Assessment 2: Bernard Tschumi Transcripts
Bernard Tschumi (1994) has stated that an architectures origin of each episode is found within a specific reality and not in an abstract geometric figure (p. 8) what Bernard is saying is that his designs are influenced by reality and not developed from an abstract form. In his book, Events- Cities 3, Concept vs., Context vs. Content, (2004, p. 11), he address the notion that ‘form follows function’ or the program of function can be the generator of form (Gordana 2016 cited from Tschumi 1976). This ideology is evident in the piece Screenplay 1976 (figure 1), whereby the “program of function” is the image of the movement of the characters about to fight and the “form that follows” is the architectural piece created at the end. His work revolves around the aspects of sequence/program of the images, the movements that occur from the sequence and the form that comes of it. After completing this piece, Tschumi concluded with this statement, which describes his style, “There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program.”(Bernard Tschumi Architects, 1976)
Bernard Tschumi’s technique was used as inspiration and can be seen in my work through the example of my train movement piece. The architectural form created was the result of images taken of the train system in used. This method of transport is something that can be documented as a transcript to explore the relation between events and architectural space much like the one in Tschumi’s Screenplay. Within Screenplay the movements of the fight scene is document into a movement diagram dictated by the ‘M’ with longer broken lines. This technique has been used to highlight the point at which two trains pull into a terminal from two separate directions much like the climax in the fight scene of Screenplay 1976. The broken vertical line not only signifies where trains ‘A’ and ‘B’ begin their movement from but also identifies the general direction (M) path of both trains as well. The solid arrowed lines represent the path at which both trains physically move through into and cross paths at the terminal station indicated by the small circles. After the Movement diagram was created the next step was to turn the motion into a 3D diagram to create sold forms. Following this the 3D form was then placed into a grid to represent a living space and extruded downwards to understand how the form would interact in the living space. The Final image created was a concept for a Hospital entry and common space, which are also divided into sections taken from the terminal station in the train images.
Bibliography
Fontana-Giusti , G, 2016, The Landscape of the Mind: A Conversation with Bernard Tschumi,Architecture and Culture, 4:2, 263–280, DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2016.1176432
Screenplays, 1976, film images, Bernard Tschumi Architects, accessed 24th April 2018 <http://www.tschumi.com/projects/50/>.
Tschumi, B, 1994, The Manhattan Transcripts, Academy Editions, London.
Tschumi, B, 2004, Concept, Content and Context, Event-cities 3, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.