Unpacking系列：建筑师的书架第三辑Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman
UCB:Given the wide range of books in your library and on your top ten list, can you say that architecture requires a promiscuous appetite for literature, philosophy, and all kind of works beyond strictly architectural ones?
My main focus is literature, philosophy, and film. I do not believe you can do architecture and not have ideas that come out of culture, in some way. So my idea of reading is like someone going to concerts. My friend Kurt Foster goes to concerts all the time; Jeff Kipins and Leon Krier play the piano two hours a day. Everybody has some other discourse that informs their ideas about architecture. But it's not being promiscuous; it's part of the "being"of these people.
UCB:You have a formidable book collection. Can you tell us a bit about the history of acquiring it, and what the act of collecting means to you?
There are two different aspects to my library. One is a collector's library that reflects my interest in the twentieth century and in modernism, in particular little magazines. For me, these are the primary sources of my understanding about what was going on at any particular time. These books are not here. They now reside in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. It is a collection of mine that is quite extensive-perhaps four to five thousand items. I became obsessed with colecting these items, these objects, after my first trip to Europe with Colin Rowe. This was in the summer of 1961, when I was teaching at Cambridge and doing my PhD dissertation.I became obsessed with collecting magazines until 1974,when I could no longer afford to collect.I was starting to send my children to school,paying tuition, etcetera. So my collection basically happened between 1961 and 1974.
My interest in reading began earlier. It was a forced exile that caused it. At Cornell I never read anything. I graduated in 1955. I was in Korea, on the front line, albeit in the armistice line, living in a tent for two years, with nothing to do. I was totally bored. My brother was at Cornell. It was the first year of the Vintage paperbacks. There were Alain-Fournier, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Andre Gide, which my brother sending to me as they came out. I had the collectiong from one to thirty or whatever. And I would just read these books, and it was like the opening of a new world to me. I completely changed because I had two years to do nothing but read. There were no films, There was no art, and there was no culture:nothing. So that's when I began to read, and that continued through my years at Cambridge, my years in teaching.Without The Four Books on Architecture of Palladio no one would have cared about Palladio. A book lasts longer than a building; books are more important in the world than buildings. Without Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture there would be no Bob Venturi. Without Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York there would be no Koolhaas. Without Le Corbusier's Toward an Architecture, etcetera. That's why I have them on my top ten list. The books that I mentioned in the list made those architects.Without those books, they wouldn't exist for us. So for me, architects live beyond their time through the book.
UCB: For a few of books on your list, you were in very close contact with the authors when they were producing those works. Delirious New York was done at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. Derrida's Of Grammatology coincides with your turn to deconstruction and your subsequent friendship with Derrida. Is there a connection?
No, my relationship with Jacques Derrida, with Venturi, with Koolhaas, has nothing to do with their being on the list-not at all. I would like to think that these are objective views, as I view what I know. I have never met Thomas Pynchon, although I would love to meet him. He was in my brother's class at Cornell. What would be more difficult for me would be if you said, name ten films that are the most important to you. That would be more difficult. To say this film is more important than that film would be a difficult operation. But to say ten buildings, I have just written a book about ten buildings[Ten Canonical Buildings:1950-2000]that are very important to me. I think that film would be much more difficult because this is where you have to be more of an expert. I can give you ten buildings and I can pick standard books, but to know film the way people who know film know film …well, I would not be required to make. I read enough, so I know I love when people create with the word, turning it into something more than a mere sentence, more than just a simple idea-that it resonates in some way beyond its mere existence as a word. And I believe that's what architecture does. There are ideas, there are functions, there are words, but when you hit something extraordinary, it's like reading a beautiful book.
Peter Eisenman对书籍的观点：
① 书比建筑重要，建筑的深刻思想通过书籍流传下去；
② 他的兴趣点在文学、电影，其他比如他好友Kurt Foster经常听音乐会，Leon Krier和Jeff Kipins则是弹钢琴 ；
③ 他大概的人生经历；
④ 他正在写一本叫Ten Canonical Buildings:1950-2000 的书，该书已出版。
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
TOP TEN BOOKS:
Walter Benjamin
 Illuminationen[Illuminations]
http://book.douban.com/subject/2051921/ （下面介绍作者）
Le Corbusier
 Vers une architecture[Toward an Architecture]
http://book.douban.com/subject/5316970/ （Eisenman 的版本也是非常老的）
Jacques Derrida
 De la grammatologie[Of Grammatology]
http://book.douban.com/subject/1364945/ （下面介绍作者）
William Faulkner
 Light in August
http://book.douban.com/subject/3413915/ （文学作品）
James Joyce
 Finnegans Wake
http://book.douban.com/subject/1376845/ （接下来这本书将出现很多次，乔伊斯最后的作品，文学类）
Rem Koolhaas
 Delirious New York
http://book.douban.com/subject/1833504/ （这个封面的英文版）
Robert Musil
 Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften[The Man without Qualities]
http://book.douban.com/subject/2029123/ （作者为奥地利小说家， 文学作品）
Andrea Palladio
 I quattro libri dell'architectturo [The Four Books on Architecture]
http://book.douban.com/subject/4798406/
http://book.douban.com/subject/1730865/ (补一个英文版，帕拉迪奥的建筑四书）
Thomas Pynchon
 Gravity's Rainbow
http://book.douban.com/subject/3450390/ （再一次出现了。。）
Robert Venturi
 Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
http://book.douban.com/subject/1752262/ （第三次出现）
朋友：
Kurt Foster
Jeff Kipins
Leon Krier
作者：
Walter Benjamin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin
全名：Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin，德国人，思想家、哲学家和马克思主义文学批评家，出版有《发达资本主义时代的抒情诗人》、《论歌德的（亲和力）》、《德国悲剧的起源》、《单向街》、《机械复制时代的艺术作品》、《1900年左右的柏林童年》、以及传世名作《巴黎拱廊街》。
更多请戳：豆列
Jacques Derrida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida
维基条目：他是一位法国籍犹太哲学家，解构主义的代表人物。
巴塔耶（Georges Bataille, 1897-1962）法国评论家、思想家、小说家。他博学多识，思想庞杂，作品涉及哲学、伦理学、神学、文学等一切领域禁区，颇具反叛精神，不经意间常带给读者一个独特的视角，被誉为“后现代的思想策源地之一”。代表作有《内心体验》、《可恶的部分》、《文学与恶》等。 巴塔耶继承了尼采、柯耶夫诠释的黑格尔、东西方神秘主义，影响战后法国思想甚钜，后结构大师巨子如罗兰.巴特、福柯、德希达等都深深受惠于他特殊的洞察力与观看事物的角度。
豆列：http://www.douban.com/doulist/211012/
小组：http://www.douban.com/group/Georges.Bataill/
维基：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bataille
让·鲍德里亚（Jean Baudrillard，1929年-2007年）法国哲学家，现代社会思想大师，后现代理论家，知识的“Terrorists”。波德里亚生于1929年，作为家族中上大学的第一人，他在巴黎获得了社会学博士学位，曾任教于巴黎十大和巴黎九大，从1968年出版《物体系》开始，撰写了一系列分析当代社会文化现象、批判当代资本主义的著作，并最终成为享誉世界的法国知识分子。
豆列：http://book.douban.com/doulist/31923/
小组：http://www.douban.com/group/Baudrillard/
维基：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
阿兰 巴蒂约（Alain Badiou，born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco）法国哲学家，非公立学校高等教育机构（ENS)常任主席。是一个奠基式的人物，是一个极具领袖气质的知识分子。……他以独特的方式把严格的数学知识、真正的哲学情怀、艺术家的感性，和激进的政治活动结合起来。
ENS全名École Normale Supérieure维基页面：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Normale_Sup%C3%A9rieure
小组：http://www.douban.com/group/badiou/
维基：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou
亨利·柏格森（Henri Bergson，1859年—1941年），法国哲学家，文笔优美，思想富于吸引力，曾获诺贝尔文学奖。
收藏：http://www.douban.com/group/Bergson/collection
小组：http://www.douban.com/group/Bergson/
维基：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson
第二辑Henry N.Cobb
http://www.douban.com/note/131056687/
第一辑Stan Allen
http://www.douban.com/note/130945263/
Preface for Unpacking My Library
http://www.douban.com/note/130046856/
第四辑Liz Diller and Ric Scofidio
http://www.douban.com/note/131513940/
（已修正错误和待翻译）