The Plan

^Plan of Victims, Berlin, John Hejduk 1986

Text by John Hejduk from his afterword to Stanley Tigerman's Monograph:

"When I examine his plans it occurs to me that, throughout the history of Architecture, plans have changed the least. This, I think, is a curious phenomenon. It is sometimes stated that the plan is a horizontal section, in relation to the well-known vertical section of architecture. So it may be, but I think architectural plans are something else. I think they are architecture in a state of sleep. Plans are sleeping architecture that, in the extreme, are architecture in death. We tend not to want to disturb architectural plans, for they are so still and so quiet, abstract and awesome. The plan shows the death of the soul of architecture. It is an X-ray of the soul. The plan returns architecture to a state of timelessness. The plan has no need for clothes or ornamentation; it carries with it an inevitability. The plan is sacred and inviolate."

3 Masterpieces of Late Twentieth-Century Design Theory

1:  Rossi's Inequality, aka the Architectural Memory Theorem

The minimum meaningful architectural configuration is greater than and irreducible to its geometric constituents.

2:  Hejduk's Inequality, aka the Architectural Poetry Theorem

The minimum poetic architectural configuration is greater than and irreducible to architectural memories.

3:  Eisenmann's Hypothesis, aka the Architectural Calculus Theorem

Minimum geometric, mnemonic and poetic configurations are special cases of a generalized calculus of form.

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Text and images from Jeffrey Kipnis, Late Twentieth Century Design Theory, 1990
via Architecture's Desire, Reading the Late Avant-Garde, K. Michael Hays. MIT Press.