Deconstruction/Deconstructive Architecture (Page 7)

Deconstructive architecture is not demolition or dissimulation. On the contrary, it locates certain Structural problems within stable structures that do not necessarily lead to the collapse of the structure. Deconstructive architecture challenges the very values of harmony, unity, and stability, to propose instead a different view of structure. It attempts to show that flaws are intrinsic to both structure and form. It identifies the inherent dilemmas, impurities and contamination within buildings. It questions the form and structure by drawing these impurities to the surface by coaxing and torture only in order to destroy it. It destroys the form and structure to remove the impurities hidden within them. It is indeed structural. 

In order to interrogate the form, deconstructive architecture employs formal strategies developed by Russian constructivsm in the early part of the 20th century. The Russian avant-garde had changed the traditional understanding about the nature of architectural form. It had posed a threat to the tradition of architecture by breaking the rules of composition that produced balanced, hierarchical, relationship between forms to create a unified whole.

Pure forms were used to produce "impure, skewed, geometric compositions. Both Malevich and Tatlin painted simple forms in conflict to produce unstable and restless geometry. There was neither a single axis nor a hierarchy of forms but an assembly of competing and conflicting axes and forms. with time this conflicting geometry became increasingly irregular. After the 1917 revolution, the avant-garde gradually rejected the high arts to move into architecture as it was functional and was, hence, tied to society Architecture provided them the ground to attain their revolutionary social goals. 

Tatlin's design for monument with pure geometric forms trapped within a twisted frame changed the basic understanding of the tradition of architecture.These radical structures, however, Were never realised. More the constructivists got committed to architecture, more the instability of the early works was removed. The conflict between, forms that characterised the early work, was gradually resolved. Unstable assembly of forms in conflict gradually became stable assemblies of forms in harmony. In vesnins' Palace of Labor, the distinct dynamic geometry of the early work is only evident in the overhead wires like an ornament attached to the roof of a classical composition of forms. 

The constructivists were neither prevented from constructing their early projects due to technical reasons nor did they abandon the spirit of their early work. Rather, the tamed version of the early works was because the constructivists were never concerned with destabilising structure. On the contrary, they were concerned with the purity of structure. The irregular geometry was always a result of a dynamic relationship of forms floating in space rather than being an unstable structural condition intrinsic to forms themselves. Neither the purity of individual forms was called into question nor was the purity of structure.

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