Deconstructivism is a theoretical term that emerged within art, architecture, and the philosophical literature of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The movement refers mainly to an architectural language of displaced, distorted, angular forms, often set within conflicting geometries. With origins in the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (b. 1930), deconstructivism generated an iconoclastic style of the avant-garde whose principle architec tural exponents included Coop Himmelb(l)au, Zaha Hadid, Behnisch and Partners, Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, Morphosis, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and Frank Gehry, among others. Curiously, while these and other architects have continued to practice in a related formal language, the terms once used to describe their work have long since dropped out of usage. Deconstruction in the field of architecture owes its origins to two parallel events that took place in 1988. One was an exhibition titled “Deconstructivist Architecture” held at the...