Delirious New York

vs
Manhattan Transcripts
‘The architect designs the set, writes
the script and directs the answers’
- B. Tschumi
PLUG-IN SYSTEM
Maps shown by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious NY
Commisioner’s proposal for the Manhattan Grid, 1811
as shown in Delirious New York
Central Park and the ‘manipulation
of nature’ Tree Moving Machine
as shown in Delirious New York
 ‘Hood meets secretly with him at midnight’

Tough-Minded Realism v Romantic Fantasy Stylistic Tricks

1. Historical Present Verb Tense
Needle & Globe at the 1853
World’s Fair
Location of Coney Island vis a vis Manhattan
‘Metropolitan Densities arrive at Coney Island’
as shown in Delirious New York
‘Leap Frog Railway – exhilarating accident
witnessed from parallel track.’
as shown in Delirious New York
Tough-Minded Realism v Romantic Fantasy Stylistic Tricks
2. The single sentence as full paragraph
 Luna Park skyline by day...

...and by night

as shown in Delirious New York

Dreamland Burns at Coney Island as shown
in Delirious New York
Tough-Minded Realism v Romantic Fantasy Stylistic Tricks
3. Generalisations
The Globe Tower
100 Storey Building, Starret’s Proposal
1909 Theorem:
the skyscraper as utopian device for the
production of unlimted numbers of virgin
sites on a single metropolotan location
Axonometric section
through the Walfdorf
Astoria as shown in
Delirious New York
Tough-Minded Realism v Romantic Fantasy Stylistic Tricks
4. Unrealism
Rockettes, Radio City Music Hall
Downtown Athletic Club
 “The strength of montage lies in the fact that it involves the
spectator’s emotions and reason. The spectator is forced to
follow the same creative path that the authors followed when
creating the image. The spectator does not only see the depicted
elements of the work; he also experiences the dynamic process
of the emergence and formation of the image . . . .

“So now we can say that it is precisely the montage principle,

as distinct from the depictive principle, which forces the
spectator himself to create, and thereby releases that great
force of latent creative excitement within the spectator which
distinguishes an emotional work from the informational logic
of a plain exposition of events.”
Theory of Montage – Sergei Eisenstein
Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa, 1950
Tonal Montage – Image
MT 1 – ‘The Park’ – Central Park, NY

MT 2 – ‘The Street’ – 42nd Street

MT 3 – ‘The Tower’ – home, asylum, prison, hotel, etc.

MT 4 – ‘The Block’ – 5 inner courtyards within city blocks

Manhattan Transcripts
1976-1981
Bernard Tschumi
Intellectual Montage
 MT 1 – ‘The Park’

Photos
Plans Diagrams
 Photos
Action (Violence)

Plans
Architectural Manifestations (Object)

Photos Plans Diagrams

Diagrams
Movements of the Protagonists (Subject)
MT 2 – ‘The Street’
Polyphonic Montage
John Perver (AA ‘78), The Opera and its Double, 1978
The Kuleshov Effect, Alfred Hitchcock
MT 3 – ‘The Tower’
Overtonal Montage
MT 4 – ‘The Block’
 Cinematography – Jump-Cut
Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
Cinematography – Jump-Cut
Carlos Villanueva (AA ‘82), The Timber Fibre Factory, 1981-83
Neil Porter (Dip 10), The Furniture Precinct, 1981-82
Odessa Steps Scene
Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein,
1925