Three pranksters dressed in gorilla costumes walked into a conference on conceptual architecture in London in 1975. The moderator, Robert Maxwell, continued to speak as if nothing were happening, straining to keep the audience's attention while the gorillas roamed the room. After five minutes, Colin Rowe, who was more amused by the performance than was Maxwell, spoke out: “I think a super-abundant illustration of conceptual architecture has just walked into the room.” The three visitors, as Rowe put it, were clearly embodiments of what “Dr. Johnson described as the unexpected copulation of ideas” (Figures 1 and 2).1 While not physically aggressive, they were clearly antagonistic to the event and singled out one participant in particular, Peter Eisenman, barking and growling at increasing volume each time he tried to speak.
Like the hominids in Stanley Kubrick's then still-recent 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose movements the London pranksters...
University of California Press