PEOPLE IN THE KNOW: Bernard Tschumi: I Am No Deconstructivist

Deconstructivist architecture evokes very different responses and sparks heated debates both in artistic circles and among ordinary observers in the streets of Berlin, London, Beijing, Los Angeles or Cincinnati, the cities that have witnessed the arrival of daring deconstructivist projects over recent years.

The most prominent representatives of the deconstructivist design are a group of seven architects whose projects were exhibited at the landmark Deconstructivist Architecture Show held by the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1988.

Taking part in the event were Wolf Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky of Coop Himmelblau, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and Bernard Tschumi. The influence of the ideas presented at the show is still felt today, but their interpretations have undergone numerous changes.

All the above-mentioned architects continue to work actively across the globe without giving up their teaching and theoretical work, taking an active part in debates on the issue.

Only two years ago Bernard Tschumi left the post of dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. During his 15-year spell as dean the School became one of the world’s most progressive educational institutions. He has now dedicated himself to the running of two offices of Bernard Tschumi Architects, in Paris and New York.

Those two architectural bureaus have designed concert halls, universities, stadiums and museums in France, Spain and the United States. Tschumi was the author of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, a 59,000-square-meter residential estate in Beijing and a recently commissioned watch-manufacturing facility of the celebrated Swiss brand Vacheron Constantin in Geneva.

Tschumi rose to prominence after he designed Le Parc de la Villette in Paris. The architect won a competition for the design of Paris’ largest park in 1982. The $300 million project for the development of the 50-hectare park took 15 years to implement. Other architects contributed to the project designing installations situated in the park, such as the Cit? des Sciences, Cit? de la Musique, Grande Halle and a rock concert hall, Le Z?nith.

Parc de la Villette was developed as a 21st century urban park, and along with the Louvre Pyramid, Grande Arche de la D?fense, and the New Library (Biblioth?que nationale de France), became one of the grand Paris projects viewed as the legacy of President Francois Mitterrand.

These days, Tschumi is based in New York. His only project implemented here so far is the Alfred Lerner Hall at Columbia University.

The design of the hall is conditioned by rigid zoning requirements. The facades looking out on to Broadway and inside the campus blend in with the window panes, decorations and even colors in strict compliance with the university general plan adopted in the 19th century.

It is hardly surprising that the Lerner Hall is not unlike an unusual three-layer pie tumbling to one side. Its ‘edges’ are of classic design while the centerpiece – the spacious Glass Court – is a result of a daring experiment. The development came under a hail of criticism, the design of its edges being attacked for its conservatism and contextualism, while the centerpiece was criticized for its unrestrained radicalism.

Many principles of Tschumi’s architecture used by the artist when designing Parc de la Villette in the early 1980s and the Lerner Hall in the late 1990s were first proclaimed at the above-mentioned Deconstructivist Architecture Show. His projects were presented against a background of the works of the Russian Constructivist architects of the early 20th century – the precursors of the new current that gave birth to numerous masterpieces.

-What are the differences and similarities in style of constructivist and deconstructivist architects?

The similarity lies in the interest in motion-related elements, i.e. staircases, ramps, towers, cranes, elevators, etc. Architecture is static and dynamic at the same time while the interest in new technologies leads to new stylistics. The difference is in the withdrawal from the use of the main geometrical forms, such as spheres, cylinders, cubes, cones, and moving towards vaguer, more flexible shapes. Later we began to use computer technologies and discovered new principles of shaping which led to the emergence of new elements in style.

-Computer technology offers engineering solutions. How can the computer help improve the quality of design?

Well, take, for instance, the landmark dome over the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence. Its construction was a great engineering challenge. Outstanding intuition, special knowledge of mathematics and geometry were required of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.

Nowadays nobody would calculate a project like that manually, only with the help of a computer. Though, to solve such tasks it is used almost like a human brain. We are using computers to research spatial configurations that are very difficult to construct in the human brain.

-Who, in your opinion, was the first to introduce deconstructivist ideas to architecture?

It is hard for me to name just one person. Frank Gehry was the first who masterfully compiled spectacular collages using traditional construction materials and created a complicated, flexible geometry using computer software.

Peter Eisenman delved into the study of form shaping, thus triggering theoretical disputes and the borrowing of ideas from other disciplines. Coop Himmelblau intuitively began testing new properties of materials, back in the early 1970s. Rem Koolhaas came under the weighty influence of the Russian architect visionary Ivan Leonidov and the Russian constructivists.

Daniel Libeskind studied symbolism in architecture while Zaha Hadid always had a phenomenal intuition in terms of pure form. As for my projects, they revealed an interest in cinema theory, philosophy and new social programs. I have mentioned all those who pioneered the research of certain problems. Still, we have always differed greatly, and we still do.

-How close did you knew each other then?

We were well acquainted.

-Did any of you influence the others?

I don’t think so. It was a time of experimenting for all of us.

-Did you discuss your projects?

We did not meet but we knew each other’s work very well. In the 1970s Prix, Koolhaas, Libeskind, Hadid and I lectured at the Architectural Association in London. Then, in the late 1970s, I taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, along with Peter Eisenman and Koolhaas. We maintained close ties but none of us was a leader.

-How was it then that all those architects almost simultaneously developed deconstruction stylistics in different cities?

I have to ask you not to call it that! It is modern stylistics. Neither in the past nor today has any of us regarded our architecture as deconstruction. To be quite frank, we never liked the coinage. We never sought to become just another movement, because movements come and go, emerge and die out. We sought to live on in the present.

-You insist that deconstructivism has never evolved into a new trend in architecture. Why is that so?

It was never conceived as a movement, in the first place. That was just a name of an exhibition invented by museum curators. We tried to steer clear of the fate of post-modernism that was intentionally popularized as a movement.

-You lived and worked in Paris in 1968, at the height of the student riots. Did those events influence you as an architect?

Those times witnessed a radical reevaluation of all the social institutions, architecture included. Many of my peers were critical of the architecture of those times and everything it stood for. I decided to probe the definition of architecture as such, and its boundarie – in other words, to find architecture beyond all the predictable ideas and clich?s. All of my projects are based on that, everything begins with criticism and the search for new meanings.

-In the 1970s you taught at the London Architectural Association, an outpost of architectural avant-garde at the time. Why did you move to New York?

In those days, I took a serious interest in art while New York was, undoubtedly, the world center of the arts in the 1970s. Many of my friends – avant-garde artists – lived there. The architects here, however, were predominantly conservative. I was the first architect in New York to exhibit my projects at an art gallery. That time was also important because it was then that I began my first theoretical work, The Manhattan Transcripts.

-The design of the Lerner Hall center is highly controversial, largely, due to reasons beyond your control. But, when designing the glazed atrium – the Glass Court – you were given a free hand. It is literally interlaced with expressive ramps of glass and steel. Yet, some students claim the building is not functional. What was your response to the criticism?

It had never been conceived as a functional one, in the first place. Take a look at the wide steps of the library building on the other side of the campus. They are hardly functional, but they have become a gathering spot for students, in fact, the main square of the campus.

The Lerner Hall and its ramps is a place where you can view everything. It is a very large vertically oriented edifice. I sought to find a certain element unifying the vertical community. I think the idea of the Glass Court was highly productive.

Architecture is not knowledge of form but, on the contrary, a form of knowledge. We should always ask ourselves what architecture is all about. It is not something predetermined and unambiguous. Architects often think that space is defined by walls, but the term “to define” means “to find a definition and meaning.”

-Once you said that you do not trust architecture that tries to convey a message. How, then, would you explain your famous idea that “form follows fiction”?

“Form follows fiction” is a pun, an antithesis to a well-known formula by U.S. architect Louis Sullivan, “form follows function”. I used the paradoxical word combination to emphasize the difference between function and fiction. It is about how the building is used, for I have never viewed the form as its main component. The main thing is what architecture is capable of doing.

Instead of beginning a project with an analysis of specific requirements, say, requirements as to the size of the premises, I am looking for an idea in literature or cinema. Here is an example: until the 18th century there was no such thing as a corridor. Then it was invented to make life more comfortable.

Note, that was not an architectural idea, but cultural and social. That is why I opt for questions that may alter basic habits. “Form follows fiction” is, rather, a proposal to look at things that are more important than function. In my opinion, it is history, culture, traditions.

-What is the subject of your theoretical studies today?

It is about the triangulation of architectural concept, context and content. They may be in unison, or they may contradict one another, but sometimes also cancel each other out. The concept – is because I believe that architecture should express ideas that are far more important than forms. The context is because architecture is always situated somewhere. I mean political, economic, cultural, urban settings, but not the visual context, that is why I don’t like contextualism. And finally, there is the content, because the building is always subordinated to events taking place inside. Those three ideas do not necessarily intersect in a predictable manner and this is also part of my studies.

-You once said that the essence of architecture lies not in some ideas of functionality but simply in life and death.

Yes, I really think that life and death are the key elements of architecture. Architecture has a dimension of pleasure and risk which are rarely discussed. I always engage in polemics that go beyond the profession because everything in our life is in touch with architecture, be it today or thousands of years ago.

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Bernard Tschumi was born in 1944, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied architecture at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Zurich. He then worked in Paris, and lectured at the Architectural Association in London. In the late 1970s he moved to New York where he taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and later at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, at Princeton and Yale universities.

Tschumi rose to prominence after he published his theoretical work, The Manhattan Transcripts, penned from 1976 to 1981. The work focuses on relations between space, events and movements – the key components of architectural perception.

Bernard Tschumi’s projects have won numerous awards, among them the Legion d'Honneur and the Grand Prix National d'Architecture.

The Bernard Tschumi Architects bureau was established in Paris in 1982 to design Parc de la Villette. In 1988 the head office moved to New York. Over the past few years the value of the buildings designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects neared $200 million.

Their projects include, Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing (France 1988), the first stage of the School of Architecture Marne-la-Vallee, the Lerner Hall (the U.S. 1999), a transportation hub in Lausanne (Switzerland 2001), the Rouen concert hall (France 2000), a manufacturing facility of the Swiss brand Vacheron Constantin in Geneva (2003), and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. The bureau receives the majority of its orders through architectural competitions.