The main events

摘要

In an interview transcribed for this monograph, Marco de Michelis asks Bernard Tschumi: 'If space as movement, time and flux is architecture, doesn't this mean that the notion of tectonics is definitely dead?' Back comes the answer, brief and blunt: 'Yes, materiality is alive but tectonics are dead.' Later in the interview, Tschumi talks about the systems of notation derived from cinema and dance that he used in his famous theoretical project, The Manhattan Transcripts. 'They provide a good means of developing concepts,' he says. 'Unfortunately, however, you have to translate back into the general architectural code [plans, sections and elevations] so that these concepts can be understood by the building industry.' The implication is clear: architecture, in Tschumi's world, has little to do with building. For him, the physical fabric is unimportant. Events, not forms, are the true stuff of architecture. At Parc de la Villette in Paris, his first major work designed in 1982, the only new structures recognisable as architecture in the conventional sense are the so-called folies. Set out on a square grid that deliberately ignores any existing features of the site, they are tongue-in-cheek parodies of Russian Constructivism, not so much architecture as a mockery of architecture. The park as a whole is conceived as a support structure for events rather than an architectural composition. It is no surprise to discover that Cedric Price's Fun Palace project was an early influence on Tschumi while he was teaching at the AA.