Palladio Virtuel presents a groundbreaking new analysis of the work of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio by renowned New York architect Peter Eisenman. Displayed at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery as twenty original models and over one-hundred drawings, the work begins to reveal a series of previously hidden indeterminate (or virtual) readings of Palladio's work, which, rather than being clearly reducible to a synthetic view, produce a new, more complex Palladio. Here, traditional architectural components (the portico, the circulation, and centrally figured spaces) offer rich variety. The resulting overlays of these components, in contrast to ideas of harmonic proportions, introduce a complexity beyond the literal presence of typical building elements. This work opens up Palladio, and, in a sense, all of the classical world, to a fresh, more contemporary interpretation, giving classical precedents a new relevance in present-day thought. A related monograph by Yale University Press is also being published.

Peter Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect and educator. The principal of Eisenman Architects, he has designed large-scale housing and urban design projects, innovative facilities for educational institutions, and a series of inventive private houses. His current projects include the six-building City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and a large condominium housing block in Milan, Italy. Eisenman has taught at Cambridge University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Ohio State University, and the Cooper Union. His many books include Eisenman: Inside Out, Selected Writings 1963–1988; Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004; Tracing Eisenman; and Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. From 1967 to 1982, he was the director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, which he founded.

Matt Roman has coordinated all phases of the exhibition and forthcoming monograph Palladio Virtuel and has contributed extensively to the research and curation of Modernist Media: Peter Eisenman Collection at Yale (Beinecke Library, Fall 2012). As an architect and research assistant with Eisenman Architects in New York, Roman coteaches graduate studios and seminars at the Yale School of Architecture, from which he received his MArch in 2009. Roman graduated summa cum laude in architecture from Princeton University in 2003, and received an MPhil in architecture and the moving image from Cambridge University in 2004. He is the coeditor of The Real Perspecta 42 (MIT Press, 2010).

Brian Butterfield has served as the director of exhibitions at the Yale School of Architecture since 2011. Shows organized and/or designed include Ceci n'est pas une reverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, and Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture. From 2004 to 2008, Butterfield worked for the award-winning office of Della Valle Bernheimer Architects in Brooklyn, New York. Butterfield currently teaches a course on furniture design and fabrication at the Yale School of Architecture, from which he received his MArch in 2011. He graduated summa cum laude in architecture (with a minor in furniture design) from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004.

At the Yale School of Architecture we recognize our obligation to the historic moment in which we study, teach, and build—but we also recognize that this moment, however unique, is neither singular, unchanging, nor disconnected from the past or the future. Architecture is the most palpable of all the arts and the most public, as it concerns the art of making and preserving fixed places, which serve as the settings for the interaction of people and ideas over time. Seeking to highlight architecture's continually evolving relationship to the wider world it serves, the YSOA Gallery is dedicated to advancing the understanding of architecture in the context of history and ideas—as well as contemporary practice—for both the academic community and the greater public. The Department of Architecture at Yale was established in the School of the Fine Arts in 1916 and designated its own separate professional school in 1972.