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PE: Maurice Blanchot says that after the Holocaust, it is no longer possible to represent such excessive acts in language. One can no longer make an icon or a symbol as representational conditions in the traditional way. In our project for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation competition [record, February 2003, page 31] we attempted to make an index. This is similar to what I did in Berlin for the Holocaust Memorial project, where I took two topological surfaces—one on the ground and one in the air—and connected the dots—a minimal presence. In the WTC site, the shadows of the absent towers were an index. But don’t forget there were four energies at work on that project. It is not a Peter Eisenman project, nor a Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, or Steven Holl project. We all drew. The sketches I did were an attempt to create an index—a grid in the air and a grid on the ground. One was the footprint of the other.

Eisenman Robertson Architects with Michael Heizer: Model of Biocentrum, Frankfurt, Germany, 1987 (above) David Childs and Marilyn Jordan Taylor of SOM, Eisenman Architects, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, and Richard Meier and Partners: Model of FSM East River Project, New York City, 2001 (above). Eisenman Robertson Architects with Jacques Derrida: Model of La Villette, Paris, France, 1987 (above). Photos courtesy Eisenman Architects

I love our scheme. We wanted to examine the possibility of doing an urban project that was both a memorial and that could be built. The project was probably too sophisticated and problematic to win popular approval. It was not in touch with the expressionism that the victims’ families seemingly wanted. Our project shunned expressionism. It was both an index that could become an icon, and it also was practical. It did not do things that the New Urbanists would want—it did not bring the street grid through. At the WTC site, I thought we had designed a memorial square where this red paving seemed to seep into the city––an important symbolic gesture. Particularly important for us was that the entire project was on grade, and the memorial was part of the fabric of the city.

AR: But you talked about the need for an affect in the memorial. Where is the affect for you, and what about the affect for
the other people?

PE: Schindler’s List had all of the affect that people needed to deal with the Holocaust. They love that. Or Jim Freed’s Holocaust museum [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] in Washington. But for me, those ideas about memorialization are laden with too much sentimentality. Memory is not nostalgia. Our memorial in Berlin has little or no iconography, nothing symbolic, and it is this absence, like the silence of a psychiatrist, that will allow people to come to terms with their repressed feelings. I would not say that Libeskind’s project was any more affective. His presentation that day at the Winter Garden [World Financial Center], on December 18, 2002, was.

AR: Is this your first large-scale collaboration with other architects?

PE: Earlier I worked with Jacques Derrida on a project for La Villette [Paris, 1987]; with Michael Heizer on a competition for the Frankfurt Biocentrum [1986–87]; and with Richard Serra on the Berlin Holocaust Memorial [1996 to the present]. Richard Meier and I teamed up with David Childs on the Con Ed project [FSM East River Project, New York City, 2001]. In that one, we ended up each doing our own tower. For Ground Zero, we consciously said we want less architecture, less personality, less signature. We wanted to do something that did not recognize any of us individually. And I believe philosophically that was the right thing to do.

Was it difficult? Yes, extremely so. What was difficult was not the idea, but getting the egos to stay with the idea and not do their own thing. Even though everybody agreed on what we were doing, each one’s interpretation looked different. Those meetings, and there were a lot of them, were like being in a sauna [record, March 2003, page 65]. For me and for Steven, it was not easy—Steven almost quit. Charlie was the moderator. There were tensions everywhere. And we each had to keep our respective offices running, as well.

AR: You often say you like to challenge people in terms of your architecture.

PE: The architecture we remember is that which never consoles or comforts us. In a course I taught last spring at Princeton, we examined 10 canonical buildings designed between 1950 and the present day. They were all deviant buildings that became canonical because of their deviance. Luigi Moretti’s Casa Girasole in Rome can be considered the first Postmodernist building. Whatever he wants to call it, Robert Venturi also recognized it early on, as did Reyner Banham. I also included Rem Koolhaas’s Jussieu Library scheme [for the Jussieu University, Paris, 1993], because it was the best example of his use of horizontal slabs becoming routes in themselves. We also analyzed Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, and Gehry’s Case Western Reserve building [Weatherhead School of Management, 2002] in Cleveland.

I picked Case Western because it evolved from an index: The floor plan at Case Western comes out of Schinkel’s Altes Museum and Stirling’s Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. The plan of Schinkel, the plan of Stirling, and then the plan of Gehry represent an evolution. Then Gehry takes the plan and twists it into the third dimension. It is the only project that starts from Cartesian geometry and transforms it.

AR: In looking at these buildings as part of a history, how do you feel about your role in history? How do you want to be remembered in 100 years?

PE: A 100 years from now, I want to be remembered for my ideas. I would argue that without ideas I would not be able to continue. I would not know what to do. I do not do function. I do not do icons. My work is a constant process of uncovering. Do not forget, there is no new history. The architects I am going back to are all still there. They do not move. I move. And so, there is a constant renovation, a constant rereading, reinterpretation, reinvention.

Life, as in the case of Dr. Faustus, is a bet with the devil. Ultimately, he can give you fame, fortune, and power, but in the end, if you choose these, he wins. The one thing he cannot give or take away from you is your history.