ARCHITECTURE AND DECONSTRUCTIVISM

1.1 Introduction:

In the 20th century many Avant Garde developments have arose in the fields of Philosophy, Art and Architecture. These developments have addressed the changing notion of the complexity and contradictions, that have been encountered by the society. The main reason for. these developments arose with the emergence of the new Post-Industrial society, which was completely disoriented within the new parameters that were created by industrialization. In many ways, the 20th century also saw a change in the human metaphysical development. The Great Depression, the World Wars, Technological Developments, Shifting Political Empires and many more attributed to the insecurities in the world order. These saw direct references to the changing human needs. But where this new world order has led us to is difficult to assess. As every new development warrants the need for newer developments. This is an obvious reason for the longevity of the theory and tradition. It must be able to change with the changes of society.

The most recent of these Avant Garde developments and the one that has witnessed an uproar of criticism is Post structuralism or Deconstruction. This Deconstruction if one can define it, is the substitute for this present to historic, anti-historic, and the essence of what is a transitory fleeting contingent of Post Modem time and space.

1.Peter proudfoot ;architectural acience review , p55

Deconstruction far from being a recipe or a standard is usually

seen as a scornful superficialisation of all fields of human

creation and even of human life. |t is neither a guide nor a puzzle,

a school nor a code. In literary criticism "Deconstruction works as

a mode of interpretation by a careful and circumspect entering of

each textual labyrinth. The deconstructive critic seeks to find by

this process of retracing, the element in the system studies which

is a logical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it

all, of the loose stone which will pull down the whole building, the

deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the

building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated

the ground, knowing or unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a

dismantling of the structure of text but a demonstration that it

already dismantled itself. It is a provocative method, aimed at discovery and perhaps discovering ourselves."¹

Deconstruction has been theorised and exercised since 1967 by Jacques Derrida, its great exponent and practitioner. When he began to work out a way of representing it from 'mimesis', or what the philosophers called 'mimetalogy*; that is, the captivation of its representation through Logocentrism (metaphysics which goes as far back as Plato to Heidegger and still further), according to what is writing; and any type of inscription as vehicles of speech,

where, meaning always proceeds what is 'signified¹. It is the humbling of written words in the hand of speech which organises our symbols and concepts of meaning, there by governing our notion of truth. Nevertheless, the general possibility of the written words lays the foundations for the possibilities of language itself. Derrida has talked in "Of Grammatology" upon reforming the concept of the written word by reintroducing it to its roots.