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A Design Narrative:
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Design Intent, Perception, Experience and a Structural Logic of Space.
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Table of Contents
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List of Figures 4
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Abstract 4
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Chapter 1 Introduction: Architecture and Narrative
1.1 Introduction 6
1.2 Background 7
1.2.1 Questions of Design 7
1.2.2 Relevance Of Narrative 9
1.2.3 Relevance of Museums 9
1.2.4 Significance Of Bernard Tschumi 10
1.3 Research Questions, Aims and Objectives 11
1.3.1 Research Questions 11
1.3.2 Aims 11
1.3.3 Objectives 11
1.4 Research Gap: The Case Study - The New Acropolis Museum 2009 12
1.5 Description of Subsequent Chapters 12
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Introduction to Literature Review 14
2.2 Questioning the Modernist Idiom 14
2.3 Narrative Discourse 15
2.4 Framing Tschumi & Psarra 17
2.5 Understanding Museums & Knowledge of the Case Study 18
2.6 Spatial Syntax 19
2.7 Conclusion to Literature Review 19
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Chapter 3 Methodology
3.1 Overview of Methodology 21
3.2 Analysing Space: Spatial Syntax 21
3.3 Analysing Space: Tschumi 22
3.4 Limitations 22

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Chapter 4 Main Discussion
Part 1: Tschumi’s Approach to Narrative
4.1 Introduction to Discussion 23
4.1.2 The Structuring Logic of Narratives 23
4.1.3 Tschumi’s Narrative Triptych: Context, Programme and Event 25
4.1.4 A ‘Mise en scène’ Approach to ‘Narrating Programme’ 26
4.1.5 Choreographing Sequence: Designing a Narrative 28
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Part 2: Analysing Tschumi’s Narrative within the Acropolis Museum
4.2 Narratives within the Acropolis Museum 29
4.2.1 Introduction to Part Two 29
4.2.2 A Narrative Geometry 30
4.2.3 Program, Circulation and sequence 32
4.2.4 A Narrative of Visual Connectivity: Spatial Syntax in The Museum 33
4.2.5 Ritualising the Familiar 35
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4.3 Conclusion to Chapter 4 38
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Chapter 5 Conclusions
5.1 Transgression; the Acropolis Museum as a Phenotype 39
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6.0 Notes 41
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7.0 Bibliography 46
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List Of Figures
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All figures and images are from Pantermalēs, D., Aesopos, Y., & Tschumi, B. (2009).
The New Acropolis Museum
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Image 01 - The base middle and top of the Acropolis Museum - Page 84
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Image 02 - The archeological ruins below the museum, page 64
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Image 03 - The ramp as a central feature of the atrium, page 111
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Image 04 - Circulation diagram, page 83
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Image 05 - Transverse section through the museum, page 80
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Image 06 - Archaic exhibit, page 48-49
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Image 07 - The caryatids, page 18-19
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Image 08 - The Acropolis Museum in context with the Acropolis hill, page 134-135
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Abstract
A Design Narrative is to re-evaluate 'narrative' as both a conceptual approach,
design process and medium of communication in architectural design. This
assessment will specifically consider the link between the way architectural space,
movement and experience is conceptualised, and how that progression is translated
within a design process and finally realised as a project. It is contended that a
narrative structure is not only present but fundamental to culture and its expressive
agencies, and in many respects part of human nature itself as a way of composing
ideas and thought. Given this, narrative is inextricable from the very nature of
architecture as an expression and by extension a design method that would inform
it.
In looking beyond the issues of style and image, attempts to find correspondences
between the broad role narrative plays in literature, its capacity for abstract
conceptualisation in composing and organising space and its flexibility as a multi
vocal idiom of communication. In examining a number of writers in the field of
architectural narrative and spatial syntax the research then focuses upon the
writings of Bernard Tschumi to establish the extent to which 'narrative' influences
both design thinking, its processes and project resolution within the new Acropolis
Museum (2009).
While the research suggests a positioning of narrative within architecture as a
structuring method for design, it is importantly not a grammar we can simply apply
and evaluate, because like the library of Babel1, it is without boundaries, intent or
implicit meaning, but rather constructs a way of thinking.
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1Borges, J. L. (1941). The Library of Babel. Argentina: Editorial Sur. (Spanish: La Biblioteca de
Babel) is a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a
universe in the form of a vast library.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: ARCHITECTURE AND NARRATIVE
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1.1 Introduction
The context of this paper situates itself in examining the relationship between
project, theory and design process. It will consider the potential for ‘narrative’ as an
approach to a design process, through evaluating the work of Bernard Tschumi,
whose writings and projects primarily focus on cultural issues from urban contexts
to individual building elements. It will examine how spatial syntax operates to create
and orchestrate a range of relationships between space, circulation, objects and
users. On the basis of inquiry defined above, the paper will then define how these
qualities have informed the design process in the case study of Tschumi’s new
Acropolis Museum.
The museum is a unique building type with a didactic intent expressed within an
emerging design grammar that makes it a model for cultural communication. The
museum is analogous to the paradox of knowledge explored by Borges in his short
story The Circular Ruins (1940)2 where humanity finds itself in a position of ‘me
watching you, watching me, watching you,' in an attempt to make sense of
ourselves. In understanding the design issues of the museum as cultural narrative
we can by extension appreciate how in similar ways the built environment defines us
through spatial relationships that are profoundly social in nature. In considering the
structuring quality of the ‘event’ constructed within a narrative spatial dialogue, the
theoretical writings of Bernard Tschumi and specifically his Acropolis Museum,
affords particular insight as a modern architectural manifestation of the museum.
These writings become a platform upon which to appreciate Tschumi's provocative
rethinking of disciplinary orthodoxies and design methodology which has evolved
throughout his career. The Acropolis Museum, charged with exhibiting Greek
antiquity, establishes a narrative discourse that places the observer in a position to
consider and reflect upon the exhibition and with it architecture’s role in creating and
transmitting cultural knowledge and relationships at multiple levels, both individually
and collectively, becomes the basis for a narrative discourse.
Museum architecture is an ideal test situation to evaluate not only the demands of
increasingly flexible interpretations of program, site and context, museums also
demonstrate the need for a high degree of intelligibility from the standpoint of user
experience. The museum communicates cultural information through its narrative
structure by establishes a dialogue between the building as a spatial context, and
the variable presence of user groups that provide a social context. (See explanatory
note 18, page 45)
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2 Borges, J. L. (1940). The Circular Ruins. Argentina: Sur. (original Spanish title: Las Ruinas
Circulares) is a fantasy short story establishing the social interactive nature of perception.

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1.2 Background
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1.2.1 Questions of Design
The starting point for this paper began as an attempt to make sense of the links
between culture (in its broadest humanist sense) and architecture, whose role it is to
reflect upon, to interpret and give expression and representation to a diversity of
cultural values where they become our collective experience of a place. The
frequently fragmented, incomplete, often contradictory and ambiguous association
between meaning, values and experience through perception, has been the subject
of architectural discourse for almost half a century, as architecture attempts to
define itself.
In many respects architecture has always been guided and informed by tradition. It
situates itself in an ever-widening divide between a reverence for the past and an
uncertain future composed of trends and ‘isms’. Since the appearance of a breadth
of critiques of ‘modern’ architecture’s failings in the 1960s, architecture as a
discipline, has sought to re-invent itself, to recompose the tangled threads of
humanism and to weave a pattern of ideas that will eventually become the fabric of
a discipline. Historically, architecture has always been what is often an ad hoc set of
borrowings from a range of other disciplines. Architecture continues to be a
discipline in search of a supporting body of knowledge through which to order
itself.3
Within most contemporary western societies there has been a radical shift,
epitomised by the digital-media/information age, towards an appreciation of an
emerging globalism. While there is much to be questioned concerning the politics of
globalism, it is perhaps sufficient to acknowledge its impact on architectural design.
Culture has become virtually synonymous with ‘design’ and in popular terms with a
‘western lifestyle’ and language of values it promotes. But, with the emergence of
each generation of architects and designers we are forced to critically understand
both the content of cultural communication and how it is communicated. It is
precisely a working definition, a methodology, or a process of interpretation, that
begins to orchestrate every architectural concept that must be critically understood
as a dynamic part of the design problem itself. If architecture and design as it’s
medium of creativity is directed to satisfy Vitruvius’s4 three edicts, translated by Sir
Henry Wotton (1624) as: firmness, commodity and delight, then it is the ‘art of
delight’ that needs to be studied as a process of communication.
Ambiguous and open ended as it is; a critical exploration of culture is nevertheless
the raison d’etre of design and the locus of where architecture is ‘meaningful’. To
focus on particular aspects of narrative, a number of generally accepted disciplinary
assumptions have been built upon. Architectural issues perhaps begin and end with
the city.5 Rowe examines in Collage City (1983) what in appearance seems to be an
randomly stitched patch-work fabric of diversity that raises the central issue of
'context' as a generator of architectural responses. Additionally, it begins with the

3 Venturi, R. (1977). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

4 Vitruvius, M (15 BC). Da Architectura published as Ten Books on Architecture
5 Rowe, C., & Koetter, F. (1983). Collage City

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assumption that buildings can be considered as relatively closed sets of attributes,
developed through relationships at a variety of levels and perceived and understood
through the experience of their space. Against this background it establishes the
pervasiveness of 'narrative' as a social vehicle to define and communicate
perception. The expanding framework of the ‘cultural’ is becoming so broad and
complex it is also at risk of an equally reductive relativism. Yet for the architect
attempting to assess the interaction of space, context, and activity as constructed
‘by design’ then the contemporary museum will prove itself to be an unparalleled
comparative model or ‘how to’ resource in understanding design as a structured
narrative. Here buildings are seen as sets of conceptual properties and perceptual
experience. Psarra (2009) interprets this as “sequences of spaces accessible by the
senses and as frameworks connecting these sequences into larger conceptual
system”6, meaning that,
"Architecture is brought into this process as a model of structural similarity
highlighting the relationship between things we access gradually through our
perceptions and their organization into graspable wholes."7
Significantly, from both designer’s and a viewer’s perspective ‘architecture’ is a field
of inquiry rather than a prescribed set of knowledge. Within this paradigm, design as
an activity is about capturing the tentative: exploring ‘the possible’, as meaning
becomes more permeable and to a degree subjective. With an emphasis on
interpreting information rather than on final or agreed references, viable design
parameters are found in Tschumi’s fascination with the idea of a ‘program’, a
structuring set of relationships creating an ‘operational context’. Significantly, it is
argued that Tschumi’s architecture achieves something beyond formal architectonic
arrangements, by layering cultural references and complexities, similar to what
Robert Venturi’s describes in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture8. This is
an important achievement in the way design may colour the space of activity and
understanding.
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6 Page 104 Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative : The Formation of Space and Cultural
Meaning (1 ed.)
7 Ibid, page 107
8 Venturi, R. (1977). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

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1.2.2 Relevance Of Narrative
Why is narrative an important discourse in relation to architecture? Roland Barthes
states,
“…under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every
age, in every place in every society; it begins with the very history of
mankind and there nowhere is, nor has been, a people without narrative.”9
Thus expresses narrative could be identified as a constant; a part of humanity and
by extension inextricable from architecture. Mark Rakatansky argues,
“Architecture is permeated with narratives because it is constituted within a
field of discourses and economies (formal, psychological and ideological),
to any one aspect of which it cannot be reduced, from any one of which
cannot be removed.”10
The eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell captures the potential of narrative to
'evoke' and qualifying Borges’ visionary association of the endless library of the
mind, and analogously the discourse between architecture and narrative; “While it
liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what
the world is.”11 Thus narrative in the scope of this paper identifies the relationship
between architecture and its user, understanding how space is created to influence
and shape cultural meaning. It is an architectural concept that confronts human
experience with what could be.
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1.2.3 Relevance of Museums
Narrative within the museum carries the potential to speak to the experience of the
everyday and our sense of self by bringing a controlled focus to the significance of
time and the event. Museums have evolved from being containers of art, artefacts
and catalogued antiquities putting forward a particular ‘official’ discourse or
doctrine, to adopting new roles grounded in the analysis of body & site; identity &
community, morality, politics and ethics. With contemporary museums often
becoming significant and high profile objects, they are also able to seduce and
influence the visitor through the weight of being cultural icons themselves.
Iconic museums presently challenge traditional assumptions of a relative objectivity
towards the content displayed inside, creating a somewhat tense relationship
between container and content. While Curatorial vision need not not align itself with
the image of the museum itself; neither does the sense of the architecture need to
be neutral or detached from its context. Tschumi’s Acropolis Museum was not
designed to be an ‘icon’, yet neither is it an anti-Bilbao”12 as the architect described
it, but more importantly a critique and commentary of its Athenian context.
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9 Barthes, R., & Lionel, D. (1975). An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative. New
Literary History, 6(2), 237-272.
10 Rakatansky, M. (1992). Spatial Narratives. In J. Whiteman, J. Kinpnis & R. Burdett (Eds.),

Strategies in Architectural Thinking (pp. 201-221).

11 Russell, B. (1914). Our Knowledge of the External World
12 Dimitris Rigopoulos. “Acropolis museum to be anti-Bilbao.” (February 26, 2002).

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1.2.4 Relevance Of Bernard Tschumi
Since his formative early work at the AA Bernard Tschumi, has set out and
developed a number of significant ideas in architectural theory and practice.
Tschumi has been selected as a 'test case' because he is both a significant writer
and emerging practitioner through which he elaborates and tests his ideas. While
Tschumi would resist any effort toward classification of his work, the case is made
that there is a narrative orientation that has underpinned much of it. In this respect,
Tschumi's practice and projects as a continuum appear like consecutive chapters in
a larger story that is unfolding, updating and exploring alternatives. Tschumi's focus
on the relationship between building and user becomes the inspiration and catalyst
for ‘events’, which in turn is what makes him so relevant to a study of narrative.
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1.3 Research Questions, Aims and Objectives
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1.3.1 Research Questions
It is through the exploration of narrative and the exhibition space within the new
Acropolis Museum that we begin to unfold the relationship between architecture,
social context and cultural meaning. This raises the following questions; How is a
narrative conveyed through spatial relationships in architecture? how does narrative
underpin much of Bernard Tschumi's theoretical writing and projects? And, how
does Tschumi's ‘narrative language’ as an applied approach become a practical
reality within the Acropolis Museum? By exploring and discussing the concept of
constructed ‘events’, as both narrative and architecture, A Design Narrative explores
how narrative can influence the conceptualisation of architecture to create new
phenotypes.
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1.3.2 Aims
In a broad sense the aim of this research is to recognise how a narrative orientation
constructs and communicates buildings as sets of conceptual properties and
perceptual experiences. This research aims to analyse ‘narrative’ as a potential
common language within architectural design, with the power to unite experiences,
integrating objects and space, through a ‘narrative environment’. It endeavours to
explore the power of stories as structured experiences unfolding in space and time,
and to critically assess the potential for exhibitions to act as integrated multi-
dimensional narrative environments in ‘moving’ the viewer.
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1.3.3 Objectives
Based on the proposition that the contemporary museum and its historical evolution
represents a clear progression of architectural thinking. The museum then becomes
a test case through which we can assess and discuss both theory and practice.
Given this assumption and the idea that museums are by nature cultural narratives,
can narrative also be a fundamental framework for structuring a design problem?
This raises the following objectives:
1. Discuss the broader notions of narrative from literature to architecture.
2. Discuss special syntax in relation to narrative structure.
3. Discuss Bernard Tschumi’s theories and how they engage with issues of narrative.
4. Discuss the acropolis museum as a culmination of Tschumi’s theoretical and practical
work as a narrative piece of architecture.
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1.4 Research Gap: The Case Study - The New Acropolis Museum 2009
In Tschumi's earlier seminal essays within Architecture and Disjunction, he identifies
with Borgesian narratives because similar to sequential notions of perception
through language, buildings are experienced gradually through movement. Tschumi
is fond of saying, “That the future of architecture lies in the construction of
'events'."13 This paper will explore this proposition further to consider how 'events'
become social constructions of knowledge.
A large body of research and publications exists separately on Tschumi’s
architecture/theory and narrative architecture, but it is in identifying Tschumi’s
design theory as narrative architecture and ultimately describing it as a design
method, that this paper finds it research gap. Identifying in Tschumi’s work how a
design process centred on context, program and event, becomes a vehicle to
translate design issues into human experiences, and thus a potential for
communicating knowledge in the case study of the Acropolis Museum. In defining
the research gap it is important to understand how the idea of 'narrative' becomes a
lens to examine and a catalyst to expand rather than a filter to limit.
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1.5 Description of subsequent chapters
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Chapter 2 - Literature Review
This chapter positions A Design Narrative within various contexts appropriate to the
field of architectural research. The field of architecture and narrative is considered
from potential disciplinary influences: from the historical thread of literature
structuralist anthropology philosophy (phenomenology) and spatial syntax.
Additionally, the field of museology must be examined for its links to narrative
architecture and the case study. The museum has become as important
architecturally as it is for the art it contains, because museums are about cultural
communication and hence a model for architecture as a cultural activity.
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Chapter 3 - Research Methodology
The research method of the paper is established within this chapter. A framework for
narrative architecture and museum architecture is established through a critical
analysis of the aforementioned subjects. The outline of these ideas provides an
interpretive framework through which to consider the narrative significance of
Tschumi’s architectural theories and project commentaries.
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Chapter 4 - Main Discussion
This chapter is split into a two part discussion; first, it chart the evolution and
background influences of Bernard Tschumi's theoretical writings with a view to
appreciating their relevance in assessing a narrative capacity within architectural
design method. And secondly, by evaluating how these ideas contributed to a

13 Page 256 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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narrative discourse within the new Acropolis Museum, that distinguishes it as a
museum phenotype.
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Chapter 5 - Conclusion
“Each Society expects architecture to reflect its ideals and domesticate its
deeper fears.”14
Tentative conclusions are proposed on the basis of the discussion that qualifies
many of the orthodox assumptions concerning how contemporary museum
communicate. The philosophical and architectural realities of the case study are
evaluated, in the presence of narrative architecture and Tschumi’s own writings. It
suggests that the assumptions about architectural building types are too narrow as
description based and insufficiently critical in assessing meaning through
conceptualising structures.
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! Page 72 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
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2.1 Introduction to Literature Review
There are three primary texts used in this research to understand narrative
architecture as a design theory and method within the New Acropolis Museum are:
Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction (1996), The New Acropolis Museum (2009)
and Psarra’s Architecture and Narrative (2009). With supporting texts on spatial
syntax and narrative museum explorations.
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2.2 Questioning the Modernist Idiom
In Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1977) we find a
seminal starting point in appreciating what architecture needs to achieve in
reflecting upon the paradoxes of contemporary society if architecture is to ultimately
convey meaning. Venturi describes his small volume as “self-conscious”, part
criticism and part polemic, a “gentle manifesto” and importantly written from the
point of view of a practicing architect speaking about his work at that time. He
begins his argument with: “I like complexity and contradiction in architecture”15. In
this vane he goes to some length to outline many of the qualities that we now take
for granted in a forest of theoretical pillars whose plurality continues to evade a
unified theory of architecture. Towards this larger philosophical ideal Venturi writes,
“But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special
obligation towards the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its
implications of a totality. It must embody the difficult unity of inclusion
rather than the easy unity of exclusion. More is not less.”16
Venturi saw architecture as creating the conditions through which perception and
contextual understanding move satisfyingly towards greater complexity and greater
'irony'. Venturi quotes August Heckscher17,
“…equilibrium must be created out of opposites... A feeling for paradox
allows seemingly dissimilar things to exist side by side, their very incongruity
suggesting a kind of truth”.18
Venturi's translates these intellectual roots into;
“….a calculated ambiguity of expression is based on the confusion of experience as
reflected in the architectural program. This promotes richness of meaning over clarity
of meaning.” 19
The issues posed by Venturi’s essay are in many ways a challenge to rethink how
architecture ‘operates’ and offers a preface to a broader theory of architecture. It is
clear that Venturi appreciates the persuasive richness of architecture over the
picturesque that appeases the eye alone. A cultural shift occurred during the 1960’s

15 Page 16 of Venturi, R. (1977). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

16 Ibid.
17 Heckscher, A. (1962). The public happiness: Atheneum. Heckscher 1848 - 1941, Immigrated

from Germany to the United States in 1867 and was a capitalist and philanthropist.
18 Page 16 of Venturi, R. (1977). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
19 Ibid, page 20

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where architecture found itself looking towards other disciplines from which to
borrow and superimpose ideas from art and literature into its own conceptual
thinking.20 Architecture was looking to re-invent itself and distance itself from the
modernist failings of the last 50 years. Smith notes, “The unfolding of events in a
literary context inevitably suggested parallels to the unfolding of events in
architecture”21. For Tschumi this abstraction between words, spaces and events
began a discourse into a narrative exploration in which texts provided programs or
events to develop architectural works.
Tschumi’s earlier architectural examinations in Architecture and Disjunction, of the
conceived, perceived and experienced notions of architecture, form the basis for a
design strategy and a narrative discourse. In The Architectural Paradox (1975),
Tschumi recognises the disjunction between the major oppositions of ‘conceptual’
and ‘perceptual’ facets of architecture and describes,
“On the one hand, architecture as a thing of the mind, a dematerialized or
conceptual discipline with its typological and morphological variations, and
on the other, architecture as an empirical event that concentrates on the
senses, on the experience of space” 22
In Spaces and Events (1983); Tschumi puts forward that the unfolding of events in a
literary environment incontrovertibly suggesting parallels to the unfolding of events
within architecture. Sequences (1983), depicts the various ways we may move
through space in both a physical and psychological realm, and the various ways it
may be manipulated. Additionally, essays such as Violence of Architecture (1982),
The Pleasure of Architecture (1977) and Disjunctions (1987) can all be interpreted as
positioning architecture with an underlying narrative. Tschumi in the 1970s at the
time of writing these essays was influenced by ‘Situationist International’ and
expanded on the works of such thinkers as; Jorge Luis Borges, and his use of
architecture as a model for the theoretical ideas within his fictions. In reading these
and other similar ‘questions on the nature of space’ it is interesting to note that
lingering in the background of Tschumi’s ideas are the skeletal remnants of
structuralism. Certainly Tschumi is wary of any notion of determinism and
particularly when it concerns so complex an idea as culture yet he remains
fascinated by how there could be a structure that informs the logic of thought/
decision making at the simplest level of social perception/experience/
communication as the above passages confirm. Making a wider reading of; Georges
Bataille’s 'economy' of the pyramid and the labyrinth, Roland Barthes and
Structuralism, Michel Foucault and Post-Structuralism, contributing factors to a
contextual reading of Tschumi.
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2.3 Narrative Discourse
Narrative as an architectural concept has sparked many and varied responses and
interpretations from diverse fields of research. A concern with the term ‘narrative’, is
its varied definitions, which adds much complexity. The word itself can be used as

! 20 Smith, K. (2013). Introducing Architectural Theory: Debating a Discipline. From Chapter 5

‘Function and Form’, Smith reflects on excerpts from Architecture and Disjunction (1996).
! 21 Ibid.
22
! Page 83 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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an adjective to narrate, or it can be used as a substantive of ‘story’ or ‘plot’. Genette
notes that “one will define narrative without difficulty as the representation of an
event or sequence of events.”23 Monika Fludernik for instance questions that
narrative isn’t simply a sequence of actions or events, but rather defines it as the
“communication of anthropocentric experience - the experientiality which is inherent
in human experience and feelings, and depiction perceptions and reflections.”24
Similarly Barthes links narrative as part of the human condition, “Indeed narrative
starts with the very history of mankind; there has never been anywhere, any people
without narrative.”25
In post war Europe and rising to prominence in the 1970s was the idea of pan
cultural systems seen as fundamental reservoirs to thought and expression. This
was commonly argued and largely accepted through comparative linguistic analysis
(Saussure amongst others) which was applied to social order in anthropology by
Levi-Strauss and also to literary themes by Roland Barthes as narrative structures.
With ‘reasoning’ acting as a common thread of structural dynamics: a binary logic
based on classification systems that would establish a strong basis for pan cultural
thinking through archetypes. There was also considerable debate upon the nature of
‘archetypes’, on the literary application of structuralist ideas between Barthes and
Derrida as well as Foucault. These latter figures in particular were important to
cultural narratives that included architecture. While it is not important that the whole
of structuralist theory is pivotal to the uses of narrative in particular or cultural
assessment in general it is useful to consider its influence, even passively within the
role of ‘reason and logic’ in design thinking, which is frequently though obliquely
referenced in the writings of Bernard Tschumi.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Nigel Coates was at the forefront of introducing a
narrative theory and practice into architectural works. In the pursuit of architectural
meaning, Coates (2012) frames an architecture that takes account of the human
experience, with narrative working in parallel to the basic architectural language to
add depth and meaning.
“On the one hand the physical nature of architecture makes it
comparable to the physical object of a book, which sits between the
author and the reader. On the other hand buildings can be invested with
narrative content by the architect in ways that are only possible through
the medium of space. Having both substance and void, content and
relations, space is a medium ready to soak up associative meaning”26
Hence, there is a potential for architectural space to manifest as the ultimate
medium in opening a narrative discourse with its reader. Narration shapes and
simplifies events into a sequence that can stimulate the imagination. Coates
additionally comments “…a narrative approach to architecture suggests a familiar
dialogue between the physical and the phenomenal, and discovering how each can

! 23 Genette, G. (1982). Frontiers of Narrative Figures of literary discourse: (pp. 126-144).

! 24 Page 59 of Fludernik, M. (2012). An Introduction to Narratology (1 ed.)
25
! Page 237 of Barthes, R., & Lionel, D. (1975). An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narrative. New Literary History, 6(2), 237-272.
26
! Page 31 of Coates, N. (2012). Narrative Architecture

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be found in the other.”27 This intrinsic phenomenological relationship described by
Coates was earlier explored by Claude Lévi-Strauss. The Savage Mind (1966) is an
exploration of structuralism as an approach to analyse culture and society, through
its manifestations of everything, from ritual to domestic life. In response to Jean Paul
Sartre28 , Levi-Strauss elaborates on how the mind conceptualises its external
environment. Levi-Strauss wrote to clarify the relationship between ‘analytical
reason’ and ‘dialectical reason’ which he argued were confused in Sartre’s Marxist’s
view of history contained in his Critique de la Raison Dialectique (1960) claiming
history as being the ultimate narrative of human experience29. Levi-Strauss uses the
two types of reasoning to describe how humanity both discovers and assesses the
world around them to construct a ‘known’ (or knowable) reality. Merleau-Pont’s30
work develops the idea that knowledge evolves from the interaction of the physical
body with the space that surrounds it. The space of experience is essentially a
'narrative' in its description of our how space impacts upon human behaviour. At
this level the space of experience is essentially social in nature as a background to
all human interaction.
Tschumi's design for Parc de la Villette (1983-98) made the connection between
structuralism and design theory by arguing that designers should deconstruct
modernist dogma such as 'form follows function' and use its obverse 'function
follows form'. Although 'deconstructed', this shows a formative sensitivity on the
part of Tschumi to a structuralist perspective of social relationships as a medium of
communication.
!
2.4 Framing Tschumi & Psarra
In the early 1980s narrative was used to describe a set of architectural values, which
placed the activities surrounding a building in a higher position than the building
itself, holding the ‘event’, as Bernard Tschumi called it, to the highest esteem of the
architectural object. Among the realm of architectural theorist Bernard Tschumi was
the first to identify that there was, a ‘disjunction’ between the conceptual and
perceptual facets of architecture. The conceived and perceived notions of space are
often cast in architectural theory as a powerful opposition. In Tschumi’s early studies
such as The Manhattan Transcripts (1994) he drew parallels between a sequence of
events in space and the physical conditions of the city. In linking ‘stories’ such as a
soccer game or a murder mystery, Tschumi produced a series of theoretical
drawings, which explored the dynamic relationship between the physical form of
architecture and what happened in it. In a broader sense the Transcripts are a
narrative critique of architecture as an institution of limits to be transgressed, not of
forms to be examined. They propose a fiction but are not ‘behaviourist’ in
orientation. They on the contrary depart from the relative innocence of a user as
merely an ‘observer’, to who one who begins their own narrative, as Tschumi
explains, "the place your body inhabits is inscribed in your imagination, your

27
! Ibid, page 34
! 28 Sartre, J. P. (1960). Critique of Dialectical Reason
! 29 Ibid.
30
! Merleau-Ponty, M., & Lefort, C. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible

!
!17
unconscious, as a space of possible bliss. Or menace”31 Tschumi continues to
explain that ‘events’ are about “social and symbolic connotations” or “programmatic
sequences’32 that combine “the presentation of an event with its progressive spatial
interpretation”33 . It is from this reading that Psarra presupposes an “implied
narrative exists”34 in Tschumi’s work. Through his framework she positions the
following key question in defining a design process, "How can we describe the
interface between the conceptual strategies, perceptual experience and cultural
meaning?"35
In Psarra’s Architecture and Narrative, we begin exploring the space of the intellect
in contrast with the space we occupy with our body and explore with our senses. An
exhibition is a narrative unfolding in space and time and, as a medium it
distinguishes itself form other narrative formats in as far as the visitor is physically
moving.
"When architects refer to design they cast it as a mental activity that is
concerned with arranging forms, spaces, programme and materials. When
they speak about a building they often describe it as narrative invoking a
hypothetical viewer and a journey through space. Thus while design is
portrayed as an activity of the mind, a building is seen as something to be
experienced. This experience follows a route and unfolds in time. For some
architects spatial narrative is central not only to the way in which they
describe buildings but also to way in which they design."36
Here Psarra's seminal thinking examines architecture's importance as a platform for
conceptual, social and spatial narratives. Psarra explores how ones relationship with
space is determined through its organisation and arrangement. That architecture is
the ‘thinking mind’ behind our cultural perception of space.
!
2.5 Understanding Museums & Knowledge of the Case Study
In considering the potential for narrative to create an embodied architectural
experience and how stories are told within it, the analysis would follow a similar
method as Macleod outlines in Museum Making (2012) where narrative forms, “a
mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive
environments”37. She analyses in depth the museums ability to utilise narrative
ingrained in the spatial character of the building to “connect on the deepest levels
with human perception and imagination”38. Herman Kossmann in Narrative Spaces:
On The Art Of Exhibiting (2012) establishes a comprehensive theoretical, practical
and cultural-historical framework, in defining the conceptual tools to probe the
dynamics of exhibitions as narrative spaces. The encounter of architecture and

! 31 Page 124 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

32
! Ibid, page 154
33
! Ibid, page 163
! 34 Page 4 of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural
Meaning (1 ed.)
! 35 Ibid, page 215
! 36 Ibid, page 67
37
! Page 1 of Macleod, S., Hanks, L. H., & Hale, J. (Eds.). (2012). Museum Making: Narrative,
Architectures, Exhibitions.
38
! Ibid.

!
!18
narrative is studied here in museums, galleries and cultural buildings, examining
how the arrangement of space relates to the arrangement of objects and the design
of exhibitions. Exhibition narratives are different from other narratives in that they are
constructed by the interpretation of a collection of artefacts. Meaning that objects
are categorised and displayed in a space that accords to either an aesthetic
principle or a conceptual underlying framework that aids in ordering knowledge in a
particular field. While narratives in other media platforms are founded on the
representations of time and space, museum narratives are organised depending on
the ways in which the artefacts are positioned in space. Objects are then seen for
their individual importance, while a cumulative design of the exhibition holds the
potential to convey additional meanings for each piece owing to its spatial and
visual interrelationships with others. Given these characteristics, museum narratives
can illuminate the ways in which the conceptual and perceptual characteristics
relate to the mechanisms governing the display. Additionally, the analysis of
museums can explain how the organising principles of space and the collection
relate to the exploration patterns of visitors and, therefore, how these buildings
become sites for differing and subjective narratives.
!
2.6 Spatial Syntax
Hillier's Space Is the Machine (1998); is an analytical framework for studying how
designs interface the conceptual with the perceptual in establishing social meaning.
As a two-part study: Firstly observing geometric properties independent from the
situated observer, such as symmetry, rhythm, alignment, congruence, or repetition.
Second, it examines buildings as perceptual fields and explores configurational
properties that can be discovered through the in situ experience. Similarly Psarra, in
Architecture and Narrative, (after Hillier et al.) states that “narrative enters
architecture through the ways in which space is structured to achieve specific
effects on our perception.”39 She posits that the study of ordering and positioning of
spaces, social relationships and cultural content is of primary framework to how
buildings are shaped, used and perceived. Kali Tzortzi’s paper, Space:
Interconnecting Museology and Architecture (2011) is a comparative study of
museums (between Pompidou, Tate Modern and Acropolis museum), which much
like Hillier and Psarra, analyses spatial syntax and the creation of narratives that
respond to the user. This is through either direct or indirect choices where
perceptions are either highly structure or allow for a considerable variation in
experience.
!
!
!
!
!
!
! Back cover descriptive comments of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The
39

Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning (1 ed.)

!
!19
2.7 Conclusion to Literature Review
As defined above the term narrative in the scope of this paper explores the
relationship between architecture and its user, understanding how space is created
to influence and shape cultural meaning. Architecture carries meaning through the
arrangement of space, materials, objects and cultural relationships with which it is
invested. Underpinned by agencies and systems of thought that are involved in its
production, narrative architecture becomes a concept that prioritises human
experience.
!
!

!
!20
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
!
3.1 Overview Of Methodology
In identifying Tschumi's design method and observing a narrative framework
between the perceptual and conceptual aspects of architecture, this paper will use a
interpretive-historical research method. Defined by Groat & Wang (2002) as the
"Investigations into social–physical phenomena within complex contexts, with a
view toward explaining those phenomena in a narrative form and in a holistic
fashion."40 The research seeks to collect and evaluate as much supporting evidence
as possible in providing a logical argumentation and credible interpretation.
Primary sources for this research analysis are derived from Tschumi’s essays in
Architecture and Disjunction and the documentation of his New Acropolis Museum.
By surveying Tschumi’s texts in Architecture and Disjunction and analysing a range
of relevant interpretations of these texts, a response to questions raised by defining
an architecture as having narrative sensitivities can be proposed.
Additionally, by applying the spatial analysis of Sophia Psarra’s Space Syntax (after
Hillier), which examines the way in which space is structured by interpreting the
viewers movements and sight views as they interact with space, circulation and
display, the case study's (Acropolis Museum) narrative qualities can be critically
evaluated. (See also additional note 20, page 46)
The case study aspect is proposed to be in keeping with Groat and Wang’s (Groat &
Wang, 2002) assertions in “studying a case in relation of the complex dynamics with
which it intersects”41. Through the use of historical sources and various interpretive
and theoretical responses to ‘narrative design’, A Design Narrative will provide a
comprehensive overview of a “multitude of contextual factors and phenomena”42,
thus fulfilling the requirements for an architectural case study. By compiling
information from a variety of sources with differing views it is believed that they will
strengthen the argument of architecture as narrative by presenting differing
perspectives in which the chosen works can be critically and comparatively
assessed.
!
3.2 Analysing Space: Spatial Syntax
Narrative as a ‘design structure’ used by Tschumi and analysed by Psarra, is quite a
specific interpretation of ‘narrative’ and needs to be carefully explained and
explored so that it becomes an approach and method rather than just a passive
description. As a methodology, it is pro-active and based on the dialogue between
designer and user. This is conducted by analysing the exhibition space in two
directions:
Firstly: in the abstract space of conceptual ideas and structuring organisations.
Secondly: in the visual relations that describe the viewer's experience of actual
space relations.
!
!
40
! Page 136 of Groat, L., & Wang, D. (2002). Architectural Research Methods
41
! Page 347 Ibid.
42
! Ibid

!
!21
3.3 Analysing Space: Tschumi
To achieve this, a careful review of Tschumi's terms of reference; context, program
and event provide an evaluative framework to structure analysis, and position his
theoretical approach to ‘conceptualising structure’ and thus a practical
methodology. Tschumi’s approach to a logic of architecture translates the
conceptual to the figurative, but unlike the idealism of the past that positioned
architecture as a ‘solution’, Tschumi looks at disjunctions as signifiers and moves
them from the background of ‘process’ to the foreground, as mediums of
communication. Architecture then does not solve cultural issues it represents them,
and more pro-actively communicates them as a ‘reality’ within the built environment.
The most obvious example is Tschumi’s use of ‘superimposition’ which reflects a
conceptualising process of assembling and expressing attributes as ‘overlays’ as a
logic of association and comparative disjunction.
!
3.4 Limitations
It can be noted that by adopting ‘narrative’ as an analytical lens through which to
examine architecture, this dissertation excludes other, possibly opposing, theories
on describing architectural design qualities. Although attempting to introduce a
narrative discourse as being fundamental to a variety of architectural typologies, it is
acknowledged that by exploring these issues within a singular case study, it
somewhat limits the conclusions drawn to that architectural typology (museums).
References to several of Tschumi essays and built works are made, but only the
Acropolis Museum is explored in detail, thus conclusions derived from this paper
can not be adopted as a generalised condition for all his works.
!

!
!22
CHAPTER 4 MAIN DISCUSSION
Part 1: Tschumi’s Approach to Narrative
!
4.1 Introduction To Discussion
A key aspect of this research is to consider the argument that narrative is a
structuring part of the design process. The following discussion will consider some
of the influences for a narrative case. While it is beyond the scope of this paper it is
suggested that narrative, and a structuring logic that guides it, are central to cultural
communication and hence it’s relevance to architecture. Robert Venturi’s seminal
critique of modern architecture is itself a challenge to the processes of creativity or
the nature of conceptual thinking.43 Typically, a critical examination of conceptual
thinking and its part in the design process is too frequently absent from the
discipline’s review of significant projects. Instead as Tschumi critically comments,
the aesthetics of image predominate.
Guiding this research, and used as a project test case is the work of Bernard
Tschumi. The other areas cited and contributing to this paper have all played a role
in the evolution of Tschumi’s writing. It is not the intention of this paper to apply a
particular label to his work but rather to establish its relevance to architectural
design through its narrative qualities. Significantly Tschumi’s approach to narrative
uniquely addresses how design develops a structure of questioning as a bridge
between the conceptual and the experiential.
!
!
4.1.2 The StructurIng Logic Of Narratives
At the risk of over simplification, ‘structural logic’ represents complex processes, not
just a medium we can isolate or control, but rather a process that informs our
reasoning, our thinking itself. What is relevant to the design process is how an
interplay of 'reasoning’ is able to create a poetry of experience; a poetic quality that
is often characterised as ‘delight’ or serendipity in architecture. While this quality is
often only alluded to as Christopher Alexander’s 'quality without a name'44 it is
proposed that it has more tangible aspects within the design process. Reasoning
should be at the heart of solving any design problem in an architectural discourse.
Contemporary designs are qualified and defended by ‘good reasons’ emphasising
their rationality. But for Tschumi the use of structural logic in design thinking, is more
about questioning a design solution, rather than establishing an argument for the
appropriateness of a single solution. On reasoning Levi Strauss writes;
"In my view dialectical reason is always constitutive; it is the bridge, forever
extended and improved, which analytical reason throws out over the abyss;
it is unable to see the further shore but it knows that it is there, even should
it be constantly receding."45 (Additionally see note 01 page 41)
Similarly for Tschumi, there is a tension between the two types of reasoning that
begins in speculation (design concept) and concludes in conjecture (project). In

43
! Illeris, K. (2008). Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists... In Their Own Words
! Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building
44
45
! Page 246 of Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The Savage Mind

!
!23
Tschumi’s view these are the circumstances that circumscribe the pivotal moment
when an observer moves from the acknowledgement of an idea to feeling it as an
experience. As will be discussed in greater detail below this is the quality of an
‘event’ based upon a constructed disjunction between conceptual perceptions and
their conscious/subconscious recognition as meaningful experiences, whether in the
realm of the ordinary or the symbolic. In reference to the Acropolis museum, this
translates to the dialogue between the sacred and the profane, between the
Acropolis and the Makriyianni site excavations.46
Tschumi is interested in illuminating the potential instability that is a condition of
knowledge through design. It is an instability or perhaps ambiguity that arises as
human thought through the tools of language reflect upon relationships, real and
projected within the context of experience.In the essay Questions of Space Tschumi
writes,
“1.31 If the structure of the mind imposes an a priori form (that precedes all
experience) to the perception of the external world, is space such a form?”
And later in the same essay he queries,
“3.3 (for linguists only) if space is just a thing,
a) Does it determine thought and language;
b) Together with thought, is it determined by language;
c) Together with language, is it determined by thought?”47
Clearly Tschumi appreciates the complexity of the interconnected nature of these
abstract questions, though he is far from clear or willing to define the ‘specifics’.
This holds the significance of the questions to a higher esteem than a definitive
answer. Alternatively, Architecture as a discipline has too frequently sought rational
answers at the expense of the question's conceptual significance, reducing
discourse to tangible qualities of objects that occupy space- a play of material
aesthetics rather than ideas.
The character of space as typically perceived through the object within visual
relationships is unquestionably significant yet variable in its nature. Norberg-Schulz
describes,
“Character is at the same time a more general and a more concrete concept
than 'space'. On the one hand it denotes a general comprehensive
atmosphere, and on the other the concrete form and substance of space
defining elements… Any real presence is intimately linked with a character.
A phenomenology of character has to comprise a survey of their manifest
character as well as an investigation of their concrete determinants.48
In contrast to Norberg-Schulz, though without denying character, Tschumi is looking
beyond descriptive attributes that would appeal to aesthetics. Instead qualifying
space through the relations that structure it. He attempts to focus his attention on
the experience of space as it would be cognitively mapped in a way that affords the
observer a knowledge of the conditions of space that are constructed through visual
orientation. In this way space is more complex and becomes the medium through
which cultural experience is communicated. Thus, how space is structured is

46
! The uncovered ruins depicting the life of the everyday citizen below the museum
! Page 61 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and disjunction
47
48
! Page 14 of Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980). Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture

!
!24
fundamental to how choice (and by extension experience) is manipulated by design
in reading the environment.
In his essay The Architectural Paradox (1975) he writes: “The concept of space is
not a space”: here Tschumi begins by establishing a distinction between space as
the object of knowledge and actually existing space. Using Georges Bataille’s
concept of the pyramid and the labyrinth, Tschumi establishes two reciprocal
architectural ideas; the pyramid of ‘concepts’ and the labyrinth of ‘experience’, that
simultaneously occur in architecture.49 The paradox arises from, “the impossibility of
both questioning the nature of space and at the same time, experiencing a spatial
praxis."50 Architecture, being both conceptual and perceptual, in its very nature is
both pyramid and labyrinth, that is its paradox. He offers that the only way to unite
"conceived" and "perceived" spaces was through discovering architecture's
eroticism, or to reach a point where ones subjective experience of the space in turn
becomes its very concept. The disciplinary implications of the paradox were a
rhetorical dramatisation for the introduction of the third term of architecture:
"experienced space". For Tschumi, situated at the limits of conceptual and
performance art, 'experienced space' was a concept similar to Bataille's notion of a
‘deep interior experience’.51
In Violence of Architecture (1982), Tschumi opens by stating; “There is no
architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without
program.”52 Tschumi’s violence is not some brutal act, but rather attempts to define
a heightened relationship between the individual and their surrounding space. By
staging a battle between man and space Tschumi observes the way these opposing
two camps affect each other. On the one side ‘bodies violating space’ sees us
‘intruding’ upon very controlled architectural environments. This constant act of
bodies moving about space sets up a relationship of 'intercourse' between space
and its user. If we are to state that ‘bodies disturb the purity of space’ can the same
be said for space intruding upon the visitor. Each one of us has a set of
subconscious systems for interpreting space and with it we tend to emotionally
react to varying spatial constructs. Tschumi critically works with space at the level of
perceptions and associated emotions rather than abstract rationality. In fact
architecture itself is given an anthropomorphic quality, “Architecture is the only
organism engaged in constant intercourse with users, whose bodies rush against
the carefully established rules of architectural thought.”53 Tschumi goes on to state
that, "the architect designs the set, writes the script, and directs the actors"54, but
ultimately there exists a subtle relationship of reciprocity where the actor injects his/
her own independence. The architect’s compositions may be challenged by the user
and/or challenge the user. This is where a pragmatic ‘violence’ exists between
events (users and actions) and architecture (space and programs). At the same time
Tschumi argues in The Pleasure of Architecture (1977) that the context of experience
is one in which the subject moves between the experiential (sensual) and the

! 49 Hays, K. M. (2000). Architecture Theory Since 1968

! 50 Bernard Tschumi, The Architectural Paradox: Studio International, Sept.-Oct. 1975
! 51 Page 29 of Mandler, M. (2008). Body. Architecture. Narrative
52
! Page 121 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction
53
! Ibid, page 123
54
! Ibid, page 128

!
!25
intellectual, between known relationships and abstraction. It is a specific appeal to a
recognition of bodily experience as the basis of our perception and understanding of
the external environment. (For additional see note 02 on page 41)
!
!
4.1.3 Tschumi’s Narrative Triptych: Context, Programme and Event
In the aforementioned essays, Tschumi establishes a framework of ideas that have
been fundamental in informing his successive writings and architectural projects in a
reciprocal dialogue between theory and practice55. In his writings, Tschumi clearly
defines two principle areas of questioning, ‘context’ and ‘programme’, which
explore and critically question a means of gaining insight into existing and
anticipated relationships. Within the design process and particularly the early stages
of conceptualisation both areas invite speculation through which to interpret and
frame significances. On the basis of a questioning of the normative qualities
Tschumi sees architecture’s role through design, not as one of traditional
accommodation, but rather the invention of strategies through which both context
and programme reveal the potential for new meaning. (See also additional note 12
on framing, page 44)
As a process Tschumi envisions that through understanding the disjunctions within
relations of context and programme a concept will evolve within a logic of those
relations to reconfigure them; to create the ‘event’ that is architecture. The
relationships that emerge from imposing a programme on a particular context
develop to be more than a building type, but a particular expression within a
morphology of that type. These variations that question the normative assumption
and which are effectively conceptualisations, he terms ‘codes of assemblage’. This
through a design process, become a project narrative of actual physical relations
that are the subject of user perceptions. A ‘code of assemblage’ would then be, in
the light of the above discussions, a structured narrative, that is its own critique of
contextual meaning set against a programmed use that directs perception. The
project narrative then becomes a push-pull of connected ideas whose interaction
through relationships has the ‘totalising’ effect of an ‘event’ in shaping experience.
(See note 5 for additional, page 43)
!
!
4.1.4 A ‘Mise En Scène’ Approach to ‘Narrating Programme’
To appreciate Tschumi’s view of how a building becomes its own critique; that is, an
evolving knowledge developed from a set of constructed relationships arising from
the context and programme, it is important to recognise that the set of relationships
is neither static nor pre-determined, but rather a dynamic and changing reciprocity.
This reciprocity between user and building at its most confrontational, approaches
the conditions of performance as it unfolds primarily through movement and stages
of perception. Movement within Tschumi’s writings and more recently his projects is

55
! Notably, Tschumi’s architectural practice is not limited to actual building. In his writings he is
very careful in defining his terms of reference.

!
!26
key to an evolving understanding of how buildings are conceptualised and allow an
architect to control important aspects of perception, and with that, experience.
Specifically, Tschumi employs visual relationships because the visual aspects of
cultural communication dominate contemporary society. Tschumi’s adoption of
cinema-graphic techniques puts him outside the traditional canons of architectural
composition. Importantly, cinema-graphic techniques such as ‘framing’ provide a
measure of continuity from within an established language principally drawn from a
global urbanity. (See additional note 19, page 46)
From the stand point of a design method, Tschumi then develops operational
conditions to foster a dialogue between context, programme and event (See also
explanatory note 21, page 46). To facilitate this Tschumi interprets the programme as
if it were a script; functioning in most respects as it would in a theatrical sense. He
comments that The Manhattan Transcripts (1976-81) were, “an attempt to
deconstruct the components of architecture”56 They developed representationally
like a ‘story board’, or a visualisation of a script sequence; the movements and
actions of a narrative as they are progressively ‘played out’. The script is an
important organisational tool which acts as a medium of translation between the
abstractness of conceptualisation and the immediateness of impromptu experience.
Accepting the performance theatre as the model for staging ‘events’ the script then
could be seen as a metaphorical dramatisation of the programme. Like good theatre
it attempts to stimulate the audience; occasionally prescriptive but more frequently
loosely structured as a set of guiding prompts. Potentially then the script for a
project could operate at two levels corresponding to both very formal experiences
as well as the ordinariness of social occasions. As will be discussed this capacity to
integrate multiple domains of an experience is a fundamental aspect of exhibition
design addressed by spatial syntax studies.
The importance for Tschumi of the programme acting like a script is that it functions
to structure real and perceptual relations within the spatial geometry of a building. In
doing so, it constructs a unique set of relationships as a paradigm that is a reflection
upon the variations of time, place and observer. Conceptually, both aesthetics and
style are quite secondary to ‘structure’ here and at best evoke Norberg-Shultz’s
character references. Structuring experience is a fundamental part of how
architecture ‘operates’ to create, comment upon or challenge cultural conventions.
As a medium of cultural change architecture is undoubtedly a slow process yet
internally within a project it is its raison d'être to challenge assumptions. Within even
the ‘everyday’ it is reliant upon how relations are communicated in a delicate
balance between the opportunity for ‘control’ and ‘choice’ within the
‘script’ (settings) and hence an intentional part of the narrative reciprocity. If
architecture communicates ‘intentions’ and a logic of intelligibility through the
control and development of perceived relationships at multiple levels within space,
its primary vehicle to achieve this is through defining the sequence of experience.
(See also note 03 for additional)
!
!
!
56
! Page 176 of Tschumi, B. (Ed.). (1989). Parc de la Villette, Paris

!
!27
4.1.5 Choreographing Sequence: Designing a Narrative
Tschumi writes:
“Spatial sequences are generally structural; that is they can be viewed or
experienced independently of the meaning they may occasionally evoke.
Programmatic sequences are generally inferential; conclusions or inferences
can be drawn from the events or the décor that provide the sequences
connotative aspects.”57
Though within these categories there is an element of variability wherein sequences
of spaces and sequences of events are not bound together in a final configuration
but rather interdependent; each mutually conditioning the other. In introducing the
impact of sequencing upon perception and with experience, it is important to recall
the critical capacity of ‘disjunction’ in qualifying relationships. But disjunction is the
result of a shifting conceptual orientation, at time reinforced or alternatively
restrained by movement, which in turn is strongly influenced by sequence.
Sequence is an important conditioner of how programmes are unfolded and
perceived by the user. Tschumi notes that, “Programs fall into three categories:
those that are indifferent to the spatial sequence, those that reinforce it, and those
that work obliquely or against it.”58 Meaning an implied narrative is always there,
whether of method, use, or form, it comprises the presentation of an event (or chain
of events) with a progressive spatial interpretation (which of course alters it).
Like any good story, it is difficult for architecture to be a narrative without a certain
degree of tension, provoking the visitors thinking and experience. Yet in a media
driven world of hyperbole it is also of paramount importance to not create pseudo-
narratives found in shopping malls or departure lounges around the world, but rather
create an architecture (space/surfaces) that engages with you and provokes you into
creating a field of meaning. Architecture needs now more than ever to connect with
the body in a balance between function and fiction. In our digital age of opulent
information, where every building form can be simulated and more often then not
built, narrative can provide the architect with an additional tool in drawing from the
world of human nature.
!

57
! Page 160 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction
58
! Page 159 Ibid.

!
!28
4.2 Narratives Within The Acropolis Museum
“Theory is a practice,
a practice of concepts”
“Practice is a theory,
A theory of contexts”59
!
4.2.1 Introduction To Part Two

Over the course of this research the discussion has centred upon the potential of
using narrative in architecture as a means of conceptualisation and more importantly
as a vehicle of design exploration and spatial structuring. What is important here is
to appreciate the movement from abstract conceptualisation to the dynamics of
experience, through which architecture could be said to engage in the dissemination
of cultural knowledge. In addition to the explanatory capacity of narrative in its
literary sense, it also has a powerful association with syntactical spatial analysis.
The museum as a building type is ideally suited to represent the dynamics of human
interaction and behaviour as it unfolds in ‘architectural space’. Hillier notes, "From
the historic buildings to the contemporary ones, museum architecture moves from
‘showing’ to ‘telling’ and from classification to narrative.”60 The ideas and
approaches of Bernard Tschumi are very sympathetic to both narrative form and the
issues raised by spatial syntax. The following will demonstrate an assessment of
Tschumi most recent museum project and reveal the extent to which a ‘narrative
discourse’ informs his design and transforms experience refocuses meaning.
The Acropolis Museum has influences far more profound than most museums even
by international standards, as it deals with a significant portion of our human history.
Yet despite its global importance, it has not for the most part followed in the
footsteps of contemporary architectural practice. Tschumi himself called the design
his ‘anti Bilbao’61 statement. To understand this comment and in applying Tschumi’s
own theoretical writings, it would be difficult not to begin with his seminal
affirmation, “That there can be no architecture without program, without action,
without event.”62
The Acropolis Museum is itself a cultural statement. It is about a history, set in a
physical, economic, social and political context. It is about a program not directed
towards resolving the issues of that history but rather of giving them a voice and
representative form in a larger ongoing dialogue. The Acropolis Museum is more
than just a linear narrative, it is a unique expression of a ‘narrative method’,
displacing or restructuring an orthodoxy of museum conventions. In both an
architectural and curatorial sense, this extends the existing typology to embrace a
new paradigm. In this context the museum is more than just a casual reference point
in understanding human activity within physical space, but as Tzortzi cites “it is a

59
! Page 619 of Tschumi, B. (2004). Event-Cities 3: Concept vs. Context vs. Content
60
! Page 293 of Macdonald, S. (2010). A Companion to Museum Studies
61
! Page 63 of Pantermalēs, D., Bernard Tschumi, A., Aesopos, Y., & Tschumi, B. (2009). The
New Acropolis Museum
62
! Page121 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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suggested way of seeing the world”63. It is also pertinent to an architectural process
as we contemplate the larger analogy of how we both conceptually read and
construct various degrees of the built environment, from a domestic collection of
rooms to the complexity of urban master-planning.
To understand how the Acropolis Museum has pushed the boundaries of narrative
architecture from theory to practice, it is instructive to begin with its organisational
structure expressed as the ‘parti’. The ‘parti ‘is often defined as the essence of
architecture distilled to a set of relationships without which, the building would not
make sense. (See also note 24 on parti, page 46)
!
4.2.2 A Narrative Geometry
In consideration of the movement from conceptual ideas to a design process it
seems clear that there is an evolutionary focus upon two primary mediums. The
expression of geometry as both spatial containers and circulation systems that
orientate the user. From this standpoint, a design logic of ‘rules’ or ordering
principles develops. (See note 6 for additional, page 43) Psarra describes these
principles as,
“Architects use geometry to organise relations among spaces through
architectural drawings and models. Geometry captures not just abstract
patterns but also the visual framework of these patterns, turning abstract
rules into representations. Crossing the divide between the abstract and the
visible, geometrical systems represent our knowledge as visual entities and
as abstract conceptual structures.”64
Interestingly, Psarra then moves a step further, and on the basis of comparative
museum studies, finds a representational correspondence between stable
geometric arrangements and its often axial spatial properties with a sense of order.
By contrast she associates a greater choice and diversity of experience (knowledge)
with a loose narrative, provided by openly expressive geometry. In the case of the
Acropolis Museum, its geometry is regular, albeit its rotated layers are intensionally
provocative and create a perceived instability and tension. Its articulated volumes
set one above the other, have been operated on by ‘contextualising rules’ that imply
a conceptual re-ordering of the context according to disjunctions. While it also may
be in part as Psarra notes, "an attempt to construct a critique of the ways in which
geometric entities have been associated with idealism in Classicism…”65, it is
primarily intended to stimulate a new way of perceiving the larger relationships
within the project. This is consistent with Tschumi other writing and design
projects.66 In contradistinction to Psarra, Tschumi finds 'instability', whether in
geometry or other relationships, characteristic of disjunctions that juxtapose realities
rather than degrees of conformation with a orthodoxy of archetype expectations.
!
63
! (MacDonald 1996:14) on page 31 of Tzortzi, K. (2011). Space: Interconnecting Museology
and Architecture. The Journal of Space Syntax, 2(1), 26-53.)
! 64 Page 222 of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and
Cultural Meaning (1 ed.)
! 65 Ibid, Page 228
66
! Similar to Parc de la Villette, and Architecture and Disjunction

!
!30
A primary aim of the Acropolis Museum is to reconnect the evolving present with it's
historical past. The physical presence of Athens as a living environment and the
adjacency of the Acropolis as a historical site, profoundly represents a unique
context from which its ‘parti’ is derived. (see also note 17 on context Tschumi’s
writing reinforces his conviction that there is an elementary level at which
architecture is abstract and figurative, through which to confront disjunction of
existing or projected spheres of space and use. As in his writings, the parti as a
figurative conceptualisation confronts the multiple disjunctions of the totalising
experience that is the ‘sense of place’ and the larger site. This disjunction of space
is revealed conceptually and figuratively through superimposition. The use of
superimposition conceptually and strategically was used in earlier projects, most
notably Parc de la Villette in Paris. As applied to the Acropolis Museum, the parti is
composed of three layers expressed as successive connected building levels. (See
figure 01)

Figure 01 - The base middle and top of the Acropolis Museum

Each layer is correspondingly a program level of the museum. The museum's

connection to the external physicality, from which it draws its history, is again
interpreted within the museum's design. Each layer appears as if an independent
element given its geometry, characteristic of form and absence of alignment with the
other layers. On a number of levels Tschumi’s project sketches are more
diagrammatic or conceptual than artistic; yet they also convey emotions associated
with the perception of spatial context. The ‘parti’ sketches are illustrative
developments of the museum through a layered geometry of space relations.
Creating a multi-vocal dialogue of complexity and contradiction as a ‘proposition’.

!
!31
As again Psarra notes, “The creative tension between the conceptual and the
perceptual translate to a tension between seeing and understanding”67. (See note
04 & 07 for additional page 41)

!
4.2.3 Program, Circulation and Sequence
In placing the museum typology, Psarra describes,

“Set in context, museums carry the task of presenting knowledge as a

social construct. They favour the messages coming out from knowledge
over knowledge itself as the object of attention. Architecture enters this
context by constructing a variety of spatial experiences that emphasises the
perceptual impact of space and collection.”68
Here, space is defined as constructed space, with an intent to create the conditions
within a program that direct the viewer, stimulate interaction and transmit
knowledge. Designed space of this type is a dialogue between space and circulation
(movement), and developed with hierarchical qualities to construct programmatic
intentions through visual connections. Comparative spatial syntax studies of
museums (as described by Psarra and Hillier et al.) define important behavioural
characteristics that developed through the medium of circulation, which in sympathy
with curatorial intent, can be seen as ‘deterministic’ and ‘probable’. How circulation
is developed is obviously central to the experiential aspects of movement as it is
literally “a built choreography of movement and encounter”69. The choreography is
interdependent with other variables such as sequence, axiality and choice.
Contributing to a totalising sense of place, built upon an innate tension between
familiarity and a growing knowledge of the particular, which the user must attempt
to reconcile. An application of this can be seen upon entering the New Acropolis
Museum, where the glass floor of the lobby allows the viewer to study the
archaeological remains below; (See figure 02) constructing visual connection
through a literal juxtaposition of the past and present.

Figure 02 - The archeological ruins below the museum

! Page 228 of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and
67

Cultural Meaning (1 ed.)

! 68 Ibid, page 182
! 69 Page 290 of MacDonald, S. (2010). A Companion to Museum Studies

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An internal ramp leading throughout the initial exhibition space (the atrium) reflecting
its natural counterpart outside, (leading up to the Acropolis) building upon the
visitors experience as one progresses through the museum (See figure 03). The
route that one follows throughout the museum, prescribed by the changing layers of
the built form, leads to an experiential culmination in the top level, the Parthenon
Gallery. The upper most level is an intentional reference to the Parthenon,
geometrically aligned, proportionately similar and establishing a direct visual
connection. (See additional description of the museum at note 14 for Page 44)
An interesting paradox for an exhibition, is that with increased ‘clarity of purpose’,
that is a simplistic curatorial intent, comes at the risk of losing a broader context,
whist adversely adopting an authoritarian didacticism that is mono-dimensional.
Instead sequential ordering of a display strategy must be set against a largely
interactive environment with an architectural space that is 'legible'. The issues of
‘user choice’ then become a distinct variable in the conceptual reading of space/
display and ensuing a narrative design quality. (See also note 16 on 'reading' space,
page 45) Psarra notes that there have been key changes in museums in their
approach to the display of the collection. Historical museums displayed everything
whereas contemporary ones exhibit fewer objects in spaces of varied sizes, “So,
when these [contemporary] museums are described as ‘active containers’, in
opposition to the ‘neutral warehouses’ of the past, what is meant is that they
demonstrate a greater engagement with perceptual experience than their historical
predecessors.”70 (For examples see note 10 on page 44)

Figure 03 - The ramp as a central feature of the atrium

! Page 182 of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and
70

Cultural Meaning (1 ed.)

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4.2.4 A Narrative Of Visual Connectivity: Spatial Syntax In The Museum

For both Tschumi and researchers in spatial syntax there are a number of important
areas of agreement that reinforce and emphasise the importance of visual
connectivity, movement and a cognitive mapping on the part of the user. What is
important is how visual connections are orchestrated as sequences. From Tschumi’s
point of view all sequences are cumulative, “If all spatial sequences inevitably
implies the movement of the observer, then such a movement can be objectively
mapped and formalised - sequentially.”71 (See note 08 for additional, page 43)
While all spaces are cumulative in Tschumi’s view, they are significantly not equal
nor communicate the same level of information. Spatially speaking the Acropolis
Museum is very simple, in that there is very little differentiation or variation in terms
of spatial types or sequences. The circulation through the museum offers very little
in the way of choice that would isolate and define particular spaces or groups of
spaces. From a curatorial perspective this would seem a limiting factor of the
organisation and effectively minimise curatorial opportunity. Given this, it seems
clear that the representational intentions of the museum have been focused upon
the more singular opposition between the everyday experience of the user (the
profane) and the elevated idealism of the sacred. This focal opposition is strongly
evident in the spiralling circulation system. (See figure 04)

Figure 04 - Circulation diagram

Architectural knowledge is based upon an understanding of geometry as either

strong or weak. Psarra writes that, “Perceptual space… is observable but not
reducible into a visible schema” even though it can be conceptualised as a figurative
idea through representational logic. Here it would seem that the dimension of a
‘representational logic’ and its implicit rules, become the formatting that translates
the conceptual to the figurative. In the Acropolis museum this language is a cinema-
graphic framing which disconnects the perimeter spaces from the internal atrium.
(See figure 05)

!
71
! Page 162 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

!
!34
 Figure 05 - Transverse section through the museum

4.2.5 Ritualising The Familiar

"A ritual implies a near-frozen relationship between action and space. It
institutes a new order after the disorder of the original event. When it
becomes necessary to mediate tension and fix it by custom, then no single
fragment must escape attention. Nothing strange and unexpected must
happen. Control must be absolute."72
In Tschumi’s Acropolis museum the visitor is conditioned by the juxtaposition of two
spatial types. First, a structuring central geometry in the form of a continuous
vertical core element, creating a single interior atrium that connects the building’s
geometry with a regular section that is largely self explanatory through its vertical
visual connections. In this first spatial sequence or ‘procession' Tschumi uses
geometry to evoke the meaning of the exhibit through perceptual experience.
Curatorial intent and architectural intent; the dialogue between geometry and
content, the dramatisation of program merges within circulation, not as access to
knowledge but knowledge itself. Additionally, surrounding perimeter galleries of
differing geometric proportions allow for degrees of external visibility at each level.
By contrast to the interior core, in the perimeter galleries, exterior visibility is largely
open, filtered horizontally only by columns and limited internally by the central core.
The perimeter galleries though, have only limited association with the interior atrium
where visibility and perception is concentrated at the opposing core ends. By
contrast to the processional sloped floor as a narrative journey, the 'arrival' to the
perimeter exhibition spaces reconnects the user with the distant object of their
contemplation, the 'real' Acropolis site.
As a narrative, Tschumi has used and intentionally mixed metaphors. The personal
journey comprising of conceptual and symbolic frameworks are overlaid or
'superimposed' to create a multi-vocal experience that becomes the 'totalising'
experience of the Acropolis Museum united by the icon of the Parthenon. The
columns originate in the archaeological site itself at grade and there become is
reference system. A loose grid of structural columns that become a dominant
architectural motif through all the museum levels; holding down the layers, the
metaphorical pins of a specimen box. The visitor begins at an archaeological site,
which is only partially experienced through the glass floor of the museum. Here

72
! Page 163 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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!35
there is something of a double meaning in which the archaeology is persevered in a
container like box, viewed traditionally from above, yet the not all of the contents are
accessible a one look leaving the archaeology as it were to be perceived as
spreading out into the surrounding landscape/context. The large scale and neutral
texture of the columns then become a dominant visual delineator in the exhibition
spaces on the level above. The effect is unexpected as a sculpture collection is
diminished as individual pieces, yet heightened in its collective ambiance like the
irregular occupation of a crowd in a public urban space; a narrative defining the
transitoriness of the object against the dominance of space. The sculptures as icons
of the art world are not afforded special treatment but rather displayed casually in
relatively open space which, for the user allows a perceptual familiarity that tends to
de-mystify, by placing them in an ambivalent forest of structural columns (point grid)
and repetitious facade panels. (See figure 06) (Additional on the user's experience
see note 15, page 45)

Figure 06 - Archaic exhibit

The main galleries, tall and vast, house an outstanding number of sculptures and the
sheer verticality of the space heightens the experience for the viewer through
relationships of scale. Associated with issues of scale and particularly the
monumental, the Acropolis rock and the Parthenon itself, which are the binding
elements of the museum exhibitions. All the artefacts and objects are in one way or
another connected to this grounding rock. The visitor is constantly being made
aware of this innate unity as the museum’s design echoes along it. The relationship
between the building itself and its surrounding context changes as the viewer
moves, and it becomes evident that the visitor themselves are as much a part of the
experience as the physical built form. The user becomes an integrated part of the
architectural whole. A whole that is analogous to the circumambulation of the
Parthenon temple and ritualised in the Parthenon gallery by a circulating the frieze.
Another example is the visual prominence of the caryatids as a centre piece of the
museum collection. Isolated and elevated in the atrium space, not as an art historian
would have envisioned, but rather as they would have been originally viewed upon
approaching the Erecthion. (See figure 07)

!
!36
 Figure 07 - The caryatids

Tschumi, in constructing a ritualistic promenade has intentionally made the caryatids

not the focus of the axis, nor even an ‘event', but a visual part of the journey. One
that is mapped by the observer but not savoured. This is important because as a
significant part of the collection knowledge emerges, or become apparent through
an often semi-conscious testing of increasingly familiar spaces. The exploration of
the unknown though, is neither random nor highly structured but largely intuitive.
Relying instead on environmental supposition defined by visual links. One aspect of
cognitive mapping would be the propensity for affirmation as a normative part of the
sequencing, with a build-up to a dramatic encounter. It is the propensity to confuse
appearances with reality, a primary vehicle for didactic intent in literature that allows
partial truths to appear whole or complete. This in part affirms perception and in
particular our dependence on what is visually accessible to inform us, 'seeing is
believing’. (See additional on cognitive mapping at note 14, page 44)
Narratives by their very definition as a ‘believable’ structuring of ‘events’ are not
necessarily guided by a concern for truth but rather by an internal cohesion. Pieced
together or ’constructed’ through the experience of framing and sequencing, that
would appear not just useful but satisfying as a directed ‘story’. Following from this
the caryatids are not part of a literal reconstruction typical of most museum
displays. In some ways this is the ‘praxis’ of Tschumi's 'event', which in principle
could be either loosely structured or clearly orchestrated by circumstance and
informed by the type of ‘knowledge’ conveyed. All of the impressions that a user is
subjected to will vary according to the individual, the social factors of a ‘prevailing
atmosphere’ and a receptivity to the didactic intent of both display and architecture.
The understanding of the multiple forces that may be present or contend for
identification.
Tschumi on the one hand wanted to engage the monumental space of the gods
(sacred space) and simultaneously reinforcing the user’s position as an ‘outsider' or
'initiate’ in being introduced to a ritualised awareness of ‘place’. A geometry of
dominant space and correspondingly a freedom of visual perception is developed
with curatorial display almost secondary. In some respects it could be suggested
that there are no secondary and tertiary spaces developed as a hierarchy. Instead,
there are a series of levels linked by an open ascending circulation. The circulation

!
!37
itself composes the principle spaces and as it moves upward with increasingly
expansive views to include the context, it has the quality of ritual circumambulation
as an architectural and curatorial narrative as it reaches the Parthenon frieze. (See
figure 08)

Figure 08 - The Acropolis Museum in context with the Acropolis hill

!
!38
4.3 Conclusion to Chapter 4

The research has endeavoured to understand how the concept of a narrative could
be used as a design tool. In the examination of 'exhibition space', and more
generally the New Acropolis Museum we were able to identify how narrative
influenced the viewers perception of the content it displays. By critically testing and
evaluating how the concept of narrative influenced the structuring of geometry, as
architectural space, we began to understand how this approach was able to be both
the space of ideas and the space of experience through a 'contextualising' design
method. Through the case study of Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum we were able
to consider how it departs from the typical museum's internal dialogue to challenge
the observer's understanding of the connection between the sacred and the
profane, expanding cultural knowledge and redefining museum architecture.

Narrative reflection is unquestionably a significant part of the translation from

intuition, an abstract sense of reality that is the seed of experience, a logic of
discovery and finally a memory that is the basis of knowledge. If the difference
between building and architecture could simply be put as the latter having more
than just utilitarian purpose, and indeed at a fundamental level a didactic intent, then
that intent must be at the heart of any project from conceptualisation to a materiality
of building elements. Architecture, unlike the space in which literature exists, is a
real constructed physical environment with real human interaction. But it is the
‘representational’ as a medium that provides the structural bridge between
conceptual hypothesis and the conjectural imagination.
Museums are an important testing ground for architectural theories not because of
the material exhibited but rather to explore how a dialogue between perception and
understanding is fostered by diverse strategies of didactic intent(s) involving the
reading of a constructed environment through experience. Spatial syntax studies
become important measures of spatial integration as a measure of how the space is
read by the user/visitor. The complex hierarchical inter-relations of geometry as a
conceptual schema, become through spatial articulation and overlaid with
circulation sequences, structures that control the language of architecture. For
researchers such as Psarra a strong geometry also heightens (clarifies) perceptions
as expectations and hence formalise abstract properties into the representational.
Psarra's measure of relative stability of geometry vs display strategy makes for a
creative tension that accentuates perception leading towards knowledge between a
curatorial intent and an architectural intent. Tschumi’s museum sets itself apart by
denying that there should be such a division.
Finally, the contextualising of the building is extremely important in that it has
nothing to do with ideal notions of ‘fit’ but rather the complexity and contradictions
that represent the totalising impact of the environment; historical, intellectual,
physical and emotional. This, as the above discussion makes clear, distinguishes it
not only from the way it has been conceptualised and then realised as geometry,
space and circulation, but of equal importance from the way the user experience
has been radically re-thought within the museum typology. (Also see additional note
17 on issue of context, page 45)

!
!
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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS
!
“Each Society expects architecture to reflect its ideals and domesticate its
deeper fears.”73
!
5.1 Transgression: The Acropolis Museum as a Phenotype
This essay has been concerned with exploring the potential for a narrative approach
to architectural expression, particularly as it develops from conceptualisation
through the design process and ultimately to the figurative. In an effort to both
narrow the scope and to capitalise on a building type that is customarily directed
towards narrative issues of representation, the discussion has focused on the
Acropolis Museum as a case study. The study has also been limited to attempting to
link theory and practice to a single architect, writer and practitioner, Bernard
Tschumi's work is particularly valuable in attempting to follow a consistent evolution
of ideas that have an internal integrity and which directly inform his practical work.
The museum as a building type is in many ways representative of the merger of
architecture’s pre-occupation with space/use and urban planning’s larger concern
for the inter-relationship of spatial uses. In the museum we find curatorial intent
concerned with the display, set against an architectural intent of a hierarchy of
spatial representations. In all of this, the focus is upon the experience of the viewer/
user, which becomes the subject of manipulation so as to construct meaning and
significance by selectively influencing or controlling perception. How a scene is
represented; conditions, associations, depth of field, choices for focus and
direction, information and importantly social interaction become a paradigmatic
‘field of knowledge'. In a broad sense this informational field can be influenced by a
number of critical factors that are in themselves the essential variables that
characterise any architectural design problem.
Bernard Tschumi's Acropolis Museum, in concert with his writing on context, space,
program and event, explore narrative structure in two opposing fields of perception
and bodily experience that simultaneously define the conditions of architecture as a
complex field of relationships. The Acropolis Museum is a unique response to the
paradox of the pyramid and the labyrinth. (See explanatory note 11, page 44) This is
not to suggest it is a resolution but perhaps more interestingly that the two
conditions can exist in the same place as a dynamic context. Where as Psarra notes
of Borges influence that;

“Borges blurs the distinction between ideas, buildings and texts, first to
create poetic relationships among these artefacts and second to intensify
the fact that although they influence one another in reality they are different
categories.”74
This is because buildings as real events do not coincide with the theories that
represent them. Likewise, real life does not correspond to its representation in
fiction. Psarra concludes the role of Borges and narrative is to put forward theories

73
! Page 72 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction
! Page 231 of Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and
74

Cultural Meaning (1 ed.)

!
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and texts that are representations of the world, not reconstructions of it. But it is
inspiring to consider that Tschumi’s museum returns us to a theatre of ‘events’, a
street theatre of suspending disbelief in favour of the possible. What it seems
Tschumi has done is to set a stage that ‘socialises’ the objects of culture by re-
asserting them back into the cultural field, a frame of perception that is contextual in
orientation.
Tschumi's Acropolis Museum achieves the transgressional critique that he defines
as appropriate to architecture's role as a voice in culture. Importantly, 'narrative' as a
design parameter (and Tschumi’s approach or method) has demonstrated that only
when architecture as a discipline challenges boundaries of its own language and
internal discourse, can it effectively renew its cultural significance. Tschumi
provocatively writes, "Architecture is the ultimate erotic act. Carry it to excess and it
will reveal the traces of reason and the sensual experience of space.
Simultaneously."75 (See note 09 for additional, page 43)

!
!

75
! Page 76 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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6.0 Notes
1. Levi Strauss continues the above passage with the qualification to refute the
hard distinction of dialectical reason from its analytical counterpart in writing that
dialectical reason, "…is something additional to analytical reason: the condition
necessary for it to venture to undertake the resolution of the human into the non
human.” Levi-Strauss is emphasising the potential of a conceptual narrative to
create a hypothetical realism through which belief may be postulated; where the
intangible (receding shore) in a situation (or a designed set of relationships) may
be brought to conscious awareness.
!
2. Tschumi makes a number of important observations. The first; is a critique of
what in the 1970s had become the reification of theory; a cerebral game of
semantics which ultimately only supported an circular aesthetic idealism as a
reaction to the sterile pragmatism of form and function yet even more remote
(irrelevant) than early modernism’s optimistic belief in influencing social values.
Second; is that architecture, its desire for a rationality self justification has
eliminated all notion that architecture engages the physical body and its
emotional experience of the environment. Additionally, Tschumi considers the
‘sensuality’ of how a user emotionally and intellectually engages experience
likening problem solving as a logic of rules to untying the ‘knots of bondage’.
The more knots (difficulty) the greater the pleasure. There is here an
acknowledgement of a level of formalism in how culture is constructed and
transmitted through ritual. Throughout most of Tschumi writings he emphasises
that the relationships are neither static, or nor clinical in their clarity or
predictability. Instead, Tschumi stresses the notion that there is a condition of
reciprocity between user and event, a spontaneity that is beyond the control of
the ‘script’, (architect as spatial script-writers) making the ‘narrative condition’
equally shared.
!
3. In Tschumi’s writing there is a continuous undercurrent within his terms of ‘script’
or ‘strategy’ that heralds the importance of the ‘dramatic’ in the event, as a
product of space and program which essentially combine in staging a
performance that includes the observer/user as more than just an audience but
part of the performance. In many respects Tschumi proposes a delicate balance
between opportunity for ‘control’ and ‘choice’ within the ‘script’ and hence part
of the a narrative reciprocity. As discussed, these are two fundamental aspects
of museum/exhibition design addressed by spatial syntax studies. It is the view
of this paper that they are also central to the narrative condition that develops
within the design process and becomes part of architecture’s cultural
expression. For Tschumi this balance is a persistent duality whose centre is
somewhere between the faculties of reasoning and experience rather than an
‘opposition’. This is evident in Tschumi’s interest in ‘sequencing’, which is like
the raw structure through which architecture constructs the space of
performance. It is the intersection of user, space and program in the unfolding of
events that encompass, order, conflict, reason, symbolism, sensuality, reflection,
comfort and discomfort that evolves through experience to be knowledge.
!
4. In assembling the pieces of architecture’s interactive nature Tschumi is not
looking for fundamental structures that may suggest a common denominator but
rather to the disjunctive qualities of thought to develop concepts and experience
that would ‘trigger’ dynamic forces through which to model architecture. Using
Venturi’s language these are the qualities that, sensed as ‘complexity’ and which
foster ambiguity resulting in ‘contradictions’ and instability and with it the desire
to see a new structure of relationships. Tschumi’s questioning and the potential

!
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 for design exploring disjunction is the polar opposite to architecture accepted
role to harmonise, or blend in; a smoothing out of irregularities that would result
from synthesis and accommodation. Again, as in the Manhattan Transcripts the
event of disjunction is the result of a collision between appearance and reality,
the heart of any narrative story.
!
5. Tschumi states that he is exploring new ‘codes of assemblage’, asserting that
spatial sequences are structural yet not necessarily didactic in that meaning can
be experienced independently as an order of experience rather than an order of
composition. Tschumi is here emphasising the role of sequence in influencing
perception and ultimately knowledge of the world and ourselves within it. This is
to be found in how Tschumi conceives two narrative frameworks that are not
mutually exclusive. A ‘loose narrative’ that is largely open ended, as opposed to
a 'directed narrative', which is didactic in intent. In the case of the Acropolis
Museum, Tschumi is wary of any theoretical agenda, and instead with an
admirable consistency, allows the ‘context’ to be self-evident and assertive of its
own parameters. Tschumi provides continues evidence that a 'context' coupled
with 'program' will combine to articulate a particular 'set' of internal architectural
parameters. That’s not to say these 'orders' may contrast or even contradict
exterior reading of the building as it responds to a number of local contextual
interpretations.
!
6. Design is a process of going back and forth among hundreds of ideas, where
partial solutions and details are repeatedly tested in order to gradually reveal and
fuse a complete rendition of thousands of demands and criteria… An
architectural project is not only a result of a problem solving process; it is also a
metaphysical proposition that expresses the architect’s mental world and his/her
understanding through human experiences .
!
7. Here context is abstractly represented as composite ‘design issues’; a mixture of
emotive interpretation based on existing knowledge distilled as a ‘summary’
through graphic notation of a ‘sketch’. There is in this respect an interesting
correspondence between the analysis of’ ‘sketching’ and spatial syntax
diagrams of display types. They are similar in recording a time/focus patterns
that show emphasis at particular intersections and then ‘leaps’ to other areas.
Palms', J. Elaborates in The Thinking Hand (2009) observes, “The design
process simultaneously scans the inner and the outer worlds and intertwines the
two universes.”
!
8. Psarra also notes that, “[open] space lacks a fixed shape of visible knowledge.”
Space in this sense is neutral in that it has no boundaries; no relations, it is
space that is un-configured and non-representational in nature. This raises the
question of how conceptual space develops. From the observations of spatial
syntax studies of perception discussing circulation’s relationship to a hierarchy
of spaces, definition is variable and the subject of speculation and conjecture in
the form of design hypothesis because perceptual, that is emotional component,
that grows within the skeleton of conceptual space rendering it knowable and
‘real’ however imaginary. Drawing (regardless of medium), the dialogue between
the hand and the eye, between conception and perception facilitates the
visualisation of space as a knowledge of geometric form.
!
9. Whether literal or phenomenal transgression, architecture is seen as the
momentary and sacrilegious convergence of real space and ideal space. Limits,

!
!43
 remain for transgression does not mean the methodical destruction of any code
or rule that concerns space or architecture. On the contrary, it introduces new
articulations between inside and outside, between concept and experience.
!
10. The architect conceives of forms and relationships in such a way as to express
an idea or an intent that, the whole of which is more than the sum of the parts…
hence the ‘idea’ dominates and becomes part of the experience. In this instance
the geometry, although governed as forms, become configured and experienced
primarily as spaces. But, architecture constitutes the abstraction of absolute
truth, (how big is the labyrinth?) while this very truth gets in the way of the telling.
We cannot both experience and think of what we experience. “The concept of
the dog does not bark, the concept of space is not space.” - Tschumi,
Architecture and Disjunction.
!
11. Pyramid and the Labyrinth.
Pyramid = A mental conceptualisation of space based on rules or reason (such
as a pure geometrical figure). Labyrinth = Space occupied by the body - space
that has been configured in hillier terms. As per Borges’s images. This
conceptual process is the dematerialisation of architecture’s reality and an entity
and is in turn focuses on the how and why of relationships.
!
12. When one considers how Tschumi frames his train of thought it is significant to
observe his terms of reference, the unfolding logic of ‘premise and conjecture’
that is a ‘scripted/staged’ narrative of experience. Tschumi’s use of narrative is in
many ways a parallel exploration of how individuals and, society (ultimately
generalised by culture) attain knowledge through experience.
!
13. For example, director for Centre Pompidou, Pontus Hulten describes his
museum as having a spatial structure that resembled a city, "...that consists of
squares, streets, dead ends…” In some sense cognitive mapping is partly a
process of appropriation of the experiential qualities of a space; ‘identifying’
them within both their immediate physical context and a parallel conceptual
context of meaning. Creating an invisible pedagogy of spatial narratives that
would develop and/or influence behaviour/experience through choice.
!
14. One can reflect on the architectural narrative through which they have just
traversed. Bringing together the numerous stories into a unified whole. The
directed movement paths allowing specific encounters tie to predetermined
logics of history. The idea and intentions behind the museum building’s spatial
layout are experienced through the situated encounters with very different types
of exhibition spaces and specific ways of bringing the visitor in contact with the
exhibits, and not least, with the museum’s context, the adjacent Acropolis Hill.
By allowing transparency and direction through movement routes the viewer is
almost forced to direct their attention to the 'relational in-between-ness’ of the
architecture and its context. While doing this it does also lead one to notice the
physical distance and separation between the Acropolis and its museum. The
character of these possible connections allow for the viewer's experience to be
both spatial and temporal, as the “here and-now in Athens, in the twenty-first
century and yet points towards the historic past, to ancient Greek culture.” -
Annette Svaneklink Jakobsen. The architecture of the Acropolis Museum pre-
conditions the historical experiences of the viewer, pointing towards certain
views and ideals yet to a degree still allows contemplation and individual
connections. Local factors may reflect particular types of engagement or act as

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 counterpoints, all of which become a recognition of a larger cultural context. For
example, a clear distinction can be made between patterns of movement and
relative spatial connectivity, though this cannot be argued as necessarily positive
or negative. There are also social factors which expresses patterns of movement
created. In this regard, space is not simply a framework that contains human
activity and experience, but a conduit and catalyst for it. Thus space as a
variable can be unpredictable, yet influential upon the dynamics of a particular
configuration as it is an important part of the holistic cultural experience.
!
15. In assessing a narrative intent it is fundamental to consider the user like a reader,
or any observer looks for logical clues to read the environment. The Acropolis
Museum achieves a unique synthesis of ideals distilled from his projects to
achieve a merger of architecture and curatorial strategy. In Tschumi’s project and
in accord with his writings, experience encompasses a critical review of context,
and program to create an event through which the structure and morphology of
a museum is reborn as a phenotype. As a phenotype the museum is profoundly
contextual as a signifier. In appearance the Acropolis Museum is dominated by
the space of geometry. In particular its scale and in contrast to its actual context,
is surprisingly large, almost the space of urbanity turned inside out.
!
16. Reading space is concerned with how a user conceptualises the fundamental
characteristics of architecture, through geometrical organisation, shape, scale,
symmetry, axiality, order/hierarchy, sequence, circulation and direction. Against
these pragmatic physical dimensions is added, the addition phenomenological
characteristics that define a sense of place through the qualities of enclosure
ambiance and amenity. In attempting to review a project for its narrative capacity
and in particular its use of a design approach that is narrative in nature we must
necessarily define design parameters that are generic in scope. It is sufficient for
an elementary assessment that relationships be simple and comparatively
oppositional in nature. The assessment is concerned to define strategies rather
than particular rationalisations.
!
17. Context is a primary source of information in terms of how a work of architecture
relates to its physical and social setting. For Tschumi this issue cannot be
reduced to one of complementariness or ‘fit’ but rather a, “Pragmatic context
versus urban typology versus spatial experience versus procedure, and so on to
provide a dialectical framework for research.”76
!
18. In answering the question of how space is conceptualised and then structured to
produce readable and comprehensible environments, we must identify space as
not neutral, but rather configured by objects that create relationships between
the viewer and themselves. Spaces are themselves also connected to other
spaces to develop varying degrees of integration. From the standpoint of a
spatial syntax (Hillier et all) the patterns of connectivity between spaces may be
evaluated to assess an integration value. The integration value would also
correlate with patterns of movement. Ultimately the level of integration produces
a rating of ‘Intelligibility’, which as a measure of integration suggests how
socially meaningful and informative the experience becomes. The property of
integration can be measured based on axial, convex or isovist maps depending
on the different types of layouts, or the characteristics most crucial for the
questions at hand. In contrast, seeing what individual spaces are like;
developing a sense of them, requires movement as does any understanding of

76
! Page 148 of Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction

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 relationships between spaces which than acquires a temporal dimension as well.
There are then two opposing notions of space ; one through a logic of geometry
(abstract and generalised and conceptual) and the other an interpretation of
space in terms of or in relation to levels of integration which implies a system
and hence how space is configured. How space is configured may have a
reference base far beyond the immediate circumstances to include global
allusions.
!
19. The idea of an integrative mechanism, one that takes into account different
aspects/dimensions of experience, from the physical to the psychological is
often assumed by terms like cognitive mapping. There is evidence to suggest a
cross cognitive referencing between levels of meaning/recognition from ‘local’ to
‘global’ conforming to the practical and symbolic.
!
20. This methodology importantly is neither prescriptive as a ‘how to’ nor didactic as
a philosophical intent but rather appropriately neutral aesthetically, concerning
itself instead with structuring key relationships.
!
21. The design method then as a series of logical operations based on context and
program that will produce a limited number of generally familiar typologies,
constructing relationships in the form of ‘building sets’ which define a design
paradigm for those conditions. The development of building sets as a base of a
building typology has the important quality of displacing style/appearance as a
criteria of categorisation in spatial assessment.
!
22. "The parti is the dominant idea of the building which embodies the salient
characteristics of that building. The parti diagram encapsulates the essential
minimum of the design, without which the scheme would not exist, but from
which the form can be generated."77
!
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77
! Page 203 of Clark, R. H., & Pause, M. (1979). Analysis of Precedent: An Investigation of
Elements, Relationships, and Ordering Ideas in the Work of Eight Architects

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!
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