Word: steels
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...that does not mean the building is easy to understand or like. Running its whole, three-city-blocks length is a permanent, jungle gym-like white steel scaffolding. The faux scaffold is inspired: it defines a long outdoor walkway, it plays tricks with perspective (Does the thing tilt up? Down? Are its beams parallel?), and its evocation of construction in progress makes the Wexner Center seem perpetually unfinished, excitingly open-ended...
...modernism's elemental unit. For starters, Eisenman has lined up the building with the Columbus city grid rather than the campus grid -- an off- kilter tilt of 12 1/4 degrees. Within the complex, he has laid down still more grids to play with: the 12-ft. modules of white steel scaffolding, structural columns set 24 ft. apart, decorative columns 48 ft. apart. He lets these various grids overlap and collide, creating quirky niches and three- dimensional geometric cat's cradles everywhere. Inside, the experience of architectural structure is nearly kinetic: as you enter, a fake beam shoots past...
What is the point of all this highly wrought architectural scribbling and juxtapositioning? Why, in a single glimpse, is there brick, tinted glass, clear glass, white glass, white metal panels, white steel, white stone, concrete and red stone? Because to pull off such an improbable collage is a virtuoso feat -- Eisenman is like a chess master playing several games at once while standing on his head. Because the dense, dense eclecticism of material and form prevents the place from seeming too slick and self-serious. And - because Eisenman remains rather perverse. The four painting and sculpture galleries, for instance, amorphous...
...STEEL MAGNOLIAS...
...observant of playwright Robert Harling to see that a small-town beauty parlor can function as a little lodge hall for women, a place where they can let their hair down while it is being put up. It was clever of him to stock Steel Magnolias with Southern belles, wicked of eye and tongue, though ultimately forgiving of heart. It was shrewd of him to work his successful off-Broadway drama around personal milestones (marriage, birth, death) that everyone shares. His characters may be exotics, but their situations are achingly familiar...