplinary make-up, its reliance on industry standards and focus on clear communication and the user. Nevertheless, I have identified some areas where such an approach can lead to rich user experiences while allowing space to acknowledge the ambiguity inherent in interpreting visual communication.

References

1. Kirby, D., Kofman, A.Z. & Derrida, J., 2005. Derrida: screenplay and essays on the film, Volume 2005, Part 2, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

2. Attridge, D., 2004. Obituary: Jacques Derrida | World news | The Guardian. Available at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france [Accessed January 10, 2011].

3. Derrida, J., 1988. Limited Inc, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.  p.93.

4. Esch, D., 1999. In the Event: Reading Journalism, Reading Theory (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics), Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.  p.12

5. Reynolds, J., 2010. Derrida, Jacques. Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/ [Accessed January 25, 2011].

6. Derrida, J., 1998. Of Grammatology Corrected., Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

7. Norris, C., 2002. Deconstruction: Theory & Practise, London: Routledge.

8. Grenz, S.J., 1996. A Primer On Postmodernism, Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing.  p.149

9. Cusset, F., 2008. French Theory: how Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, Minnesota, MI: University of Minnesota Press.

10. Grenz, S.J., 1996. A Primer On Postmodernism, Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing.  p.149

11. Easthope, A., 2004. Difference. In K. McGowan, ed. A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Maidenhead: Open University Press.  

12. Seaver, G., 2007. The Ideological Basis to Affirmative Action and Diversity. American Civil Rights Institute.
Available at: http://www.acri.org/seaver_article.html [Accessed January 18, 2011].

13. Tshumi, B., 2001. The Pleasure of Architecture. In A. Ballantyne, ed. What is Architecture? London: Routledge.

14. Lupton, E., 2004. Typotheque: Deconstruction and Graphic Design: History Meets Theory by Ellen Lupton.
Available at: http://www.typotheque.com/articles/deconstruction_and_graphic_design_history_meets_theory [Accessed January 17, 2011].

15. Eisenman, P., 1996. Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure. In K. Nesbitt, ed. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-95.
New York: Princeton Architectural Pres, pp. 176-181.

16. Eisenman, P., 1990. Post/El Cards: A Reply to Jacques Derrida. Assemblage, (12), pp.14-17.

17. Collins, J. & Mayblin, B., 2005. Introducing Derrida, Cambridge: Icon.

18. Turner, T., 1994. A review of Parc de la Villette, Paris. GardenVisit.com. Available at: http://www.gardenvisit.com/history_theory/library_online_ebooks/architecture_city_as_landscape/review_parc_de_la_villette_tom_turner [Accessed January 19, 2011].

19. Tschumi, B., 1996. Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.  p.251.

20. Tschumi, B., 1996. Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.  p.180.

21. Poynor, R., 2003. No More Rules : Graphic Design and Postmodernism, London: Laurence King. p.64

22. Derrida, J., 1990. Glas, University of Nebraska Press.

23. McCoy, K. & McCoy, M., 1990. High Ground Design : Essay-The New Discourse. High Ground Design.
Available at: http://www.highgrounddesign.com/mccoy/cran3.htm [Accessed January 21, 2011].

24. Heller, S., 1993. Cult of the Ugly. Eye, 3(9), pp.52-59.

25.  Poynor, R., 2003. No more rules : graphic design and postmodernism, London: Laurence King. p.65