"The extension of the Columbus street grid generates a new pedestrian path into the campus, a ramped east-west axis. The major circulation spine of this scheme, a double passageway - an asymptote extending from the central oval of the campus - wracks out of the ground, and runs north-south. This passageway - one half glass-enclosed, the other half of which is enclosed in an open scaffolding - is perpendicular to the east-west axis. The crossing of these two 'found' axes is not simply a route but an event, literally a 'center' for the visual arts, a circulation route through which people must pass on the way to and from other activities. Thus, a major part of the project is not a building itself, but a 'non-building'. Scaffolding traditionally is the most impermanent part of a building. It is put up to build, repair or demolish buildings, but it never shelters. Thus, the primary symbolization of a visual arts center, which is traditionally that of a shelter of art, is not figured in this case. For although this building shelters, it does not symbolize that function."

— Peter Eisenman, Arie Graafland, ed., Peter Eisenman: Recent Projects, p63

The Creator's Words

"Now when I did a museum for the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, I said, 'We have to exhibit art, but do we have to exhibit art the way has been traditionally exhibited, that is, against a neutral background? Because,' I said, 'You know, art has always been critical of life, that is what gave art its potency, its poetry. And architecture should serve art, in other words, be a background for art? Absolutely not,' I said, 'Architecture should challenge art and this notion that it should be a background."

— Peter Eisenman. from Peter Noever, ed. Architecture in Transition: Between Deconstruction and New Modernism. p39.