Bernard Tschumi facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bernard Tschumi
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Bernard Tschumi at GSAPP
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| Born | 25 January 1944 |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | Parc de la Villette, Paris (1983–1998) Acropolis Museum, Athens (2001–2009) Alésia MuséoParc, Burgundy (2001–2013) |
Bernard Tschumi (born 25 January 1944) is a famous architect, writer, and teacher. He is known for his unique ideas about how buildings should be designed. Bernard Tschumi was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is the son of another well-known architect, Jean Tschumi. He has both French and Swiss citizenship and works in New York City and Paris. He studied architecture in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.
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Bernard Tschumi's Career
Bernard Tschumi has taught architecture at many universities in the UK and USA. He taught at Portsmouth University and the Architectural Association in London. In the USA, he taught at Princeton University, the Cooper Union, and Columbia University. He was even the Dean (head) of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia from 1988 to 2003.
His first big project was the Parc de la Villette in Paris, which he won a competition to design in 1983. Other important buildings he designed include the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, and the Rouen Concert Hall in France. Over his long career, he has designed more than sixty buildings and many theoretical projects (ideas for buildings that might not be built).
In 1996, he received the French Grand Prix National d'Architecture, a very important award for architects in France. He started his own architecture firm in Paris in 1983 and later opened Bernard Tschumi Architects (BTA) in New York City in 1988. In 2002, another firm, Bernard Tschumi urbanistes Architectes (BtuA), was opened in Paris.
His Ideas About Architecture
Bernard Tschumi believes that architecture is more than just making pretty buildings. He thinks buildings should make people think and question things. Since the 1970s, he has argued that there isn't a fixed way a building's shape should relate to what happens inside it.
He believes architecture should help people feel more free and question how society is organized. For Tschumi, a building's job isn't to just show how society already works. Instead, it should be a tool to challenge and change those ideas.
Early Ideas (1960s–1970s)
Tschumi's ideas were influenced by the student protests in May 1968 and the Situationist International group. These events made him think about how architecture could be used to explore personal and political freedom. In his classes, he mixed ideas from film and literature with architecture. He wanted to rethink how buildings might accidentally support old ways of thinking.
He was inspired by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who used diagrams to plan his films. Tschumi used similar diagrams to explore the connections between space, events, and movement in buildings. He famously said, "the football player skates across the battlefield." This simple phrase shows his idea that things can be out of place, making you see them in a new way.
His approach had two main parts:
- First, he wanted to show how the usual connections between building parts, spaces, and activities are made.
- Second, he wanted to create new connections between spaces and the events that happen in them. He did this by making things seem unfamiliar, breaking them apart, layering them, or mixing different uses.
His projects like The Screenplays (1977) and The Manhattan Transcripts (1981) showed these ideas. He used techniques from film, like montage (putting different scenes together), to organize how spaces and events would work in a building. He wanted to challenge other architects who only used montage for how a building looked.
Tschumi also wanted to offer new ideas when some architectural theories seemed stuck. For example, some architects like Superstudio created ironic, impossible projects, suggesting that architecture couldn't really change cities or culture anymore. Tschumi wanted to show that architecture could still make a difference.
He even said that architecture, by its very nature, is "useless" compared to just building a shelter. He believed this "uselessness" could be celebrated. He thought that the excitement of senses and the order of pure design could combine to create buildings that truly connect with their surroundings. He also distinguished between "forming knowledge" and "knowledge of form," arguing that architecture can help create new understanding, not just be about how things look.
Later Ideas (1980s–1990s)
Bernard Tschumi's design for the Parc de la Villette in Paris (1982) was his first big public project. It allowed him to put his theories from The Manhattan Transcripts and The Screenplays into practice. He used the park's layout, spaces, and activities to create places for new kinds of social interactions. This challenged the usual ways people expected to use a large city park.
He continued these ideas in many other projects and competitions after 1983. For the 1986 Tokyo National Theater and Opera House project, he used ideas from experimental dance and music to design. This helped him think about space in new ways, rather than just drawing static building plans.
In his 1990 Video Pavilion in Groningen, transparent walls and tilted floors made visitors feel a strong sense of disorientation. This challenged normal ideas of walls, inside/outside, and the horizon. At a larger scale, projects like the 1992 Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, in Tourcoing, France, and the 1995 architecture school at Marne la Vallee, France, used big spaces to challenge normal building uses.
At Le Fresnoy, he added a huge umbrella roof above existing buildings. This created a new "in-between" space with ramps and walkways. Tschumi called this the "in-between," which means it's not about a perfect shape or style. He had explored this idea earlier in the 1989 ZKM Karlsruhe project, where a large open space had smaller areas for activities, creating a network of "in-between" spaces.
He also explored how mixing different activities could change a city. This was seen in his designs for the 1988 Kansai International Airport competition and the 1989 Bibliothèque de France competition. In the Bibliothèque de France design, he proposed a large public running track and sports facility on the roof. This track would cross paths with the library floors, making sure that neither the sports nor the reading could happen without affecting the other.
With these projects, Tschumi challenged traditional ways architects had designed buildings for centuries. He suggested that daily routines could be challenged more effectively by a range of design ideas, from surprising people to subtle changes. He believed that how a building handled extreme or unusual activities could show its ability to organize society.
Modern Ideas (2010s)
Bernard Tschumi's critical ideas about architecture are still central to his work today. He believes that there is no space without an event happening in it. So, he designs buildings that encourage new ways of living, instead of just repeating old styles. This means architecture becomes a "frame for constructed situations," a concept inspired by the Situationist International group.
Tschumi believes that modern society often lacks clear ethical rules and that how buildings are used, what they look like, and their social values are disconnected. His designs encourage many different stories and feelings to appear and organize themselves. Even though he thinks there's no truly meaningful link between a space and the events in it, he agrees with philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault suggested that social structures should be judged by their potential danger to each other, not just by whether they are "good" or "bad."
In this way, Tschumi's work is about how people behave and interact with their surroundings. He wants to expand what people can do and how they see themselves. By mixing different activities, spaces, and cultural stories, Tschumi encourages people to rethink who they are and how they live.
Tschumi is famous for his bold ideas about architecture from the 1960s and 70s. He won the competition to design the New Acropolis Museum. This museum looks calm and focuses on the beautiful light and landscape of Athens, while still being imaginative and sophisticated in its design.
Bernard Tschumi's Buildings
Completed Buildings
- Parc de la Villette, Paris, France (1983–1998)
- Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University, New York City (1999)
- New Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece (2002–2008)
- FIU School of Architecture, Florida International University, Miami, Florida (2003)
- Vacheron Constantin Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland (2004)
- Lindner Athletic Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio (2006)
- Blue Condominium, 105 Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side of New York City (2007)
- Limoges Concert Hall, France (2007)
- Paris Zoo, France (2014)
- Paul & Henri Carnal Hall, Institut Le Rosey, Rolle, Switzerland (2014)
- The Hague Passage, Netherlands (2014)
- Alésia MuséoParc, Dijon, France (2013)
- Le Fresnoy Contemporary Art Center (1997)
Proposed Buildings (Designs Not Yet Built)
- Alésia, Archeo Museum, Dijon, France (2018)
- Elliptic City: International Financial Center of the Americas, Guayacanes, Dominican Republic (completion after 2008)
Bernard Tschumi's Writings
- 1979. Architecturalmanifestals, London, Architectural Association.
- 1985. a Case Vide: la Villette.
- 1987. CinegramFolie: Le Parc de la Villette.
- 1996. Architecture and Disjunctions: Collected Essays 1975–1990, MIT Press, London.
- 1994. Event Cities (Praxis), MIT Press, London.
- 1994. Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, MIT Press
- 1994. The Manhattan Transcripts, London, Academy Editions.
- 1997. in "AP" (Architectural Profile), Monograph, vol.1, n.4, Jan/Feb.
- 1999. A. Guiheux, B. Tschumi, J. Abram, S. Lavin, A. Fleischer, A. Pelissier, D. Rouillard, S. Agacinski, V. Descharrieres, Tschumi Le Fresnoy: Architecture In/Between, Monacelli Press.
- 2003. (with Todd Gannon, Laurie A. Gunzleman, Jeffrey Kipnis Damasus A. Winzen) Bernard Tschumi / Zenith De Rouen. Source Books in Architecture, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.
- 2003. Universe, New York.
- 2004. Veronique Descharrieres, Luca Merlini, Bernard Tschumi Architects: Virtuael, Actar.
- 2005. Event-Cities 3 : Concept vs. Context vs. Content, MIT Press.
- 2006. عظيمة السبب, Monacelli Press.
See also
In Spanish: Bernard Tschumi para niños
