The Epic of Deconstructivism

Deconstructivism opens with a building that begins to question itself: the straight wall, the right angle, symmetry and the box that ruled architecture for so long. After the exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the book sets out its principles, breaking the box, instability as a language, the fragment as geometry, space as more than what remains, and collision in place of harmony. Frank Gehry's metal in motion and his glass sails for the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Zaha Hadid's paintings of impossible worlds, Daniel Libeskind's voids of memory and Bernard Tschumi's red grid in a Paris park give each idea a building. The computer then makes these difficult forms calculable, and the book ends by calling the movement a revolt against certainty.