Postmodern architecture was only one manifestation of the phenomenon that Portoghesi so aptly described as the end of prohibitionism. Challenges within design culture to the hegemony of modernism paralleled similar challenges to prevailing social and political norms elsewhere within contemporary society. In field after field, questions were raised concerning the fundamental assumptions on which different disciplines and practices were predicated. In 1988 Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley organized the exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” for the Museum of Modern Art that attempted to probe some of the central assumptions regarding architecture’s deepest cultural significance. In his catalog essay Mark Wigley wrote:

Architecture has always been a central cultural institution valued above all for its provision of stability and order. These qualities are seen to arise from the geometric purity of its formal composition. . . . The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been disturbed.
(Johnson & Wigley, p. 10)

Whitley employed the term Deconstructivism to label this sensibility. Deconstructivism is the conflation of two words: deconstruction and Constructivism. Deconstruction is an approach to reading and language that seeks to uncover the multiple and often conflicting levels of meaning inherent in texts of all kinds. In the 1970s, the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida served as the primary source for many architectural theorists interested in the application of deconstruction to architecture. Constructivism is one of the terms used originally to describe Soviet avant-garde architecture of the immediate post-Revolutionary years in Russia. In Deconstructivist designs, Wigley argued, architects employ the radi?cal forms of the early-twentieth-century Soviet avant-garde to represent some of the theoretical ideas of deconstruction. Nevertheless, some of the architects categorized as Deconstructivist were reluctant to explain their work solely as the conjunction of late twentieth-century literary theories with early-twentieth-century avant-garde designs.
In contrast to the epigrammatic clarity of early-twentieth-century architectural programs and manifestos, the literature on Deconstructivism displayed a convo?luted and abstruse writing style characteristic of the worst in academic prose. Ironi?cally, language became a barrier rather than a bridge between architectural form and public comprehension. Reviews of the exhibition were mixed and even the exhibit’s organizers acknowledged the tenuous quality of the concept of Decon?structivism. In his catalog essay, Wigley refused to claim the status of an organized movement for the work selected. Instead he described the exhibition in the following terms:

It is a curious point of intersection among strikingly different architects moving in dif?ferent directions. The projects are but brief moments in the independent programs of the artists.
(Johnson & Wigley, p. 19)

In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art’s “International Style” exhibition established a popular definition of modern architecture that would endure for decades. By the late 1980s however, there was less enthusiasm for defining normative conditions in the arts or anointing a limited selection of work as canonical. It was challenging enough for cultural institutions to illuminate “brief moments.”

Projects by seven different architects were included in the Deconstructivist exhibition: Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind (b. 1946), Rem Koolhaas (b. 1944), Peter Eisenman (b. 1932), Zaha Hadid (b. 1950), Coop Himmelbau (the name for the joint practice of Wolf Prix [b. 1968] and Helmut Swiczinsky [b. 1944]), and Bernard Tschumi (b. 1944). Zaha Hadid’s design for The Peak, an exclusive Hong Kong club, conveys the formal qualities that characterized work selected for the exhibition. Conceptually, the building consists of a horizontal stack of tubes. No clear hierarchy among the parts is apparent and the complexity of the scheme defies quick comprehension. Each level is skewed in its relationship to adjacent levels in an effort to negate any hint of orthogonal order. Hadid presented the building as a sequence of knifelike forms that appear to shred rather than compose the site as they slice into the hillside setting. While the lack of conventional order is at first unsettling, the intricate layering of the scheme and the manic intensity with which it was rendered is a compelling demonstration of architecture’s ability to function as a form of philosophical speculation. Indeed, many of the buildings designed by Hadid and the other architects included in the exhibition possess an eloquence that their writings unfortunately lack.
The Deconstructivist architecture exhibition represented a preliminary attempt to label a new design orientation in the history of architecture. Despite the awkwardness of the word, “Decon” entered the vocabulary of contemporary criticism because it answered the need for a term to describe a body of work that could neither be considered modern in the conventional sense nor postmodern in terms of its visual imagery and cultural references. Two architects whose work proved to be central to the crystalization of a new architectural approach were Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas. Both archi?tects effectively combined writing and designing to establish international repu?tations. Their work called into question the continued viability of classical and modernist design strategies and suggested the outlines of a new architectural aesthetic in the history of architecture.