This project investigates the decomposition of House El Even Odd (1980) by American architect Peter Eisenman. El Even Odd, also known as Castelli House, is an unexecuted project. The house was designed for the exhibition “Houses for Sale” on view at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. It belongs to a series of projects called “Houses.” The architect developed these projects after the completion of his PhD work, The Formal Basis of Architecture (1963), at the University of Cambridge.

Project Description

The project aims to provide a formal description of House El Even Odd. It focuses on the structure of form itself as opposed to the relationship of form to function and form to meaning. Specifically, it follows a two-fold process. It first decomposes the building’s form into its observable spatial elements and subsequently re-composes those elements to specify their relations.

The documentation of the building’s drawings and models is generally limited in the literature. The project uses the books Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works (1995) and Diagram Diaries (1999) as reference points. The project produces a series of original drawings, diagrams, and digital models based on the two-fold process of decomposition.

The project’s booklet contains the following chapters:

1. The Structure of Building Form
2. Spatial Transformations
   1. Geometric Distortion
   2. Projective Geometry
   3. Recursion
   4. Indentation or Imprint
3. Architecture’s Autonomy
4. Drawings and Diagrams

University: School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Course: 2TH.121 Theories of Deconstruction of Space and Gender
Year: Spring semester 2011-2012