FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Architect and theorist Peter Eisenman has enjoyed a long career as international architectural provocateur and knows a thing or two about controversial buildings and spaces. He will link Luigi Moretti, an Italian planner/architect who designed projects for Mussolini’s fascist regime, to the dawn of postmodern architecture in a series of lectures cosponsored by the University of Arkansas School of Architecture and Mississippi State University School of Architecture.

Eisenman will present the first part of “Luigi Moretti and the Origins of Postmodern Architecture” at 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 10, in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main. The second lecture will take place at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 11, at the Mississippi Telecom Center in Jackson, Miss.

“Eisenman has been critical of postmodern architecture in the past,” said Jeff Shannon, dean of the UA School of Architecture. “In fact, when his colleague Michael Graves jumped ship and began designing postmodern buildings, Eisenman responded with an article titled 'The Graves of Modernism.’ I’m interested to learn what he has to say about the subject.”

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany

Eisenman has built an international reputation in part as a chief proponent of deconstructivist architecture, developing theories seeking to liberate form from meaning. In the process, he has assembled an award-winning body of work that includes such richly symbolic projects as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located on the former site of the Third Reich’s Ministry Gardens in the heart of Berlin.

Eisenman rose to prominence in the late 60s as a member of the New York Five. Together with Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, Richard Meier and Michael Graves, Eisenman explored the ideas of Le Corbusier, culminating in a 1969 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Eisenman founded and served as first director of New York’s Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and has held teaching positions at Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard and Yale universities. He was the first John G. Williams Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas in 1997, returning for a second term in 1998. He has written numerous articles and essays and several books, most recently “Code X: The City of Culture of Galicia” (Monacelli Press, 2005), “Eisenman: Inside Out, Selected Writings 1963-1988” (Yale University Press, 2004) and “Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques” (Monacelli Press, 2003).

Cardinals Stadium, Glendale, Arizona

In 1980, after many years of teaching and writing, Eisenman established Eisenman Architects in New York City, allowing him to express his theories in built form. The firm has designed a broad range of projects encompassing urban planning, inventive private residences and controversial structures such as the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts at Ohio State University. Completed in 1989 and hailed as a “deconstructionist tour de force,” the Wexner Center received a 1993 national honor award from the American Institute of Architects but has required extensive retrofitting to protect the art within from direct sunlight. Other award-winning projects include the Koizumi Sangyo Corp. headquarters building in Tokyo and the firm’s social housing at Checkpoint Charlie, along the former Berlin Wall.

Current projects include a 68,000-seat stadium with retractable roof for the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale and a 750,000-square-foot cultural complex in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. His work has been documented in two monographs, “Eisenman Architects” (Images Press, 1995) and “Peter Eisenman” (Electa, 1993).