The Parthenon Project

October 17 - December 20, 1998

The Parthenon Project is an installation created by architect Paul Rosenblatt and photographer Judith Turner that focuses on the ambiguous perception of architecture in photographs, and photographs as architecture.

In response to a portfolio of Turner's photo-etchings of the Parthenon's sculptural reliefs, Rosenblatt designed a structure which places her fragmentary views into a new architectural context, on a series of linear frieze-like panels. Wood studs, white Fiberglas sheets, fluorescent lights, and a television monitor are the major materials that form this 'temple.' These materials are commonly found in ordinary American life, yet antithetical to the original Parthenon itself. Visitors to the temple experience a contemporary analog to the 'real' Greek Parthenon, built with contemporary materials and new images of old fragments. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how images can become integral parts of architectural spaces, and how illusory images of buildings can transform our perceptions of physical reality.

The installation is an 8 by 18 foot long, and 7.5 foot high wooden 'temple' with proportions based upon those of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The structure is composed of 9 regularly spaced 2 by 8 foot bays built of standard American dimensional lumber, plywood, Fiberglas sheets, that enclose the interior space, and fluorescent lights that line the interior vertically installed at 2 foot intervals.

Above the basic structure, ten panels display photographs and photographic etchings representing the Parthenon's pedimentary sculpture and frieze reliefs. Within the structure, where the Parthenon's altar to Athena would be, is a video monitor displaying an image of an owl, a bird sacred to the goddess.

Before widespread verbal literacy in the Western world, images communicated only the most important and enduring history and legends. In Europe, Medieval church interiors are lined with paintings which describe biblical tales and Christ's sacrifices and good works. In cultures like ancient Greece, pivotal battles of men and gods comprise the imagery of pedimentary sculpture and temple friezes which encircle the most sacred sites of the ancient world. In those days, images were literally sacred. And they were ineradicably linked with the architecture which they animated. Greek architecture, particularly the Parthenon, perched upon the Acropolis in Athens, has exerted an enormous influence on American and European building. However, in today's image dominated world, what is ironically lacking in the transformed classicism, is the presence of analogous contemporary imagery to the carved stone friezes that animated the original structures. As new image technologies continue to emerge and dissolve the boundaries between the real and the mediated, what place can images have in the buildings we design?

Paul Rosenblatt practices architecture in Pittsburgh with the firm of Damianos+Anthony PC. He grew up in New York City and studied art and architecture at Yale University, where he received his bachelor's and master's degree and edited Perspecta, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture. After working for several years in New York, he moved to Pittsburgh in 1987 to teach at Carnegie Mellon University Since then, Rosenblatt's cross-disciplinary work has explored the relationship between art and architecture in the form of buildings and interiors, site-specific art installations, exhibitions, and texts. He has received several awards for his work, including an American Institute of Architecture Honor Award, and was included in the 1993 Young Architects issue of Progressive Architecture.

Judith Turner was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey and educated at Boston University where she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree. In addition to the countless newspapers and magazines in which her photographs have appeared, Turner's photography books include Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects (Rizzoli), White City: International Style Architecture in Israel (Tel Aviv Museum), and Annotations on Ambiguity (Axis Publications, Tokyo). An entire issue of the influential French magazine of fine art photography, Creatis, was devoted to her work. Solo exhibitions include the International Center of Photography in New York, and The Architectural Association in London.

This exhibition made possible by the Vira I. Heinz Endowment. The Vira I. Heinz Endowment is one of the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Endowments, which together form one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations. The Endowments' mission is to support progress in economic opportunity, arts and culture, education, health, human services and the environment.