Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism).pdf

8/17/2019 Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism).pdf

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Michele Costanzo interviews Bernard Tschumi about his work and his vision of the changing field of contemporary

design research. How do the younger generation of students receive Tschumi's seminal theoretical works? Is a lack

of time merely the current scapegoat for a more considered conceptual approach? How does Tschumi view the

proliferation of architectural fetishes in the urban landscape? How is his own theoretical landscape shifting?

Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism)

An Interview with Bernard Tschumi

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In the early 1990s, there was a significant schism in

architecture. This was triggered in the recently globalised

world of design by a simultaneous crisis in theoretical

thought and a growing shift towards the formal. As the

preoccupation with form developed through the decade it

concurred with a burgeoning international economy,

which paved the way for the exponential rise of thesignature architect. Elevated by the association with the

gilded world of the global brand, the architectural doyen

inevitably became separated from the spatial concerns of

the city. However, with the current economic slowdown

and an acute growing awareness of wider issues, such as

the imminent shortage of water, food and energy as well

as climate change, the reconsideration of the architect as

merely a marketing instrument or branding package has

become pressing. It is now time to re-evaluate how the

architect might become an operative figure in the world of

aesthetics while being attentive to social and urban

objectives.

The fact that Bernard Tschumi is both a theoretician

and a designer is key to understanding his distinctive

approach to architecture. After completing his degree at

the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich,

Tschumi moved to London in 1970 to teach at the

Architectural Association (AA) under the directorship of

Alvin Boyarsky. In 1976 he moved to the US where he

taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban

Studies, founded by Peter Eisenman, and the University

of Princeton, before taking up a position as a visiting

professor at Cooper Union in New York in the early 1980s.In the late 1970s, Tschumi began to focus on

identifying a different and more direct relationship with

architecture through a series of drawings known as The

Screenplays (1977), in which he used collages of images

from film noir to experiment with the technique of

cinematic editing and montage. This research was

expanded in The Manhattan Transcripts (1981) with its

three simultaneous levels of reality:1

the event

(represented by documentary-style news photography);

movement (re-created by diagrams of movements from

choreography and sport); and space (explored through

photography, and building and site plans). This effectively

placed the architectural experience in close proximity on

three different levels.

In 1983 when Tschumi won the competition to design the 50-

hectare (125-acre) Parc de la Villette in Paris, he entered the world of

professional practice and started to build a series of highly iconic

projects, pervaded by a profound theoretical investigation. His ties with

academia, however, remained strong, and in 1988 he was appointed

Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and

Preservation at Columbia University in New York. His 15-year term atColumbia testifies to his efforts in the field of education, an activity

that provided him with a great deal of stimulation and an important

outlet for his ongoing speculative, intellectual reflections on the

making of architecture.

Between 2001 and 2002, the drawings from The Manhattan

Transcripts were included in a significant retrospective exhibition that

travelled to four US cities. Curated by Jeff Kipnis, ‘Perfect Acts of

Architecture’ displayed the graphic work that Peter Eisenman, Rem

Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne and

Tschumi all produced in a 10-year time period – from 1972 to 1982.2

Paper architecture, Kipnis notes, can have a role in the history of

architecture provided that it is innovative and if its main purpose is the

drawing in itself.3

In other words, it must suggest new research trends

and have an objective value. Work was selected from that particular era

in order to consider these points by highlighting their internal values.

However, although supported by a profound theoretical content, they

all subsume the historical momentum in which they were produced. By

encapsulating the social context and the economic transformations

typical of their time, they stress their affiliation to a period of great

communication changes. This incontrovertibly led to the profusion of

computer-aided design with its almost inexhaustible potential.

In his selection of the six projects for the exhibition, Kipnis captures

a renewed confidence.4

There is a strong sense that the featuredarchitects are poised to pass on something important to ensuing

generations. In a similar way that it was apparent in other cultural and

artistic forms at the time, such as cinema and rock music (think of

2001: A Space Odyssey from Stanley Kubrick, or Electric Lady Land

from Jimi Hendrix).

Transcending History and ‘Concept-Form’

Interviewing Tschumi provided the unique opportunity to ask him

whether he shares Kipnis’ interpretations of the featured projects. Does

he think that The Manhattan Transcripts continue to have a theoretical

value to emerging generations, providing a catalyst for new ideas?

‘While the mode of communication and the general sensibility of

The Manhattan Transcripts clearly belong to the period, the issues they

explore always had the ambition to transcend the historical conditions

Bernard Tschumi, Concert Hall and Exhibition Centre, Rouen, France, 2001

This cultural complex is located at the gateway to Rouen, close to the National Route 138. The concert

hall plays host to various musical and sporting events, and the new exhibition centre accommodates

large conventions and trade fairs. The concept involves two envelopes, with a large ‘in-between’ area

which, animated by the various routes to the hall itself, becomes one of the project’s key spaces.

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of their time. My interest at that time (as well as today)

was to try to contribute to – or potentially alter – the

generally accepted definition of what architecture is.

Hence issues of movement and event, together with their

mode of notation, were first of all an investigation into the

nature of architecture.

‘Had I engaged in the work today, it is likely that the

use of computers would have radically changed

the appearance of the work. Would it have changed the

content itself? Probably up to a point, yet the questioning

would have remained fairly comparable, due to the larger

issues at hand. Would the new generations be able to

draw from them? I have always been suspicious of the

notion of generations. I rather believe in a certain

periodicity of themes, returning to haunt us at certain

moments of history.’

Tschumi’s generation was able to dedicate a great deal

of time to further research and careful consideration of

conceptual design. Is this, however, now a justifiable scapegoat for the

loss of any conceptual approach to design?

‘There have always been periods of conception and periods of

consumption. This is due to economic or social forces way beyond the

control of architects. I would say that, as opposed to the1970s, the

early 21st century is characterised by a faster cycle of production and

consumption. This raises conceptual as well as political issues. I hope

these will soon be investigated.’

Given Tschumi’s association with Deconstruction, I was keen to find

out what his understanding of the ‘formalistic’ is vis-à-vis the current

hedonistic attitude affecting architecture now:

‘What is “form”? The problem is that both media and dictionaries

define it in the most reductive and banalising way: “form as the outline

of an object against a background”. So does the architectural

dictionary of received ideas. I find more pleasure in what I would call

“concept-form”, bringing a high level of abstraction in orchestrating

together a complexity that includes materials, movement and

programmes in the definition of architectural form.

Bernard Tschumi, Blue Residential Tower, Manhattan, New York, 2007

This 17-storey residential and commercial tower in the Lower East Side of Manhattan includes 32 apartments.

The strategy was to create a highly specific architectural statement that responds to the eclecticism of the historic

neighbourhood. Its original, pixellated profile is a new presence in the Manhattan urbanscape.


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on the one hand raise interesting questions about a new form of

architecture, yet on the other signify an impoverishment of

architectural thought and invention. I personally like the challenge of

different geographical or social contexts as a stimulus to new

architectural concepts.’

Given the distractions and difficulties of executing work, do you

think it remains important to establish the ‘theoretical core’ around

which architecture is to rely on in the near future? ‘Probably not one

single synthetic core, but four or five anchor points, around which

issues revolve and occasionally intersect: space, programme, body,

envelopes, global versus local, economy of means, typology versus

topology, concept-form, etc.’

Given this, can the theoretical/conceptual nucleus of a project

safeguard architecture from the market?

‘Architecture does not need to be safeguarded: commerce has also

been a driving force of progress throughout history. Yet it is

commercialism that is problematic – when market forces begin to

control every aspect of architectural thinking.’

‘I suppose it is the same distinction as between

pornography and eroticism. They are both okay, but one is

substantially more complex and more abstract.’

Spectacle?

‘I also would not completely condemn the production

of spectacle. After all, it can also be theorised ... ‘

Context, Place and Theory

Designers cannot avoid including in their work the

changes occurring in their everyday lives, whether it is a

matter of interpretation or mirroring their own inner

thoughts. With this in mind, how can we view the

proliferation of architectural fetishes in the urban

landscape; that is, the uncontrolled diffusion of

architectural objects that are indifferent to the

environment they are part of?

‘This indifference is more problematic. Exporting the

same “shapes” to Bilbao, Los Angeles or Abu Dhabi may

Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, Paris, 1983–98

The aim of this project, which marked the starting point of Tschumi’s

career as a theorist and designer, was to create a new model for the

urban park, in which programme, form and ideology all play integral

roles. The image represents, as the architect asserts, the idea that the

importance of architecture ‘resides in the ability to accelerate society’s

transformation through a careful agency of spaces and events’.

Bernard Tschumi, Lindner Athletic Center,

University of Cincinnati, Ohio, 2006

Representing the epicentre of the university’s athletic and

academic activities, the unusual curvilinear shape of this

building takes advantage of the tight constraints of the site

to create dynamic residual spaces between the existing

stadium, sports fields and the recreation centre.


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Tschumi’s buildings tend to be vital places open to a range of

human activities and exchanges: places committed to the satisfaction

of social needs. However, in the third volume from Event-Cities ,5

the

identification of the ‘Concept, Context, Content’ triad seems to have

removed the role of the user from architecture’s original aim. What has

caused such a change in the understanding of strategic planning?

‘To move from “Space, Event, Movement” to “Concept, Context,

Content” is by no means a negation of the first triad. On the contrary,my goal is to expand the earlier issues by inserting the unavoidable

complexity that reality entails. To bring context and content to event

and movement is a way to confront them with the realities of both

culture and production.’

In recent times, words like ‘event’ and ‘space’ in Tschumi’s work

have been replaced by others like ‘concept’ and ‘context’. This

seemed to start happening with the project for the New Acropolis

Museum. Does this shift in terminology represent a critical

reassessment of the work?

‘The project for the New Acropolis Museum had a profound effect

on my thinking. After we won the competition and for a couple of years,

I was not sure what to make of it. It did not fit neatly into the

argumentation around my earlier projects. So I would rarely talk about

it. And yet I knew the project was important. It took me a while to

realise that this project brutally confronted issues that I had been able

to sidestep before, such as the issue of context. Rather than a

reassessment of the work, it became a means to expand thought about

the overall work, a case where practice feeds theory.’

The last consideration, in which Tschumi asserts that it is possible

in defined circumstances to arrive at a theory through practice,

explains and analyses more thoroughly what he affirmed at the

beginning of his studies and reflections on the project: that ‘concept,

context and content are part of the definition of contemporary urbanculture and therefore of architecture. Theory is a practice, a practice of

concepts. Practice is a theory, a theory of contexts.’64

This interview has been compiled from email correspondence between Michele Costanzo

and Bernard Tschumi from April to June 2008.

Translated from the Italian version into English by Paul David Blackmore

Notes

1. The Manhattan Transcripts , Architectural Design (London), 1981; 2nd edition, Academy

Editions (London), 1994.

2. For an overview of the exhibition see

http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail.asp?id=42.

3. Jeffrey Kipnis, Perfect Acts of Architecture , The Museum of Modern Art (New York) andWexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), 2001.

4. The six featured series of drawings in the exhibition were as follows: Rem Koolhaas and

Elia Zenghelis, Exodus or The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture , 1972; Peter Eisenman,

House VI Transformation Collages , 1976; Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts ,

1976–81; Daniel Libeskind, Micromegas , 1978, and Chamber Works , 1983; Thom Mayne

(Morphosis Studio), Sixth Street House , 1986–87, and Kate Mantilini Restaurant , 1986.

5. Bernard Tschumi, Event-Cities 3 , MIT Press (Cambridge, MA, and London), 2005.

6. Event-Cities , op cit, p 3.

Text © 2009 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 24, 26, 29 © Peter Mauss/Esto; p 27 ©

Sophie Chivet; p 28 © Christian Richters

Bernard Tschumi, New Acropolis Museum, Athens, 2009

The distinctive characteristic of this new museum structure is its

relationship with the ancient Acropolis and celebrated

monuments which sit on a plateau overlooking the city. The

building highlights the individual elements on the site by

focusing on the creation of broad and inspired views from the

different vantage points within the museum.

Bernard Tschumi, School of Architecture, FIU Miami, Florida, 2003

The Florida International School of Architecture is a place in

which social exchange, discussion and debate between students

and teachers are key. Its buildings are thus generators of events and

interactions. According to Tschumi: ‘The project can be described

as the sobriety of two wings defining a space activated by the

exuberance of three colourful generators. The sober wings are

made of precise yet user-friendly precast concrete; the three

generators are, respectively, varied yellow ceramic tiles, varied

red ceramic tiles and nature.’

Bernard Tschumi, Concert Hall, Limoges, France, 2007Like the Rouen Concert Hall and Exhibition Centre, the Limoges

Concert Hall is based on the idea of a double envelope. The inner

envelope, which delineates the perimeter of the performance space,

is clad entirely with wood, while the exterior envelope is composed

of polycarbonate panels. The concept responds to the dramatic site:

a clearing in a large forest at the edge of the city, surrounded by

200-year-old trees.

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Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism).pdf