Bernard Tschumi

Architect Bernard Tschumi
Bernard Tschumi (born January 25, 1944, Lausanne, Switzerland) is an architect, writer and educator,
commonly associated with Deconstructivism.
Born of French and Swiss parentage, he works and lives in New York and Paris.
He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture in 1969.
From 1977 to 1981, after his move from London to New York, Tschumi produced the Manhattan
Transcripts, designs and collages in which he tackles new forms of architectonic notations including
such ideas as form follows fiction.
His Inspiration:
Films formed major source of inspiration but not without socio-economic conditions. With political
ideas comes ideas of organization, and with organization comes architecture, is what Tschumi
believed.
His Philosophy:
Throughout his career as an architect, theorist and academic, Bernard Tschumi's work has reevaluated architecture's role in the practice of personal and political freedom.
Tschumi has argued that there is no fixed relationship between architectural form and the events
that take place within it.
The ethical and political imperatives that inform his work emphasize the establishment of a
proactive architecture, which non-hierarchically engages balances of power through programmatic
and spatial devices.
According to Tschumi's theory, architecture's role is, not to express an extant social structure, but to
function as a tool for questioning that structure and revising it.
This approach unfolded in his architectural practice
1. By exposing the conventionally defined connections between architectural sequences and the
spaces, programs and movement which produce and reiterate these sequences (deconstruction).
2. By inventing new associations between space and the events that take place within it, through
processes of defamiliarization, de-structuring, superimposition and cross programming.
By arguing that there is no space without event, he designs conditions for a reinvention of living,
rather than repeating established aesthetic or symbolic conditions of design .
Through these means, architecture becomes a frame for constructed situations, a notion informed
by the theory, city mappings and urban designs of the Situationist International (context).
By advocating recombination of program, space and cultural narrative, Tschumi asks the user to
critically reinvent themselves as subjects.
His Projects:
The Manhattan Transcripts New York City-Manhattan, plan 198182
Parc de la Villette, international competition 198295
Interface Flon, Lausanne, Master-Plan competition; Rotterdam railway tunnel, the
Netherlands 1988
ZKM - Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, plan 1989
Kyoto Centre and new railway station, Japan, competition upon invitation; Glass Video
Gallery, Groningen, the
Netherlands 1990
Villa in Le Hague, the Netherlands 1991
National Studio for the Contemporary Arts, Tourcoing, France, international competition, first
prize 199197
School of Architecture, Marne-La-Valle, France (under construction); Lerner Student Centre,

Columbia
University, New York (under construction) 1994
Master Plan Renault, Paris, Competition upon invitation; Franklin Furnace Gallery, New York
1995
Exhibition Park in Znith, Rouen, France 2000
Contemporary Art Museum in San Paolo, Brazil 2001
Vacheron Constantin watch factory, Geneva 2001
Museum of African Arts, New York, USA 2001
New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece 2002
Limoges Concert Hall, France 200306
PARC DE LA VILLETTE , Paris.
As part of an international competition, 1982-83, to revitalize the abandoned and undeveloped
land from the French national wholesale meat market and slaughterhouse in Paris, France, Bernard
Tschumi was chosen from over 470 entries (including that of OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and
Jean Novel).
Unlike other entries in the competition, Tschumi did not design the park in a traditional mindset
where landscape and nature are the predominant forces behind the design [i.e. Central Park]. Rather
he envisioned Parc de la Villette as a place of culture where natural and artificial [man-made] are
forced together into a state of constant reconfiguration and discovery.
During the early 1980s, after President Mitterand took office, Paris was undergoing an urban
redevelopment as part of city beautification, as well as making Paris a more tourist influenced city. In
1982-3, the Parc de la Villette competition was organized to redevelop the abandoned land from
the meat market and slaughterhouses that dated back to 1860.
The brief called for the imagining and design of an urban park for the 21st Century across the 135
acre site that was divided by the Canal de lOurcq, which did not dwell or rely upon history as
precedent, but rather looked into the contemporary issues as well as the future.
It was more of an open expanse that was meant to be explored and discovered by those that
visited the site. Tschumi wanted the park to be a space for activity and interaction that would
evoke a sense of freedom within a superimposed organization that would give the visitors points
of reference.
As part of Tschumis overall goral to induce exploration, movement, and interaction, he scattered 10
themed gardens throughout the large expansive site that people would stumble upon either quite
literally or ambiguously. Each themed garden gives the visitors a chance to relax, meditate, and
even play.
Parc de la Villette is designed with three principles of organization which Tschumi classifies as
points, lines, and surfaces.
Points: The 135 acre site is organized spatially through a grid of 35 points, or what Tschumi calls
follies. The series of follies give a dimensional and organizational quality to the park serving as points
of reference. The repetitive nature of each folly, even though each one is unique and different, allow
for the visitors to retain a sense of place through the large park.
Lines: Tschumis lines are essentially the main demarcated movement paths across the park. Unlike
the follies, the paths do not follow any organizational structure; rather they intersect and lead to
various points of interest within the park and the surrounding urban area.
Surfaces: Of the 135 acres, 85 acres are dedicated to the green space, which are categorized as
surfaces. The large open green spaces give Parisians space to interact, play, relax, and gather. The
open space is typically used for large gatherings and even in the summer it becomes a large open air
cinema.
Even though most traditional picturesque parks are unprogrammed and usually mean for user
definition and interpretation, there is usually still some semblance of desired activity.
Tschumis Parc de la Villette is conceptualized as one large user-defined space that is completely
open for interpretation. Each of the deconstructivist follies are centers for informal program.
Although each folly is unique and formally different, there is no designated program just a space
that can harbor activity. Its only until recently that some of the follies have been converted into
restaurants, offices, and information centers for the park.
Parc de la Villette is often criticized as being too large being designed without consideration for the
scale of a human, and argued to be exist within a vacuum as it does not take the history of the site or
the surrounding context into consideration.
However with such a large site and the scale seemingly to be out of touch with the human, but it
becomes an analytical and conceptual approach to the way a human feels within a larger urban
setting.
Parc de la Villette seems to be a critical manifestation of urban life and activity where space, event,
and movement all converge into a larger system.
Back ground:
The first Kyoto Station opened for service by decree of Emperor Meiji on February 5, 1877. It was
replaced by a newer, Renaissance-inspired facility in 1914, which featured a broad square leading from
the station to Shichijo Avenue. Before and during World War II, the square was often used by imperial
motorcades when Emperor Showa traveled between Kyoto and Tokyo: the image of Kyoto Station with its
giant rising Sun flags became a well-known image of the imperial era. This station burned to the ground
in 1950 and was replaced by a more utilitarian concrete facility in 1952.
Kyoto, one of the least modern cities in Japan by virtue of its many cultural heritage sites, was largely
reluctant to accept such an ambitious structure in the mid-1990s: The station's completion began a wave
of new high-rise developments in the city that culminated with the 20-story Kyocera Building. For this,
there are opinions criticizing the station design for taking part in breaking down the traditional cityscape.
Conceptual planning for the competition of Kyoto station:
The competition for the railway station in Kyoto, Japan is characteristic of hybrid megaprojects at the
end of the 20th century.
He began by decomposing the overall program into its main constituent elements and aligning them
with the Kyoto gridone block for the cultural centre, two for the hotel and convention centre, two for
the department store, and two for parking, keeping a nine-meter opening between each block at the
location of the street grid.
Subdivided the blocks into organizational strips 18 meters, 27 meters, and 18 meters wide
respectively, with a three- meter gap between them to allow natural light into the centre of the blocks.
Finally, we staged a combination of image theater, sky lounge, wedding chapel, athletic club,
amusement arcade, gourmet market, and historical museum into a new and composite architectonic
element invented : the programmatic extractor or skyframe. Placed in front of the hotel, convention
center, large store, and the parking lot blocks, the skyframe is the intersection of a horizontal slab (the
250-meter-long, structurally gridded, hollow beam) and seven uneven vertical slabs (the supporting
towers or yaguras, 5.4 meters wide by 15 meters deep and ranging from 62 to 83 meters high).
Besides extremeprogrammatic intensity, the skyframe, with its long cantilevered space and slender
glass towers (seven gates), was to give Kyoto a new heterogeneous sign to be superimposed on the
temple landscape without obliterating it.

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What are some of Bernard Tschumi's major architectural projects?

How did Tschumi conceptualize Parc de la Villette in Paris?

Architect Bernard Tschumi

School of Architecture, Marne-La-Valle, France (under construction); Lerner Student Centre,

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