Tschumi, Bernard
Tschumi, Bernard (1944– ). Swiss-born American architect. His best-known work is the Parc de la Villette, Paris (planned from 1982), in which hard landscape parodies something of the primitive character of Ledoux's Barrière near by, and where three ordering systems (lines, points, and surfaces) are superimposed: the lines are sets of axes; the points are established by broken grids; and the surfaces are collages of stereometrically pure figures (circle, square, and triangle) creating red-painted toy-like follies set at intersections of the grids. The meaning, if any, of these follies is indecipherable, and the sense of a gag having gone flat adds to the anaesthetized uneasiness of the place. Tschumi was one of seven architects identified as involved in Deconstructivism in the New York Exhibition of 1988. His somewhat agitated Lerner Center, Columbia University, cannot be said to harmonize with its surroundings, and his proposals for the Acropolis Museum, Athens, have not found universal favour. His publications include Architectural Manifestoes (1979), Architectural Writings (1988); Manhattan Transcripts (1981), and Questions of Space (1990), all opaque.
Bibliography
Abram et al. (1999);
Anno Domini, lx/9–10 (1990), 32–49;
Wi. Curtis (1996);
Futagawa (ed.) (1997a);
Johnson & and Wigley (1988);
S. Richardson (1989);
Salingaros et al. (2004);
Tschumi (1979, 1990, 1994, 1994a, 1994b, 2000);
van Vynckt (ed.) (1993)
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Tschumi, Bernard