Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also about event, action, and what happens in space. B.Tschumi
Developed between 1976 and 1981, the Manhattan Transcripts are a theoretical visual work by Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi (More on Socks.). By coupling drawings and photographs, the sheets embody an attempt to include into architectural representation the relationship between space and its use, and, as Tschumi himself adds, between “the set and the script, between “type” and “program,” between objects and events“. In this sense, the explicit references for the Transcripts are Eisenstein’s film scripts or Moholy-Nagy stage directions.
The Transcripts also aim at uncovering the disjunctions among “use, form and social values“, (each element traced on a different axis), to reveal how they relate but never coincide. At the same time, architecture is used as a tool to interpret reality “directing” the movement of people through space.
The Transcripts aimed to offer a different reading of architecture in which space, movement, and events are independent, yet stand in a new relation to one another, so that the conventional components of architecture are broken down and rebuilt along different axes. Bernard Tschumi
All images © Bernard Tschumi
Images via:
Adam Achrati
Landing Architecture
I have been unsuccessful at deciphering Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts. Any help?