Differentiating the Whites: Using Fractal Analysis to Investigate the Visual Properties of the Architecture of John Hejduk and Peter Eisenman

Abstract

Architects John Hejduk and Peter Eisenman were members of the “New York Five” and of the famous late modernist group, the “Whites.” Early in their careers, both Hejduk and Eisenman proposed that form or shape (the aesthetics of architecture) was more important than program (the function of architecture) and they designed experimental houses to demonstrate this. The present article uses the computational fractal method to analyze 78 design drawings to develop a mathematical description of the visual complexity of five early domestic designs by each architect. These data will provide an important basis for empirical comparisons of buildings using characteristic visual dimensions. Through this process it is possible to test a variety of hypotheses about the visual and formal qualities of both architects' works. Among the article's conclusions are that the mathematical data typically supports both architect's claims about the formal properties of their designs while challenging several assumptions about scale and Deconstructivist architecture.