Bernard Tschumi

A number of the articles from "Architecture and Disjunction" (another Tschumi book) can be found in this handsome but harder-to-find book from the AA. Given the overlap, "Questions of Space" (also the name of an article from 1975) serves the same purpose as "Architecture and Disjunction," in encapsulating Tschumi's theoretical stance, but it also serves – inadvertently, I'd guess – as evidence of the importance of the Architectural Association under Alvin Boyarsky, who served as director from 1971 to 1990. Under Boyarsky, the AA became, in the words of Beatriz Colomina, "the first truly global school of architecture," and teachers like Rem Koolhaas and Tschumi, who traveled back and forth between the AA and the IAUS, helped to make it such, bringing students to the AA from around the world. Tschumi's articles published here may have been published outside of the AA, but the school was a place for the architect to develop his ideas, and therefore the AA's publication of his articles is a validation of the school's role in nurturing Tschumi's talent.… (mehr)

This book collects 13 articles Tschumi penned between 1975 and 1991, a period of time that started with him teaching at the Architectural Association in London and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York and moved to him winning the competition for the Parc de la Villette in Paris and becoming dean of Columbia GSAPP. The park commission, coming in 1982, can be seen as the hinge between Tschumi's theoretical projects of the 1970s, which established the main ideas of his architecture, and a focus on practice that would find expression in the "Event-Cities" monographs (four of them to date) and other books. The essays collected here are the clearest distillation of the former, of the theoretical basis for, among other things, the function-less "folies" that litter Parc de la Villette. The title of the book indicates that disjunction is on equal footing with architecture, such that Tschumi states, "the disjunction between space and event ... was characteristic of our contemporary condition." Architecture, then, "could also export its findings [via writings and other projects, not just buildings] into the production of culture." Tschumi's belief in the strength of architecture is clear and infectious at times.… (mehr)

The 1970s are often seen as a decade when architects wrote rather than designing buildings, since commissions were few and far between, and conservative, historical styles in buildings were more and more prevalent, meaning avant-garde architects were left to write and teach. Architects like Tschumi experimented through writings, installations and exhibitions, creating projects that were architecture without being strictly buildings. "The Manhattan Transcripts," which Tschumi created from 1977 to 1981 for four gallery shows in London and New York, is one of the most famous, up there with Rem Koolhaas's "Delirious New York." In the project, told primarily through cinematic notations in black, gray and red (the last being the color that defines him to this day), Tschumi establishes the precedence of the event (distinct from function) and its juxtaposition with form, such that a football game can take place in a prison yard, for example. Or to put it in the context of architectural history, form does not follow function.… (mehr)

Although the 1990s were hardly a time of exceptional architecture in New York City, the decade ended on a promising note with Bernard Tschumi's Lerner Hall at Columbia University. Tschumi was Dean at Columbia GSAPP, so the commission seemed like an inevitability, but his design was not quite what one would expect from such a choice. On the city side, facing Broadway, the building is contextual, almost a background building, but on the campus side it makes a contemporary statement in glass. I felt like the whole was too subdued and schizophrenic, and all these years later the same sentiments bubble to the fore, even though I'll admit the building has integrated itself well into the Morningside Heights campus.

This book, by Tschumi and structural engineer Hugh Dutton, describes the campus-side creations: the glass wall and ramps that, respectively, create a visual void akin to the McKim, Mead & White's courtyard-based master plan and span across the gap between the two masonry volumes of the building. Given the contextual nature of much of the project, it's no wonder these pieces are the focus of the AA book. Most illuminating to me, having learned Tschumi's planning rational here and there beforehand, is Dutton's description of the structure and a conversation between the engineer and architect that highlights their working process.… (mehr)