Architecture Beyond Architecture

Bernard Tschumi is widely recognized as one of today’s foremost architects. First known as a theorist, he drew attention to his innovative architectural practice, in 1983, when he won the prestigious competition for the Parc de La Villette. Since then, he has made a reputation for groundbreaking designs that include the new Acropolis Museum in Athens and Le Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts in France. Very early in his career, Tschumi collaborated with RoseLee Goldberg on the exhibition A Space: A Thousand Words at the Royal College of Art, which brought together artists and architects as well as students and faculty from both the RCA, where Goldberg directed the school’s art gallery, and the Architectural Association, where Tschumi taught design. As evidenced in the conversation, it was precisely Tschumi’s exposure to such interdisciplinary exchanges early in his career that served to inform a radical rethinking of architecture. The many books devoted to Tschumi’s writings and architectural practice include a comprehensive monograph, titled Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color, the four-part Event-Cities series, and The Manhattan Transcripts. Tschumi has taught architecture at a range of institutions including the Architectural Association in London, Princeton University, and The Cooper Union in New York. He was dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University from 1988 to 2003, where he is currently a professor. Tschumi’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Pompidou Center in Paris. This conversation took place in New York on March 12, 2014.

Our questions focus on two general topic areas that we see as forming a bridge between performance art and your particular approach to architecture. The first concerns modes of transdisciplinary practice and the second addresses issues related to movement and temporality. We’d like to start by having you talk about the ways in which the London art scene in the 1970s, and your collaborations with RoseLee Goldberg at the time, influenced your thinking about architecture.

I had always been interested in some of the early Bauhaus experiments in theatre. Later I discovered Artaud as he also touched on a theoretical approach to the body in space. For me, Artaud was one figure among several, surrealism, for example, and [Frederick] Kiesler, Duchamp, and Georges Bataille, of course. So I would say that to answer your question, much of what I did in London was trying to reconcile two aspects of my work as an architect, what I would call the concept and the experience. One part of the discourse I was interested in was intensely political and the other part was indeed quite intrigued by the art scene. The AA [Architectural Association of London] at the time was quite close to Saint Martin’s [School of Art], so there was already some interaction. Also RoseLee Goldberg, then at the Royal College of Art, with whom I organized an exhibition called A Space: A Thousand Words at the RCA in 1975, helped organize a series of seminars at the AA that included a number of artists. I was trying to get to architecture without addressing architecture frontally, but rather through its margins; hence, the combination of a fairly theoretical approach, which I put under the umbrella of concept, and a more experiential approach, which was loosely related to the art scene.

You moved to New York in the mid-1970s because of your interest in the art scene where writers and artists were involved in real exchanges. You’ve mentioned how the only venues to show your work at the time were alternative spaces in the art world, a situation that recalls Philip Glass writing about his early years as an experimental composer in New York when he faced a very similar predicament. What was your involvement with the New York art scene, specifically performance art, and how did it influence your thinking about architecture?

I’ll just add one thing. There was another reason for me to come to New York: it’s the...