P E O P L E     P L A C E         P E R T I N E N T 

Post-modernism was a period of playfulness and consumer choice, where some saw it has a culture that went off the rail because communities around the globe had traditions obliterated by the spread of the capitalism and other complex theories and outlandish cultural productions such as structuralism and de-constructivism. It is a theory that refers to a number of theoretical approaches that developed in the late 1960s by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Julia Kinstera[1].  In the today society, architecture needs to reflect the tasks and possibilities that are intrinsically its own. Architecture is not a vehicle nor a symbol for things which do not belong to its essence, but instead a language in which that produces new ways of understanding the world through a number of theoretical approaches. “The world is now, quite literally at out fingertips as we choose and purchase lifestyles from wherever we please, electrically piecing together patchworks of images and signs to produce our identities[2]. Bringing ideas of fracturing, fragmentation, indeterminacy and plurality were all indeed the key of postmodern figures. It was a new era which evoked ideas of irony, disruption, difference, discontinuity and simulation. In our day to day lives, we expect common sense and accessibility from perspectives of scientific reason or philosophical logic, and as well as clarity and precision should be the sole aim of individual thoughts. But post-modernism in contrast, often seeks what escapes these processes of definition and celebrates what resists or disrupt them.

One of the theoretical approach in the postmodernism era was structuralism, a theory about understanding the phenomena using the metaphor of language. To understand language as a system or as a structure which defines itself in terms of itself. It is a self- referential system, where it refers to its theory as there is no language behind language which we understand[3] , words explain words and meaning is present as a set of structure. For example, Marxist, structuralism philosopher argues that we can understand the world ‘appearance’ by examining the relations of production ‘reality’, whereas another structuralism, Roland Barthes, argued that the author could not claim to know what his/hers book was about any more than the reader, thus the idea that there was a hidden reality (hidden to the reader but known to the text) is challenged and instead a view of the text is presented which was available equally. It focuses on emphasising the understanding of the truth as something that is not self-discovered, nor own but instead a structure which the society invents. Structuralism seek its structures not on the surface  level of the observed, but below or behind empirical reality through  generating a specialized structures, structure of language over structure of discourse and therefore divided member of the groups into categories such as married not married. For Structuralism, time as a dimension is no less, but also no more important than any other might use in analysis.[4] Structuralism relies upon the logic of the language and their characteristics way of thinking about structures remains essentially the same, and assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words.[5]  

“In the 1980s, postmodernism spawned two new architectural movements, which, although they may have postmodernist roots, are not always considered to be fully within the postmodern fold. One is de-construction, which can be seen as aligned to postmodernism in the sense that it is a reaction to the rigidity and perfect functionality of modern design theory[6].”  Deconstruction was a movement that originated in France with the motive about criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. In the book, the Critical Difference (1981), Barbara Johnson clarifies the term ‘Deconstruction; is not synonymous with ‘destruction’ however, it is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis, itself, which etymological means “to undo”, a virtual synonym for “to destruct.[7]. The main channel for the creation of de-constructivist philosophy to architectural theory was through the philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Peter Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind. Deconstruction question the traditional assumptions about certainty, identity and truth, and in a way also a complex responds to a variety of theoretical a philosophical movements such as postmodernism and structuralism. “If structuralism relies upon the logic of language, then de-construction reveals the rhetoric as the subversive, poetic subconscious of the logic[8].  De-construction emphasise the existence of opposing different meaning within what may be considered and authenticated as unified. Thus, its aims were to de-construct the traditional way of forms/construction in a sense of exposing and questioning their originality and interest on which they are based on. A de-constructivist philosopher, Peter Eisenman explains that,

“Meaning is not found in the building as an outcome of the design process,

but rather as a subjective mode in which each person interrupts and reads

meaning through their own experience of the building.”

 When structuralism constructed a system, Derrida deconstruct it, takes it apart. To generate ideas of disintegration and attentiveness in manipulating ideas of a structure’s surface or skin which serve to deform and disarticulate the elements of architecture. A theory which endeavours to establish how statements about any texts subvert their own meaning. “Do not let your experience to be bound to other buildings instead fresh and new experience created by you’[9].

“It is often said that Derrida’s early critiques of Aussers and Saussure provide the most carefully argued introductions to de-constructive approach to the tradition of western philosophy.

“The goal of de-construction may be to separate itself from

oppressive discourses to appeal to people at a deeper, more

psychological level, there is a reason that decon architecture

has become the style of choice for museums and other public

buildings around the world[10].”

Jacques Derrida points away to architectural deconstruction as a situation strategy. Both Derrida, Peter Eisenman and as well as Daniel Libeskind were concerned with the metaphysics of presence, a main subject of deconstruction philosophy in architecture.  Derrida defines metaphysics and criticize it to a large degree on the basis that it is a reduction to opposition, a series of seemingly dimensions that have logical and metaphysical priority; presence vs absence, being vs beings, identity vs difference, truth vs fiction and life vs death.[11] According to both Derrida and Eisenman, the dialectic presence and absence is found in the construction and de-constructivism and locus or place of presence is architecture. Any architectural de-constructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal construction. For Derrida, there is no being, other than impossible and contradictory. Though we have an intrinsic tendency to search for such a thing[12]. It is easy to assume what is present as a complete present and exclude absence as an illusion, difference and non-being. There is no being or presence for Derrida than there is nature. Nature only exists as the opposite of the social, never as it is in itself and the same applies to being and presence. Derrida calls this freeing technique deconstruction, to be liberated, it is essential to de-construct the relationships of built environment and culture, since the built environment and culture are built things; that is, our culturally built world is a sham of social, historical embodiments of the metaphysics of the presence[13].

Between these events-effect and language, or even the possibility of language, there is an essential relation. It is characteristic of events to be expressed or expressible, uttered or utter able, in propositions which are at least possible[14]. The questions of the character of a building then leads Derrida to another main de-constructivist philosophy of architecture, language. To interpret things requires an interpretation of language, not only because we interpret things by using language but because things and world are themselves webs of signs. If language is necessary for there to be an ideal object, than identity is caught up in the historical, cultural and inter subjective variations and ambiguities of language. Deconstruction in a large part means facing the contradictory for Derrida, if sentences in language are indeterminate, and therefore contradictory, then the concept of the sentence is contradictory, since the sentence must be what conveys meaning and cannot convey means[15]. Meaning is always contextual in a numerous of ways and therefore the way in which language as a system can only exist as a system of differences. Consequently, language is a closed infra-referential system of signs whose meanings are constituted by their place in historical systems of difference[16] thus the meaning of a word depends on what it does not mean, because other words in the system have already excluded that meaning by owning it.  De-construction architecture would be regarded as a conventional text, the meaning of which is to be read off a message, or else more positively from the point of view of reception theory, the meaning of architecture would occur not as a message, but rather as the interplay between people and the space[17].

According to Gough (2013), objective reality is not independent of concepts and our representation in thought of the object is indeed determinant of it. Objectivity reality is, in other words intrinsically correlated with the subject[18]. Derrida claims that we all have individual interpretation to how to reflect and responds to certain objects and that individual interpretation of an object always remains open and underway and needs to become an affirmation of the play of signification.  Language itself is a strategy that is meant to free us from the tyranny or traditional metaphysical interpretation and to overcome the belief in a temporal origin or original which can recover[19]. Peter Eisenman explains, that “when you experience the building you experience it has a diagram rather than a composition of architectonic elements”. De-construction architecture is an architecture that could be read, interpreted and be able to be judge as a mental operation not just a visual or figurative one”. Derrida’s construction proceeds by the way of displacement, a strategy which is a violent situating of difference.  For example, in the western world the binary pair “signified/signifier’ has been hidden insofar as priority has been given to the signified” as the objective and the transcendent reality, which is followed by the subsequent and dependent “signifier”[20]. In other term, in the today society, interpretations are done though ways in which one term is the opposition has been privileged over the other in a particular text, argument, historical tradition or social practice. The privilege is usually because the individual interprets the one term more true, more valuable, or important or more universal than its opposite[21]. De-construction is all about having an interpretation of the built environment as a displacement of the cultural desire for presence as means to deconstructing the relation of built form and culture and understanding other differences, for example the larger scope of differences between nature and the built environment.