The Debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman Revisited: Autonomy and Theoretical Disarticulation in Architecture

Abstract

This article intends to examine the debate held in November 17th, 1982 in the Graduate School of Design - Harvard University between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman. The meeting is representative of a period (70’s and 80’s) when architectural morphology and repertoire are intensely debated in view of a crisis in the modernist statute. It is worth to highlight, as important precedents to the debate, both the establishment of design as field of scientific inquiry during the 1960’s and the concurrent establishment of an ideology of practice based on the intellectual autonomy of the architect.The origins of these two phenomena are linked to the workings of two intellectual groups: the Design Methods Group and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS). The previous associations to each of these groups, by Alexander and Eisenman respectively, refers – even if indirectly – to some of the theoretical instances held in this famous debate. The controversial tone of the encounter and the intensity of some of the refutations justifies, in part, the general understanding that Eisenmam and Alexander represent theoretical positions which are diametrically opposed. However, after some thirty five years it is possible, with the convenient suspension of momentary moods, to reassess the debate with an emphasis on its contents.