Peter Eisenman - Michel Foucault - Friedrich Nietzsche: Anti-Humanist Architecture

How does a philosophical worldview flow into an architectural approach? If we assume that architecture is an expression of a given socio-political and economic reality, we can easily deduce the constant interaction between the two. The present study will delve into how Humanism, an approach to the world developed during the Renaissance, has been transformed over the centuries, influencing and infiltrating the various movements in architecture, focusing in particular on the forms it took in the 20th century and especially on the theoretical and realized early work of the American architect Peter Eisenman.
The aim of the exploration of the above is to attempt to document and highlight a course of Anti-Humanism in the context of 20th century’s architectural compositions, a century of intense changes in all fields, and in particular in the work of Peter Eisenman. The architect was intensely fond of this theory, both in his textual and materialized work, and especially in his ‘Houses’ series, mainly due to his philosophical origins as a predominant Anti-humanist. But who is he influenced from with such a state of thought? We observe him making constant references to the two prominent anti-humanist milestones, the philosophical figures of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. This study will achieve to showcase the intersection of Eisenman and Anti-humanism through the aforementioned linear analysis: the historical context of the time, Eisenman’s theoretical background on Nietzsche and Foucault, his personal approach, critique and final realization in his early work focusing on how the human subject has been displaced from and returned back to the center of interest, from the post-modern to the current days.

Keywords: Architecture, Philosophy, Anti-humanism, Eisenman, Foucault, Nietzsche, Houses.