The Landscape of the Mind: A Conversation with Bernard Tschumi

Abstract

Bernard Tschumi, a world-leading architect, author and theorist is in discussion with Gordana Korolija Fontana-Giusti. The conversation that took place in Tschumi ‘s Manhattan office explores the nature and various aspects of contemporary cities in Europe and America focusing on the reasons why they are still different, despite appearances and global tendencies.

The collocutors acknowledge the role of different histories and contexts, and the effects of distinct urban and transient spaces. They highlight the roles of diverse phenomena such as the conceptual art, the writings of radical thinkers, 1960s student protests and other events. They revisit the interplay between architecture and philosophy in the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida among others, focusing on the concepts such as ‘space’, ‘event’, ‘programme’, ‘power’ and ‘deconstruction’. During the course of their dialogue various landscapes of the mind emerge.

Keywords:

• architectural theory
• urban design
• space
• programme
• deconstruction
• conceptual art
• Foucault
• Derrida

Notes

¹ Auster’s New York Trilogy was originally published as three short novels: City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1986). The novellas by J. D. Salinger that fueled these expectations were Franny and Zooey (1961), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction (published together in book form in 1963).

² Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928–2004) and Norman Mailer (1923–2007) are American twentieth-century writers.

³ The visit was in August 2012 and I am grateful to Bernard Tschumi for the time he dedicated to this talk.

⁴ Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (London: St. Martin’s/Academy Editions, 1981). The reference is to Tschumi’s quotation: “To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder”; Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

⁵ On the subject of strolling, see Gordana Korolija Fontana-Giusti, “Urban Strolling as the Measure of Quality,” Architectural Research Quarterly, no. 11 (2007): 255–64.

⁶ This major competition Tschumi won in 1983.

⁷ The works by Michel Foucault that Tschumi alludes to are: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason [1961, abridged French version 1964], trans. R. Howard (London: Routledge, 1989); The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception [1963], trans. A. M. Sheridan-Smith (New York: Pantheon 1973); and Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [1975], trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977).

⁸ Trisha Brown (b. 1936) is a widely acclaimed choreographer who first gained public attention in the 1960s. Tschumi refers to her seminal work Roof Piece (1971) that has subsequently been represented by photographer Babette Mangolte (1973); Barbara Clausen, “Performing Histories: Why the Point Is Not to Make a Point …,” Afterall, no. 23 (2010). Available online: http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.23/performing.historieswhy.the.point.is.not.to.make.a.point.barbara.clausen#share (accessed February 28, 2016).

⁹ Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Zone, 1997).

¹⁰ Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space [1974], trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991).

¹¹ Johnpaul Jones is a University of Oregon alumnus and an architect who in 2014 was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. Available online: http://www.jonesandjones.com/. IAA is the International Academy of Architecture – a non-governmental organization with special status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC), whose members are leading architectural academicians from all over the world.

¹² Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945), a contemporary American conceptual artist who lives in New York and London; Robert Smithson (1938–73), an American artist known for his use of photography, sculpture, and land art; Julian Schnabel (b. 1951), a contemporary American painter and filmmaker; Cedric Price (1934–2003), an unorthodox British architect; original and creative, Price was ahead of his time in promoting new thinking in architectural planning, regeneration and design.

¹³ Fireworks was a project by Tschumi that took place at the Architectural Association, London, in 1974; A Space: A Thousand Words (London: Royal College of Art, 1975).

¹⁴ Marina Abramović (b. 1946) is a Yugoslav-born, New York-based contemporary pioneer performance artist who performs and exhibits worldwide, most recently in London’s Serpentine Gallery (2014) and MoMA, New York (2010).

¹⁵ Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City [1966], trans. Diane Girardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge, MA: Oppositions/MIT Press 1984).

¹⁶ Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [1972], preface by Michel Foucault, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

¹⁷ Foucault was appointed to the Collège de France, Paris, in 1970; he gave public lectures there until his death in 1984.

¹⁸ For more on this, see the Introduction to Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 2–25.

¹⁹ Tschumi here responds to the original questions from the preliminary document sent to him by Fontana-Giusti. Related more detailed discussion had to be omitted in the editing of this article.

²⁰ Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a French socialist utopian thinker who devised a phalanstère (or Phalanstery) – a type of building for a utopian community; Nathaniel Coleman, Utopias and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2005): 137. Tschumi also refers to the Soviet architects who highly valued the role of architecture in a society; Mosei Ginzburg, Style and Epoch [1924], trans. Anatole Senkevitch (Cambridge, MA: Oppositions/MIT Press).

²¹ Tschumi recalls the spring 1968 slogan. The phrase remains a symbol of the events in Paris in the early days of the protests, when the first barricades were erected. The students noticed that the cobblestones were placed on a bed of sand. More than an incentive to build barricades and throw cobblestones at riot police, the slogan sums up the aspirations of May ’68: the desire for freedom. “Under the cobblestones, the beach!” was chanted and written on the walls. Available online: http://inventin.lautre.net/graffiti.html (accessed on February 28, 2016).

²² Tschumi here paraphrases the idea that is found in Michel Foucault’s essay “Space, Knowledge and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin, 1984): 239–56; also Gordana Fontana-Giusti, Foucault for Architects (London: Routledge, 2013): 132–64.

²³ Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, Power.”

²⁴ Bernard Tschumi, “The Environmental Trigger,” in A Continuing Experiment: Learning and Teaching at the AA, ed. James Gowan (London: Architectural Press, 1975).

²⁵ Foucault, Madness and Civilization; Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus.

²⁶ François Mitterrand (1916–96) was a French statesman who served as President of France (1981–95) when Parc de la Villette was commissioned and built.

²⁷ At Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982–98), a “system of dispersed “points” – the red enameled steel folies that support different cultural and leisure activities – is superimposed on a system of lines that emphasizes movement through the park”; Bernard Tschumi Architects. Available online: www.tschumi.com/projects/3/# (accessed March 2015); Bernard Tschumi, “The Architectural Paradox,” Studio International (September/October 1975), revd in idem, Architecture and Disjunction; idem, “The Pleasure of Architecture,” Architectural Design, 3 (March 1977); idem, “Architecture and Transgression,” Oppositions, 7 (Winter 1976).

²⁸ Foucault, ibid.

²⁹ Peter Eisenman (b. 1932) is an American architect considered one of the New York Five. In addition to his modernist and often-called deconstructive designs, he is known for his writing on architecture.

³⁰ Jacques Derrida, “Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture,” AA Folios (London: Architectural Association, 1985).

³¹ Tschumi refers to his contemporaries Rem Koolhaas, the late Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, and Frank Gehry. Tschumi knew Koolhaas and Hadid through their involvement with the Architectural Association, London.

³² Tschumi mentions Russian avant-garde film-makers: Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), Dziga Vertov (1896–1954), and Constructivist architects: Ivan Leonidov (1902–59), Konstantin Melnikov (1890–1974), and Yakov Chernikhov (1889–1951).