La rhtorique visuelle du livre architectural

spring semester 2013

prof Tim Benton

Event and Movement in Architecture

The Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects

Selena Savic, PhD Candidate, SINLAB

Event and Movement in Architecture

The Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects1

I would like to begin this text with a statement: I do not understand Manhattan
Transcripts. Their systematic structure is intriguing; the photographs reproduction
quality gives them a mysterious feel, while the structural manipulation of
architectural volumes brings a taste of playfulness. The drawings and photographs
intertwined here in a research tool are an inspiring material for building an
architectural theory, but they can not be interpreted in any singular way. Manhattan
Transcripts are a response to its contemporary architectural establishment
discourse. They are not there to be understood in the first place.

Context and Procedure

Bernard Tschumi came to New York in 1976 to teach at the Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies. Between 1977 and 1981 he developed a series of
paper spaces (Bernard Tschumi Architects, 2010) inspired by the Manhattan urban
tissue. The results of this endeavour were exhibited at four consecutive exhibitions,
thus forming the 4 parts of The Manhattan Transcripts.
The character of this work follows the tradition of Architectural Association in
London, where Tschumi was just coming from. The design of buildings was long
gone from the avant-guard discourse at this institution, focusing instead on the
process of design and a critical reflection of architectural theory and practice.
Aware

and

discontent/resentful

by

the

impossibility

of

designing

perfect

architecture, they withdrew themselves to the position of active observers. The

rebellious tone of the 1968 events is mirrored here in attempts to develop an
analogue to the contemporary production in art and literature. The idealistic
practice of non-building had for a consequence the blossoming of research
oriented experimental projects.
In this context, Tschumi conceives his practice around two distinctive premisses:
reflection on architecture cannot be understood and it cannot lead to buildings.
Architecture had to negate what society expects from it. Buildings should be built
only for pleasure and for the same pleasure destroyed (Tschumi, 1977). His strategy
1 The research presented here is done based on the Manhattan Transcripts publication
published on the occasion of the exhibition of Bernard Tschumi's Manhattan Transcripts 4
at the Max Protetch Gallery in New York, 1981. (Tschumi, 1981)

is in trying not to design at all, while arguing against the predominantly

functionalist discourse of modernism and the overly stylistic concerns discussed by
his contemporaries. His focus on activities that are unnecessary (luxury, wars,
games, art, erotics) is part of his attempt to overcome the paradox of architecture
(identified with the dualism of the pyramid and the labyrinth (Hollier, 1989)). The
pyramid and the labyrinth represent the two aspects of space in Tschumis dualist
view of architecture: the conceived and the perceived space (Martin, 1990). The
paradox is that architecture is at the same time both pyramid and labyrinth.
Furthermore, it always misses something - either reality or concept, due to "the
impossibility of both questioning the nature of space and experiencing a spatial
praxis at the same time" (Tschumi, 1975). The only way to address this paradox is to
reach the point where the subjective experience of space becomes its' very concept.
A strong influence of Structuralism on architectural debate can be observed here.
Moving the borders of architectural theory after 1968, Tschumi was inspired by
Roland Barthes's writings on language, linguistic analysis and literature. He
attempts to conduct a reading of the city following Barthes's procedures, relaying
on Kristevas notion of intertextuality. If the meaning of a text is produced by the
reader, in relation to the all other texts invoked in the reading process, the reading
of the city is giving the meaning to city blocks, streets, events, and other city
elements depending on the complex network of ones experiences of the city.
Tschumis use of the concept of intertextuality is extreme and provocative,
sometimes leading to reappropriation of full paragraphs from other texts while
replacing their topic with architecture. This is obvious in titles of his early texts like
"The Pleasure of Architecture" (Barthes: "The Pleasure of Text") and "Architecture
and its Double" (Artaud: "Theatre and its Double"). He simply substitutes the word
text, theatre or science with architecture (Martin, 1990).
Tschumi is strongly against any sort of disciplinary autonomy. Architecture for him
is a means of communication, defined by the movement as well as by the walls.
Architecture can thus be compared to language, a discourse of events and spaces;
and its experience to reading. Because architecture is an intertextual experience,
semantic analysis can be applied to it. This is what he does with city blocks, building
shapes, volumes, questioning their constituting parts and their inter-relationships.
He is looking for the way to conceptualize the subjective experience of space.
The same year when Koolhaas published his "Delirious New York" (a somewhat
different approach to research with a similarly strong propagandistic element and
focus on the process) Tschumi exhibited his first Architectural Manifestos, part of
which were Manhattan Transcript 1 and 2.
The notions of event and movement are essential for this work. In his later writings

he claimed that space is created by an event taking place within it (Tschumi, 1983).
How can movement carve space? How can space carve movement, in turn?

Transcribing the city

With Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumi tries out for the first time his philosophy of
event and movement in architecture, a topic he will develop further throughout his
writings and practice. Seeking to reveal an internal logic underlying buildings and
cities, he conducts playful drawing exercises, while at the same time working on the
logic of a structure to represent and interpret space.
The juxtaposition of carefully selected visual material is supposed to offer an
interpretation of architecture and experience of the city. Photographs and drawings
form a relation that should offer a particular understanding of the relationship
between architecture and event. If we take for example a sample from the MT1
(Figure 1), it is not difficult to make the connection:

Figure 1: a scene from Manhattan Transcripts 1: The Park

On the left we have a photograph of a persons legs, the person presumably running.
The middle square is a segment of the park map - an objective representation of
architecture in its most conventional view from above. To the right, we find a
scheme of movement (straight arrow with a solid line) and a dashed line describing
architecture. This line presumably represents the experience of architecture, as
only a part of its actual shape is found here. Thus it should be a part of architectural
fact that determines or affects the movement. Because MT1 is dedicated to an
accident of murder and the following attempt of escape (running), we could argue
that what we see on photographs is what the person experiencing this event was
seeing while making the movement described by the arrow, in the space
represented in the middle square of each take. But this is far too simple.

Figure 2: Manhattan Transcripts 2: The Street. Tschumi's drawing overlaid on top of the
actual map of the 42nd street in Manhattan

The second transcript is a mapping of the reading onto the plan of the Manhattan
island's 42nd Street (Figure 2). The fact that it matches the proportions of real space
emphasizes the coexistence of different levels of reality. This superimposition of the
real map with fragments of buildings and photographs offers a multidimensional
reading of space. The use of film stills on top of each block diagram suggest a
character or possibility of an event.
In the fourth transcript Tschumi treats the inside of city blocks with skaters,
dancers, marching soldiers, football players. He measures the space against these
unlikely activities. While they operate as an indicator of potential the space has to
satisfy them, they also serve as an enrichment to be injected into the city tissue
(Figure 3).

Figure 3: Manhattan Transcript 4: Panel 11/15

The role of the film roll

Architects like Koolhaas and Tschumi are serious about fashion; they consider it
their task to set trends. Thus, as a consequence of the contemporary interest in the
possible parallel between the two disciplines - the spatiality of film and the
dynamics of architecture - the Transcripts operate as a film sequence. The relation
between Manhattan Transcripts and film is multi-threaded, at the same time formal
and ideological.
Tschumi insists on a sequence of frames, rather than a narrative. In his introduction
to the Manhattan Transcripts publication, he states that the temporality of the
Transcripts suggests the analogy of film. It is not only the temporality that is at
work here; the film analogy is reflected in the use of framed sequences, as well as
the organisation of the material in timelines (in the case of MT2 and MT4) and
takes (in the case of MT1). The metaphor is finally reinforced in the MT4 with the
stylised perforated tape drawn around the imagined architectural frames of the
object timeline.
The film metaphor is at the same time an important support for the theory of space
created by event.

Notation experiments
The work on Manhattan Transcripts was a notation experiment, with the intention to
arrive at new tools and methods of representation. Needing to go beyond methods
usually used by architects (plans, sections, elevations, etc) Tschumi complements
his work with photographs, schemes and collages (combining axonometric
projections, drawings, cut out photographs). He develops the formula objectmovement-event and uses it consistently throughout MT1, MT2 and MT4 (Figure 4).
Usually represented with a photograph, the event appears in the first of three
squares in the MT1, at the top line of the MT2 and in the bottom track of the MT4.
The object is always in the middle between event and movement. Movement is often
represented with a dashed line and an arrow. This simple tool is yet another
graphical solution to represent a dynamic component of architecture.

Figure 4: Notation experiment: A comparative arrangement of Manhattan Transcript

elements

Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects

Architectural Manifestos I were first developed for an exhibition at Artists Space in
New York in 1978. The exhibition featured three rooms of different material concept
expressions Tschumi developed over the years. First room: Space of Manifestos. A
waiting room with poster advertisements for architecture. The first two Manhattan
Transcripts were presented in one of three rooms, as drawings on walls. They were
exhibited in Architectural Association the following year at the Architectural
Manifestos II show. The first transcript, "The Park" tells the story of an event in the
park, a murder. Photographs from the news show fragments of a story Tschumi
included at the beginning. Park views, the accident of murder, an attempt to escape,

and the arrest. Next to the photographs we have architectural plans and schemes,
presumably linked to the images. The park, a space supposedly free from
architecture is a metaphor for its murder, as suggested in the press release for this
show.
MT1 is organised in takes, each take showing a scene from the event (Figure 1). It
starts with a rather objective juxtaposition of the event, object and movement,
referencing real space like the street names (Figure 5). As the scenes progress, we
notice that the objectiveness of the middle square changes, as it starts exchanging
elements with the square to the right. Musical scores, posters, map labels appear,
then the two rightmost images begin to overlap, with elements of one appearing on
the other, (Figure 6), ending up with a white square. (Figure 3)

Figure 5: Manhattan Transcript 1: The

Park. First 'take'. Movement map overlaid
on top of the actual map.

Figure 6: Manhattan Transcript 1: The Park. The gradual

deconstruction of 'object' and 'movement'

Figure 7: Manhattan Transcript 1: The Park. The last 'take'.

Stylised pattern of the facade and ground plan. Movement
frame is blank.

MT2 is a proof of concept. The most consistent sequencing of the city as an event is
applied here, under the title "The Street" or "Border Crossing". It is an analysis of
the changing experience of walking from the East Side UN building to the West side
of the New Yorks 42nd street. The shift from the deserted quays of the Hudson
River to the respectable edges of the UN building complex is characterised by movie
stills he uses, showing the prison, dark alley, touching, making love, and full
darkness frames, finishing with stills of mysterious women and a curtain. The
diversity here is a metaphor for real border crossing, the walk offering enough
diversity to contain the city. In his transcription process this time, Tschumi takes a
sample of each block and shows its event, its section and its plan. While the plan
includes a path with demarcated movement (dashed line), the most interesting part
is the middle drawing. It is a combination of the actual building section with
imaginary elements overlapping and dissolving, exploding the view.
A central vertical axes starts to shape here (Figure 8), an element which will
reappear in the MT3 in a more stylised form (Figure 9). Whether accidental or not,
this appearance confirms the playful character of the work, parts of it being a kind
of a volumetric exercise. If we interpret the vertical line motive in MT2 as
intentional, then we can think of the MT3 as a transcription of reality into an
imaginary architectural world Tschumi creates for his own pleasure.
MT3 titled "The Tower" was exhibited at the MoMA PS1 gallery in New York in
1980. It is a sequence of architectural exercises through five iterations of volumetric
experiments. Four abstract blocks are followed by a representation of a possible city
block, including openings and shades (Figure 10). At the end, four episodes of "The
Fall" are featured, in a slightly different style. A rotating silhouette of a person in
fall is shown on the last vertical arrangement only. This movement of the silhouette
through 5 vertical frames is translated into a shaping line for the juxtaposed play of
volumes. The connecting vertical line appears red in some publications, (this
research is based on the publication printed for the occasion of the fourth
Manhattan Transcripts exhibition at Max Protetch Gallery in which the vertical line
appears without any colour).
The MT3 has a somewhat different structure and style from the other three.
Because the formula object+movement+event is so consistent throughout the
transcripts, the structure of MT3 is a surprise. While its title "The Tower" suggests
an experience of architecture, floors of a building; in the description Tschumi talks
about the fall. A succession of volumetric exercises of form is followed by four pages
of vertical development. The fall here is described by a silhouette of a body falling.
The titles of the five frames suggest a hierarchy of spaces one experiences in this
fall. From home through office, hotel and asylum, the person falling ends up in
prison. Does this suggest loosing of freedom, a fall in liberty?

Figure 8: Manhattan Transcript 2: The Street (Border Crossing). Vertical line motive in the
'heart' of city blocks

Figure
9:
Manhattan
Transcript 3: The Tower.
Vertical line connecting
frames and buildings.

Figure 10: Manhattan Transcript

3: The Tower.

Figure 11: Manhattan Transcript 4:

The Block. The film metaphor. Frames
resemble a film roll, and at the same
time look like arches of buildings.

The fourth and the last transcript titled The Block demonstrates Tschumis
experimental language in its most developed form. The architecture-film analogy is
the strongest here too. On the 'object timeline', Tschumi draws a frame around each
square. This frame resembles a film roll, while at the same time representing an
arched building complex, with doors at the bottom and windows all around (Figure
11). He reinforces the analogy with the movement timeline appearing as animation
frames. The focus on unnecessary activities is at its peak here: tightrope walking,
ice-skating, dancing, marching and playing football are all rather unlikely activities
to take place within an urban Manhattan block. Tschumi however chooses them to
play the deconstructive role in the dissection of the architectural structure.
Architecture itself is on the move here, with playful volumes curving and
intersecting, carving out the movement.

The Visual Front

Square is the big brother of the right angle, containing four of them at equal
distances. Its use in architecture is unsurprisingly essential. Square almost stands
for an equal of normality. Tschumi decided to give it another role. He acknowledges
the square as healthy, conformist and predictable, regular and comforting, correct.
He then uses the square as a unit of event, a frame of experience, subverting this
highly architectural symbol for the purpose of his theory.
Square is the building block of all MT phrases, whether coming in successive
formations of three (MT1) or as part of a timeline (MT2 and MT4). Even in the fully
deconstructed pages that end MT4, the underlying square matrix is indicated with
little crosses. It is only the first part of MT3 that escapes this normalizing tool.
In contrast to the healthy square are dark, black and white photographs used to
describe the event in architecture. Consistently abstract details of unnecessary
activities (as discussed above, Tschumi emphasizes the subjectivity of experience
through these fragments that are not necessarily experienced by everyone), they
serve as a layer of reality, of lived space in this visual experiment. Their poor quality
is partly a result of the source quality and the technique used for their manipulation
(gelatin silver photographs). However it is also an agent of pluralism, opening the
territory for multiple interpretations of the work.
The visual language Tschumi developed here is rich in linear drawings, showing
plans and elevations of architectural spaces and schemes of movement. Drawings
are for Tshumi both; a key means and a limitation of architectural inquiries.

Eager to represent the dynamic component of architecture, he uses notations of

movement with dashed lines and arrows indicating a direction (Figure 12); he also
uses dotted line to represent the underlying structures (Figure 13).

Figure 12: Manhattan Transcript 2: The Street (Border Crossing). Dotted line clearly
indicates a path of movement through the city blocks.

Figure 13: Manhattan Transcript 3: The Tower. Square matrix

indicated with the dotted line. Apart from this appearance,
square is not featured of the first 5 panels of MT3.

MT1 and MT2 consist mostly of plans and elevations drawings, which are replaced
by axonometric projections in MT3 and MT4. The use of axonometrics in his
drawings is an attempt to offer a multidimensional view of space. The play of
intersecting volumes is at the same time dynamic and informative.
The title of Tschumis recently published a book Red is Not a Color (Tschumi,
2012) suggests another topic on his aesthetic choices. If red is not a colour than
what is it? In an interview given to Samuel Medina for the Architizer blog, he

explains his use of colour to emphasize connections, to mark out buildings or

concepts that belong to each other (Medina, 2012). First applied with the colour red
in the competition entry for Parc de la Villette (1982), this approach is not focusing
on a particular colour choice (although Tschumi likes to appear wearing a red scarf),
but on demonstrating the relation between elements of an architectural drawing.
The colour thus has a diagrammatic function, it demarcates a thread of architectural
thought. The colour red materialised in his first architectural experiment with folies
that were indeed painted red, as well as the Fresnoy Art Centre, whose
diagrammatic colour is blue. In Manhattan Transcripts red has the same
diagrammatic role, connecting pieces of volumes or contrasting black shapes.
Even though it is popular today to distance oneself from the contested concept of
deconstructionism, deconstruction in architectural discourse and practice of the
late 70s and 80s was a form of activism, a way to protest by questioning and
recomposing the elements of (architectural) establishment. In his writings prior to
Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumi talked about putting architecture into crisis. He did
this by applying a semantic analysis to the city elements and urban experience.
In his work on MTs, he took city elements apart and overlaid them, arriving at a
collage of the real and the imaginary. This method becomes the most obvious in the
fourth transcript, where the initial multi-track structure (a reference to film editing
technology) gradually transforms in a collage manner and finally explodes in bits
and pieces of architecture and people.

Conclusions

The importance of Manhattan Transcripts lies on bridging the gap between

architectural practice (building and representing buildings) and thinking about
architecture, its meaning to the person experiencing it and its role in the society.
They are a particular kind of gallery architecture, one that calls for attention of not
only architectural, yet very particular audience. The cultural milieu of the Artists
Space in New York (where the first Architectural Manifestos were exhibited)
allowed the architectural discourse to join a broader cultural polemics.
The work is partly dedicated to process, this process having no other result for a
goal, but the process itself. The objective here is not to arrive at a building. It is
rather a stylistic exercise. Tschumi is searching for an ideal architectural process, a
process of design that is determined purely by design decisions. Any attempt at
building would compromise his architecture.

Thus the way the transcripts are is closest to an aesthetic exercise, a play with
shapes and volumes, recombining and changing meaning through the overlap of
elements. Especially in the last two transcripts, volumes are the main protagonists
of the city-saga. They are examined through the prism of other volumes, recombined
and recomposed. What Tschumi is doing here is a kind of 'architectural push-ups'.
Tschumi takes on a novel approach to architectural design, one that would
recognize the dynamic activity architecture is supposed to become. He is looking for
a dynamic definition of architecture and experience of urban space. For him, the
Manhattan Transcripts are a device for analysing the city. The Transcripts are a
means of putting this experience on paper. Tschumi calls this process 'transcription'.
He transcribes episodes of city experience using photographs and architectural
drawings (plans, diagrams, axonometric projections). The Manhattan Transcripts
are a book of architecture and not about it. They are a quest for ideas underlying
the built habitat with its own existence and logic.
Tschumi is a man of mystery, or at least thats what he would like to be. The
fantastic abstraction aims at perfection in its experimental practice, emphasizing
the impossibility of building perfect buildings. He is intentionally unclear in his
visual suggestions, allowing for multiple readings of his material. This text is one
attempt at it.

References

Bernard Tschumi Architects, 2010. Bernard Tschumi Architects > Projects >
Advertisements for Architecture. [online] Available at:
<http://www.tschumi.com/projects/19/> [Accessed 20 Jun. 2013].
Hollier, D., 1989. Against architecture: the writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press.
Martin, B., 1990. Transpositions: On the Intellectual Origins of Tschumis
Architectural Theory. Assemblage, [online] (11). Available at:
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171133>.
Medina, S., 2012. Architizer Blog Interview: Bernard Tschumi Paints The Town
Red. [online] Available at:
<http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/64583/interview-bernard-tschumi-paintsthe-town-red/> [Accessed 22 Jun. 2013].
Tschumi, B., 1975. Questions of Space: The Pyramid and the Labyrinth (or the
Architectural Paradox). Studio International, 190(977), pp.137142.
Tschumi, B., 1977. The Pleasure of Architecture. Architectural Design. Mar.

Tschumi, B., 1981. The Manhattan transcripts. London: New York, N.Y: Academy
Editions; St. Martins Press.
Tschumi, B., 1983. The Discourse of Events. Architectural Association.
Tschumi, B., 2012. Architecture Concepts: Red is not a Color. New York; Enfield:
Rizzoli; Publishers Group UK [distributor].