The Technology of Axonometry in 1960s Britain: Kenneth Frampton and Peter Eisenman

The Bauhaus school’s utilisation of both the model medium and axonometric projection in the early-twentieth century perhaps best typifies the historical links between technology, rationalisation, and representational techniques. By the late twentieth century, however, the choice by the architect or theorist to utilise either medium has, in some cases, come to represent the exact opposite; an anti-technological ideological position. In light of this transition, this study explores the influence of axonometry as a technique of representation, and its influence on post-modern praxis in England and America. To illustrate, it locates the re-emergence of axonometry and isometry in 1960s Britain through two key cultural producers: Kenneth Frampton, and Peter Eisenman. Specifically, I will conduct a comparison of Frampton’s use of axonometry in his co-edited volume with Douglas Stephen and Michael Carapetian entitled British Building: 1960-1964 (1965). This will be compared with Eisenman’s thesis, entitled A Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, completed at Cambridge University in 1963, and supervised officially by Sir Leslie Martin, as well as unofficially by Colin Rowe. Eisenman employed isometry as the analytical method to examine canonical modern projects. By 1968 when designing House I, Eisenman would shift to wire- frame axonometry, which I demonstrate signifies a seminal development in his oeuvre from perceptual to conceptual representation. This paper hopes to address the following: what historical, social, and ideological meanings did the technology of axonometry acquire in the post-modern period? And through axonometry, how do both Frampton and Eisenman conduct their markedly different anti-technological critiques of modernism? By locating axonometry’s first significant post-modern re-emergence in transatlantic culture, this paper provides a theoretical basis to examine contemporary revivals of axonometry in architectural and curatorial praxis.