In 1988 Eisenman completed his plans for expansion of Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center, attempting to respond to two requirements: reorganisation of space in the faculty and construction of additional facilities (libraries, exhibition halls, theatres and so on).
The result was addition to the existing building of an undulating construction containing the new facilities.
The project’s outstanding features are inspired by the concepts of movement and inertia: the extraordinary delicacy of the building’s outer wrapper forms an unusual mask for the strength which animates its crowded interior.
The interior is in turn adapted to the toothed shape of the construction with exaggerated twisting, seemingly concealing itself among the downward isometric lines of the site.
In 1988 Eisenman completed his plans for expansion of Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center, attempting to respond to two requirements: reorganisation of space in the faculty and construction of additional facilities (libraries, exhibition halls, theatres and so on).
The result was addition to the existing building of an undulating construction containing the new facilities.
The project’s outstanding features are inspired by the concepts of movement and inertia: the extraordinary delicacy of the building’s outer wrapper forms an unusual mask for the strength which animates its crowded interior.
The interior is in turn adapted to the toothed shape of the construction with exaggerated twisting, seemingly concealing itself among the downward isometric lines of the site.
The Aronoff Center falls in place at a specific point in Eisenman’s study of university campuses: reaction to its unexpected appearance was different from what it would have been a few years earlier.
Careful analysis of Eisenman’s layouts is resolved in the intricate grid of lines making up the project.
The New York architect’s work is not bound within the confines of time, but opens up with aspirations toward the future taking the form of a radical challenge to conventions.
While private homes were the main theme of his first decade of work, campuses became the “sites” of his creativity beginning in the Eighties.
Evidence of their break with the early homes is provided by the transition from a focus on the concept of “location” to that of “site”.
Eisenman’s homes stand out as objects “uprooted” from a modern concept of living, while his campus projects dig into the ground to extend beyond their limits and dilate, involving a wide network of ideas.
His early buildings had little connection with their context, but their conceptual prospects did not change, and expressed the continuity of modern research aimed at grasping the interior process of design as manifested in exteriority.
His campus projects, on the other hand, have been mostly intended for areas set between existing buildings (such as the Wexner Center) and sometimes have internal empty spaces.The Aronoff Center not only reproduces the form of the adjacent building and multiplies its broken profile, but is a curvaceous structure contrasting with the linearity of its neighbour.
The allusion to a body in motion or a disquieting current within the building is obvious: the building reveals the almost instinctive desire, free of particular generational or cultural connotations, to achieve an architecture capable of basing its form on the manifestations of life rather than on conventional geometric configurations.
The Cincinnati building gives the impression that it is generating a “perpetual motion”: this effect is created by its interior space, not by transitory evocation of an illusion.
The most impressive part of the whole structure is the atrium, rising between sloped walls along the building’s empty central volume. Here the underground appearance of a portico combines with the ceremonial ascending motion of a public staircase.
The skylight produces the impression that the building contains its own source of light, crossed by various paths. Along the pedestrian path from the underground parking lot to the entrance above it, each volume is subject to the action of otherwise invisible forces which cause it to slip, rotate and slide with respect to levels and uprights.
The building is accessed through a door below a strongly illuminated projecting wedge: at the end of a long ramp, broken up and curved, the visitor is at a level no higher than the street, which branches off to the other side of the campus.
This long climb, beginning below ground level and ending at it, produces a curious effect: the conventional notion of rising and lowering gives way to a kinetic experience, allowing us to experience “the continuity of rising and descending in the depths of the structure”.
The construction’s concealed, unforeseeable nature gives one the impression of being in a cave; the delicate colours used both inside and out refer to rococo colour schemes but also allude to the darker regions of the imagination.
The Aronoff Center is the result of a combination of different concepts: the concept of the palimpsest, oscillation and vibration, applied simultaneously to the new building and to the previously existing one.
The result is a dual wavy motion: one which is more geometric (the old building) and another which flows, due to the curve in which the new functions are arranged.
The result is very interesting, as the two geometries determine the way the spaces are laid out, playing with joints and intersections.