الفهرس 
-Practicing DeconstructionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Words are their own worst enemies. ’Deconstruction’ is
no exception. Deconstruction means to ’tear down’ or to
’destroy”, In architecture, the concept has gained wide
reputation as a new movement with famous architects as
followers.
I cannot deny that when I first confronted
Deconstruction, I disliked it. I was astonished of the broken
fragmented shapes creeping into architectural students’ projects.
I did not understand what they were doing and looked for the
scientific canons that govern the practice of designing and
constructing buildings namely: ’Commodity, Firmness and
Delight’, but did not find any (from my point of view at that
time). ’Instead I found clashing masses that explode to form tiny
buildings with formless shapes scattered at odd angles.
I could not believe that ’ugliness’, acute angled rooms
and ambiguous masses with no definite shapes could creep into
the first place prizes in architectural competitions all over the
world. This phenomenon problematizes the relationship between
aesthetic values and current architectural practice. If architecture
is governed by aesthetic conventions, why do ’collapsing
buildings’ keep spreading and invading all the architectural
departments and magazines? And even if it has won a reputation
abroad, is it suitable to be applied here in Egypt?
Bernard Tschumi, one of the leading architects in this
field, indicates that ’Architecture can be consciously negative. It
can be deliberately built to be disagreeable, uncomfortable, and
dysfunctional.Y In practicing the proverb ’Never judge a race by
the worst man in it’, I decided to look for other good men in the
race. I took on the task of finding the beauty in these buildings
and looked for the reasons for its success and spread Soon T became aware that Deconstruction as a
philosophical approach has first originated in Literature and then
influenced architecture. I also recognized that the meaning and
understanding of Deconstruction differs from one person to
another. And hence I decided to investigate ’The Meaning of
Deconstruction in Architecture’.
In her book ”The Critical Difference”, Barbara Johnson
clarifies the term ’Deconstruction’, ”As a term, it is ... much
closer in meaning to the original meaning of the word ”analysis”
itself, which etymologically means to undo .A virtual synonym
for ”to de-construct”.
Deconstruction came to have direct influence on
discussion in architecture and on the building process itself. It
has led to an insistent focus on meaning. It was not the matter of
analyzing how meaning is produced but rather of vesting the
architect with the responsibility for designing buildings that
radiated meaning. This idea of meaning narrowed so that it was
not necessarily understood by the society or even by the patron,
but only by the architect himself.’ Furthermore, a building can be
understood differently. It even acquires different meanings as
time passes by. These multiple meanings depend ~n their users as
much as on their creators. The term building means its masses,
texture, colors, light and feelings. Individuals have their own
interpretation of each element according to. their culture and
tradition.
The architecture of Deconstruction, according to many, is
motivated by the need to break the bonds of accepted modes of
thinking about architecture, in order to create new possibilities. It is a chance for architects to be set free from their constraints, and
the cultural beliefs inherited about architecture.
In architecture, Deconstruction has been reviewed
distinctively. ”The architecture produced in the name of
Deconstruction attempts to embrace notions of fragmentation,dispersion and discontinuity through formal means’”. Others
attempt to clarify its aims and methods. ”Deconstruction is not
demolition, or dissimulation. While it diagnoses certain
structural problems within apparently stable structures, these
flaws do not lead to the structures’ collapse. On the contrary
Deconstruction gains all its force by challenging the very values
of harmony, unity, and stability, and proposing instead a
different view of structure. A Deconstructivist architect is
therefore not one who dismantles buildings, but one who locates
the inherent dilemmas within buildings ... Irregular geometry
is ... understood as a structural condition rather than as a dynamic
formal aesthetic. It is no longer produced simply by the conflict
between pure forms. It is now produced within those forms. The
forms themselves are infiltrated with the characteristic skewed
geometry, and distorted. In this way, the traditional condition of
the architectural object is radically disturbed.” Goals of Research:
1- To uncover the meaning of Deconstruction as well as
of what is said about it. The research will proceed to investigate
Deconstruction theory, what is it about? What does it aim at?
And how it can be applied?
2- The research attempts to answer these questions in
relation to architecture. The objective is to know how the
Deconstruction Theory affected and influenced architects in their
ideas and work. Whether the philosophical theory is the only
influence on architecture today is a question worth answering.
3-Find the concepts and meanings hidden behind
deconstructed buildings. It will be interesting to find out and
unveil the modes of thinking of its architects, and find the rules
that govern their work.