Lateness

A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists

Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be of the times--lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment.

Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis.

Lateness is the latest in a series of analogies and concepts that Peter Eisenman has used to interpret architecture, and that have defined the analytic methods that have made him a great teacher throughout his career. . . . The arguments . . . are written . . . in such an exceptionally didactic and succinct way, and illustrated so unmistakably, as to be rare amid the current proliferation of obscure and turgid architectural theories. . . . What really stands out are the penetrating formal analyses of the selected exemplars.---Preston Scott Cohen, Architectural Record
The arguments . . . . written here with Iturbe in such an exceptionally didactic and succinct way, and illustrated so unmistakably, as to be rare amid the current proliferation of obscure and turgid architectural theories.---Preston Scott Cohen, The Week
Peter Eisenman, Winner of the Kanter Tritsch Medal for Excellence in Architecture and Environmental Design, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design