The winner of the public tendering process of the City of Culture is an internationally recognized architect. He is an outstanding member of the group The New York Five. Eisenman established his own estudio in New York in 1980, after having been a teacher in some of the most prestigious universities in the world, such as Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Yale and Ohio.
Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Cornell, Peter Eisenman got Phd in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and in Fine Arts from the University of Chicago.
In 1967, Eisenman founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York, an international organism of experts dedicated to architecture of which he was the director until 1982. He received the first award at the third edition of the International Architectural Biennale of Venice in 1985 for his project "Romeo and Juliet". He was also one of the two architects selected to represent the United States in the fifth International Architectural Biennale of Venice in 1991, where he returned in 2002 and 2004 to exhibit the project of the City of Culture of Galicia.
He is also the creator of emblematic architectural works such as the Wexner Centre of Visual Arts in Ohio, the Aronoff Centre at the University of Cincinnati or the Memorial to the murdered Jews in Europe located near the Brandemburg Gate in Berlin. His projects are characterized in a definite style as "modern deconstructivism", similar to the line of work of Arata Isozaki, Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas.
Peter Eisenman is also a winner of numerous awards and distinctions; amongst others, he was deserving of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Brunner Award and National Honor Awards for Design from the American Institute of Architects, the latter on two occasions, firstly for the Center Wexner of Ohio and then for the head office of the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation in Tokyo.
By Luis Fernández-Galiano.
"CODEX. The City of Culture"
"The winning project of Peter Eisenman reconciles with great plastic and symbolic intelligence the opposite requisites of respecting an environment miraculously intact and of giving an unusual and seductive image.
Arranging the buildings as an artificial topography on the crest of the mount Gaiás, and excavating it so that the mount itself seems to be carved, the architect buries his building without burying it really, and constructs on the top without giving the impression of occupying it.
This results in a curved scenery, generated by Eisenman superimposing the tracing of the medieval centre of Santiago and the grooved undulations of the pilgrim scallop shell. This creates a pleasent and expresionist scenery which dissolves freely into the terrain, and which complements the abruptness of the streets with placid footpaths leading towards the car park at the foot of the motorway and towards the distant outline of the Obradoiro".