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An Interview With Bernard Tschumi 2002
An Interview With Bernard Tschumi 2002
To cite this article: (2002) An Interview With Bernard Tschumi, Architectural Theory Review, 7:1,
79-88, DOI: 10.1080/13264820209478446
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ATR 7:1/02
An Interview With
Bernard Tschumi
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Gevork Hartoonian: In an article published in Assemblage (# 25, 1995), you spoke about "the
political commitment of architecture." Modern architecture, I would suggest, was by definition political
in two ways: first, it had to confront the tradition of classicism in a landscape that was mostly shaped
by the remnants of medieval towns; and second, by the commitment of some architects around the
1920s to social housing as a coDective agenda. How would you characterize the political dimension of
architecture in regard to the collective aspect of architecture?
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Tschumi
and it may also be a reflection of the fact that there have been so
many misunderstandings about what architecture and politics
could have to do with one another; and there were many
misunderstandings in the twenties, 1 think. But that's where the
conversation becomes too long. One could review the various
ideologies and theories of the time, but I think for a number of
reasons it always leads to misunderstandings.
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GH: In the 1970s you worked on iheManhattan Transcripts, a text that is concerned with the city (New
York) as part of the collective dimension of architecture. Most of your commissions are buildings
serving institutions. Is the political dimension of architecture accessible through this kind of commission?
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ATR 7:1/02
city planning, and subject to rules and regulations. And at the last
moment there was a change of government and five years of
work disappeared, simply because the government—which was
socialist and enthusiastic about the project—changed into a
government of the right that didn't want to hear about it. Hence
it develops that there is no role left for the architect to play—and
1 want to produce work. Then you can see two possibilities in
these large-scale projects. One is to use your role as a polemicist,
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GH: Could you explain further: how does what you call "pushing a button" work in the Lerner Center,
for example?
BT: First of all, one has to say that at the Lerner Center the city is
really the university—in other words, it's really an internal sort of
community. But within that community what I wanted to achieve
is a high level of interaction between different students. Hence
for me what the building looked onto outside was relatively
unimportant. In other words, we were totally constrained, we
had to follow the master plan and so on, but inside we had an
enormous amount of freedom. What I was interested in was to
take the program and organize it in such a way that all the
activities would look onto that central space and that central
space, the space with the ramps, would be a space of meeting, a
space of interaction, even occasionally a space of conflict, so that
it would become a new social space for the university. That was a
very conscious move and indeed that's one of my interests.
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Tschumi
GH: But, in my experience of this building I had a strong sense of a diagonal axis introduced into the
campus.
one level and the campus half a level above. This has not been
known; he hid it, and I wanted to reveal it. You are absolutely
right! it's nice you saw it. That was not my primary concern but it
was a secondary one.
GH: It seems to me that by putting a huge glass wall on one side of the Lerner Center you are making
the political statement that architecture could be transgressive only in an in-between zone.
GH: The specific significance of your work, at least to me, and in the landscape of neo-avant-garde
architecture, is that there is a sense of objectivity in your work. This objectivity, of course, has its own
history in Russian Constructivism and the New Objectivity or Sachlichkeit current in the 1920s. In your
work, however, the 'Object' seems to be redeemed from traditions such as form/function, form/
content. Also, your work does not have a representational or symbolic dimension. Such a perception
of the autonomous object reminds me of Barthes's discourse on the Pleasure of the Text, where the
duality of sign/signifier supplants 'textual practice.'
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GH: Would you please discuss the pleasure implied in a text and the pleasure experienced in a building?
Some scholars (Alina Payne, for one) have suggested that the Renaissance architects were concerned
with the idea of pleasure experienced by detecting the trace of the familiar in a building. How different
is your discourse on pleasure? Was the idea of superimposing the Rietveld-Schroder House over
Palladio's Villa Rotonda aimed at generating pleasure?
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Tschumi
GH: That's interesting. Besides architectural drawing and model making, the building achieves a
different life after construction. Does theory have a role at this stage too?
GH: Yes. Would you suggest to someone that that person should read your writings before experiencing
your building?
GH: Infilm,I would say, the event is pre-programmed because it is achieved by dramatization of an
action through light, movement, sound, and the tactile qualities of the cut. Is the event in your
architecture pre-programmed?
GH: Is it in "use"?
ATR 7:1/02
GH: Again, pan of this sense of objectivity in your work and the way you have directed the school at
Columbia University remind me of the Bauhaus School, a progressive school that heavily relied on
technology for changing architectural production. Do you see any role for tele-communication
technologies in the evolution of 'objectivity'?
8^
Tschumi
We are now living at a time when things are very loose—there are
very few strong moral, ethical, or even social ideologies. The
Bauhaus could establish a morality of design, but today we can't
really do it in the same way, so as a result one is forced to make a
constant investigation of the 'new.' That is, always trying to push
thinking, materials, but also to push that dimension, even if 1
personally am not fascinated by that form of game. So what I
have been trying to do at Columbia was simply to constantly say
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that the university is one of the places still left in the world where
people can think, explore, push the boundaries, push the limit.
The educational consequences are that education is not learning
what has been before. When you arrive at graduate school, let's
say, it's not learning what others have done before you. It's
opening doors for the things that other people will do later. So 1
see education as a place for opening doors, not only for students,
but also for the faculty and graduates. So that has been my
intention. I often compare the school to a city. That is, you have
to have all sons of things happening, sometimes even things
contrary to it. It is very clear that this is different from the
Bauhaus. I try to have people within the school who have
different points of view and who disagree with one another. All I
do is to make sure that they don't kill one another, but that they
keep debating. But if one kills the other then there is no more
debate. So the point is also that the wonderful thing about
academic institutions, especially in America, or, I would say, in
die Anglo-Saxon world, because it is not quite the same in France
or even in Italy, is that it's possible to get an interaction between
theory and practice, between people who write, people who
think and people who design. It's possible. Not only that, but this
relates back to my point that architecture is just as much the
written word as the drawing or the built work.
GH: In the sixties you were a radical young architect supporting and even engaged with the May 68
student uprising. I have looked at some of the pamphlets ofAA at that time and I found your work very
different. Is Bernard Tschumi, the Dean of an Ivy League school, the same anti-institutional and radical
architect?
BT: Amusing. 1 would say yes but I have to fight against the
perception of the word 'Dean.' You know the word 'Dean' is a
horrible word. It implies the permanence of institutions. As I just
said, I personally see the university as the place of freedom of
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thought. It is the last place where people are going to arrest you
if you say crazy things. When you build things you can get in
trouble with your insurance policy or even with people taking
you to court. The school of architecture is the last place where
you can invent without getting into trouble. And certainly that's
what I want this place to be, so I see my role as a Dean as
someone who encourages students, especially young faculty
members, to take chances, to really go as far as they can, to push
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GH: In an interview with Metropolis in 1988, reflecting on institutions, you characterized ideology in
terms of its capacity to purpon a 'naturalized' image of architeaure. What would be your advise to a
young architect who might want to follow your path and maintain a critical position today?
BT: Yes, I think there are a lot of things that have changed. And
so it's very difficult to give advice, because circumstances change
from culture to culture. I would give different advice to a young
American architect than to a young European architect. It would
be different again on the other side of the world where you are at
the moment. So all 1 can say is that you cannot be innocent, you
cannot be naive; you have to know exactly how things are
moving. Sometimes it's good to learn about the past and about
history. I'll just mention a couple of things happening at the
moment that are quite charaaeristic and did not exist before:
increasingly the mediaization (not mediation) of architecture, in
other words dealing with the faa that the image of architecture
is often more important than the fact of architecture, that the
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Tschumi
GH: Thanks.
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