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Architectural Theory Review

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An Interview With Bernard Tschumi

Published online: 28 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: (2002) An Interview With Bernard Tschumi, Architectural Theory Review, 7:1,
79-88, DOI: 10.1080/13264820209478446

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 ATR 7:1/02

An Interview With
Bernard Tschumi
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Gevork Hartoonian: In an article published in Assemblage (# 25, 1995), you spoke about "the
political commitment of architecture." Modern architecture, I would suggest, was by definition political
in two ways: first, it had to confront the tradition of classicism in a landscape that was mostly shaped
by the remnants of medieval towns; and second, by the commitment of some architects around the
1920s to social housing as a coDective agenda. How would you characterize the political dimension of
architecture in regard to the collective aspect of architecture?

Bernard Tschumi: Any discussion of architecture and its

political dimension raises huge questions that would take us
literally several hours to cover, but let me just bring out two
points that Ifindimportant. Firstly, for me as an architect, what
counts in a building is not so much what it looks like, but what it
does. Buildings can either accelerate certain social
transformations or slow them down, in other words, a building is
a place where things happen. 1 would say that architecture
should be defined not only as space but also as the thing that
happens in the space, that is, as space and event. As soon as you
start talking about the thing that happens in the space, you enter
a social and dierefore political dimension. As an architect one
simply has to be aware of mat and therefore when 1 design a
building or discuss these architectural issues I always introduce
the notion of use, of activities, and therefore of program. Hence
the relationship between space and program, 1 think, cannot
simply be political; it must be political. So that's thefirstremark.
The second remark relates to your point about how the issue of
architecture in politics was addressed in the twenties and thirties.
Interestingly enough, in our culture today it is not addressed any
more—nobody talks about it. It is not even old-fashioned—it
does not exist—it's out. This mav be a reflection of our society,

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 Tschumi

and it may also be a reflection of the fact that there have been so
many misunderstandings about what architecture and politics
could have to do with one another; and there were many
misunderstandings in the twenties, 1 think. But that's where the
conversation becomes too long. One could review the various
ideologies and theories of the time, but I think for a number of
reasons it always leads to misunderstandings.
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GH: In the 1970s you worked on iheManhattan Transcripts, a text that is concerned with the city (New
York) as part of the collective dimension of architecture. Most of your commissions are buildings
serving institutions. Is the political dimension of architecture accessible through this kind of commission?

BT: Yes, it is accessible to us, but

for me these days it's a conscious
choice to deal with buildings. You
are absolutely right that in the
early days, not only at the time of
the Manhattan Transcripts but
throughout the seventies and
eighties and later [I was concerned
with the city]. The Manhattan
Transcripts was a theoretical
project, but Pare de la Villette, for
example, started as a piece of the
city and as a strategy for a piece of
the city. Other competitions that I
did or that I have won were
dealing with those large-scale
strategies. The problem that I
found was twofold:firstly,the
mechanisms of transforming
pieces of the city not only take
many years, but secondly, they're
intensely political, political in the
sense of party politics. I remember
a project that I did for Lausanne,
proposing four inhabited bridges
that would cross a valley. We won
the competition, but when we put
in the master plan for the city it
Lerner Center, Columbia University
then became part of urbanism and
Photograph by G. Hartoonian

SO
 ATR 7:1/02

city planning, and subject to rules and regulations. And at the last
moment there was a change of government and five years of
work disappeared, simply because the government—which was
socialist and enthusiastic about the project—changed into a
government of the right that didn't want to hear about it. Hence
it develops that there is no role left for the architect to play—and
1 want to produce work. Then you can see two possibilities in
these large-scale projects. One is to use your role as a polemicist,
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in other words, pointing in certain direction but in a, let's say,

polemical manner and sometimes implementing them but not
always. Or you then would stay for a very long time following
those processes, and 1findthem highly difficult to control.
Because increasingly you find yourself in a situation where the
architect does not change circumstances; he provides die
conditions for change. And recently I found that individual
buildings could do that. In other words, my buildings are all very
urban, they are all in the city. Hence, the strategy is more one of
acting on certain points but not on the global situation. By
pushing a button at one local place, my hope is that it has an
urban effect. In other words, whether it's with Pare de la Villette
or whether it's with the Lerner Center at Columbia, I like my
buildings being, as it were, urban-activated.

GH: Could you explain further: how does what you call "pushing a button" work in the Lerner Center,
for example?

BT: First of all, one has to say that at the Lerner Center the city is
really the university—in other words, it's really an internal sort of
community. But within that community what I wanted to achieve
is a high level of interaction between different students. Hence
for me what the building looked onto outside was relatively
unimportant. In other words, we were totally constrained, we
had to follow the master plan and so on, but inside we had an
enormous amount of freedom. What I was interested in was to
take the program and organize it in such a way that all the
activities would look onto that central space and that central
space, the space with the ramps, would be a space of meeting, a
space of interaction, even occasionally a space of conflict, so that
it would become a new social space for the university. That was a
very conscious move and indeed that's one of my interests.

81
 Tschumi

GH: But, in my experience of this building I had a strong sense of a diagonal axis introduced into the
campus.

BT: That was not my primary concern. As we designed we found

out something fascinating with the master plan of McKim &
White: there aren't any diagonals, everything is frontal, there are
no corners, so we said let's do a comer and let's play. For
example, there was the amazing fact that you have Broadway on
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one level and the campus half a level above. This has not been
known; he hid it, and I wanted to reveal it. You are absolutely
right! it's nice you saw it. That was not my primary concern but it
was a secondary one.

GH: It seems to me that by putting a huge glass wall on one side of the Lerner Center you are making
the political statement that architecture could be transgressive only in an in-between zone.

BT: Yes, that was the impression [I wished to give].

GH: The specific significance of your work, at least to me, and in the landscape of neo-avant-garde
architecture, is that there is a sense of objectivity in your work. This objectivity, of course, has its own
history in Russian Constructivism and the New Objectivity or Sachlichkeit current in the 1920s. In your
work, however, the 'Object' seems to be redeemed from traditions such as form/function, form/
content. Also, your work does not have a representational or symbolic dimension. Such a perception
of the autonomous object reminds me of Barthes's discourse on the Pleasure of the Text, where the
duality of sign/signifier supplants 'textual practice.'

BT.Let'sfirstto address the issue of 'pleasure,' because it is

related to the political. They go together. When 1 started to talk
about the use of space or the misuse of the space, or the
interaction between space and event, I necessarily spoke also
about pleasure: the pleasure of the senses, of social interaction,
of interaction between a person and the building. This is, I think,
fundamental. I never see a building as a sculpture. Again, I am
not interested in form perse but 1 am interested in form as it
interacts with the body. That's why, for example, a form for me is
like something that will induce movement or that will accelerate
movement or slow it down—so that it's always a body in space
and that's absolutely crucial, and therefore I see enormous
pleasure in it. Then there is something which of course goes
back to my very early texts, when I was intensely interested in the
conceptual and intellectual dimension of architecture, but then

82
 ATR 7:1 /02

asked myself how do 1 reconcile this conceptual dimension and

the experiential body, the body's experience? At that time 1 was
fascinated by the work of Georges Bataille and his writings on
eroticism, and his definition of eroticism as the place between
life and death, where death was considered to be the most highly
conceptual moment in life and, of course, the most highly
pleasurable moment. From this 1 found a way to develop an
apparatus to deal with architecture that was not a formal
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apparatus. It dealt, rather, with devices, so that architecture

would always be something active and dynamic rather than
passive. Interestingly enough, this leads me to the discussion of
objectivity. That is, if 1 do anything in architecture it's about what
it can do—either what it can do experientially as we use the
building, or how you move through it or how you build it. And
indeed 1 am very different from some of my friends, who work
mostly in what 1 would call visualfireworks,but 1 am much more
interested in experientialfireworksand programmatic fireworks.

GH: Would you please discuss the pleasure implied in a text and the pleasure experienced in a building?
Some scholars (Alina Payne, for one) have suggested that the Renaissance architects were concerned
with the idea of pleasure experienced by detecting the trace of the familiar in a building. How different
is your discourse on pleasure? Was the idea of superimposing the Rietveld-Schroder House over
Palladio's Villa Rotonda aimed at generating pleasure?

BT: It also involves the pleasure of using or breaking a

convention and playing with and against it. You may remember
an advertisement for architecture called 'Rope and Rules': it is
the very constraints of architecture that you can turn into
pleasure, and so on. So, amusingly enough, when we do those
competitions I always make sure that everything works, that
every programmatic element that's pan of the constraints, the
ropes and the rules, works—and that's the pleasure of it. But
coming back to your point about writing and building, I think
that architecture is an unbelievably complex andrichmaterial.
And again, because of that dimension of the conceptual and the
experiential you have different ways to actually apprehend
architecture. You can do it through drawing, you can do it
through building, and you can do it through writing and other
means. When I do a project 1 will use plans, 1 will also use
sections, I will use axonometrics, I will use models and
perspectives. These are very different things. I don't achieve the

83
 Tschumi

same things through an axonometric as when 1 do a plan or a

model. It tells me something else. Now with a computer it's even
more so. 1 need all these things to apprehend architecture. I
would add that 1 also need writing in architecture, even though I
don't write texts anymore the way 1 used to, because time is
really a very big issue. I always write pieces about the buildings
that I am working on, because writing, as a tool, allows me to
address issues that are different than the issues I would address
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through drawings. Hence, 1findit indispensable to constantly

move back and forward between building, drawing, and writings;
for me it's all pan of the same thing. So therefore, I do not at all
believe all those people who talk about theory versus practice,
and the separation between the two we talk about in education
in America today. They are pans of the same whole.

GH: That's interesting. Besides architectural drawing and model making, the building achieves a
different life after construction. Does theory have a role at this stage too?

BT: When the building is finished?

GH: Yes. Would you suggest to someone that that person should read your writings before experiencing
your building?

BT: Never! My feeling is that the building can be apprehended in

so many different ways, and 1 want it to be perceived without
filters (as when talking about objectivity). At the same time I'm
all in favor of people being informed about the building. 1 can go
and see a movie without knowing anything about what they were
trying to achieve. I will have great pleasure in seeing that film—
that's one thing. But if I read a little bit about it and know what
they were trying to do, my pleasure would be even greater. So 1
encourage people to read things, but they don't have to.

GH: Infilm,I would say, the event is pre-programmed because it is achieved by dramatization of an
action through light, movement, sound, and the tactile qualities of the cut. Is the event in your
architecture pre-programmed?

BT: No it's not.

GH: Is it in "use"?
 ATR 7:1/02

BT: Absolutely. It is really important to

make the distinction between program
and event. Program and event are not
the same. A program is a set of habits,
repeating conventions that are
formulated in such a way that you a n
write them down and have them as
instructions for a building. They are
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predictable activities. Event is exactly

the opposite. Event is the unpredictable,
it is the thing that you cannot write in
the program. It is the surprises! In many
ways what I will try to do in a building is
to put the program in such a way that it
triggers unsuspected and unpredicted
interactions. That is what I call event.
The event is not what architects
prepare. That's why I also say that the
architect is not designing the event but
is designing the conditions that may or
may not trigger events.

GH: You have worked with Jacques

Derrida and you are also familiar with his
work. Is it not metaphysical to charge
architecture with a political assignment?

Lemer Center, Columbia University BT: I don't talk about metaphysics. 1

Photograph by G. Hartoonian tend to be fascinated by the history of
ideas and by the game of language. But
in a sense, if you look back to the notion of objectivity, I tend to
leave metaphysics to others.

GH: Again, pan of this sense of objectivity in your work and the way you have directed the school at
Columbia University remind me of the Bauhaus School, a progressive school that heavily relied on
technology for changing architectural production. Do you see any role for tele-communication
technologies in the evolution of 'objectivity'?

BT: Oh yes, definitely. I think it is nice to have you make the

comparison with the Bauhaus. The times have changed so much.

8^
 Tschumi

We are now living at a time when things are very loose—there are
very few strong moral, ethical, or even social ideologies. The
Bauhaus could establish a morality of design, but today we can't
really do it in the same way, so as a result one is forced to make a
constant investigation of the 'new.' That is, always trying to push
thinking, materials, but also to push that dimension, even if 1
personally am not fascinated by that form of game. So what I
have been trying to do at Columbia was simply to constantly say
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that the university is one of the places still left in the world where
people can think, explore, push the boundaries, push the limit.
The educational consequences are that education is not learning
what has been before. When you arrive at graduate school, let's
say, it's not learning what others have done before you. It's
opening doors for the things that other people will do later. So 1
see education as a place for opening doors, not only for students,
but also for the faculty and graduates. So that has been my
intention. I often compare the school to a city. That is, you have
to have all sons of things happening, sometimes even things
contrary to it. It is very clear that this is different from the
Bauhaus. I try to have people within the school who have
different points of view and who disagree with one another. All I
do is to make sure that they don't kill one another, but that they
keep debating. But if one kills the other then there is no more
debate. So the point is also that the wonderful thing about
academic institutions, especially in America, or, I would say, in
die Anglo-Saxon world, because it is not quite the same in France
or even in Italy, is that it's possible to get an interaction between
theory and practice, between people who write, people who
think and people who design. It's possible. Not only that, but this
relates back to my point that architecture is just as much the
written word as the drawing or the built work.

GH: In the sixties you were a radical young architect supporting and even engaged with the May 68
student uprising. I have looked at some of the pamphlets ofAA at that time and I found your work very
different. Is Bernard Tschumi, the Dean of an Ivy League school, the same anti-institutional and radical
architect?

BT: Amusing. 1 would say yes but I have to fight against the
perception of the word 'Dean.' You know the word 'Dean' is a
horrible word. It implies the permanence of institutions. As I just
said, I personally see the university as the place of freedom of

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 ATR 7:1/02

thought. It is the last place where people are going to arrest you
if you say crazy things. When you build things you can get in
trouble with your insurance policy or even with people taking
you to court. The school of architecture is the last place where
you can invent without getting into trouble. And certainly that's
what I want this place to be, so I see my role as a Dean as
someone who encourages students, especially young faculty
members, to take chances, to really go as far as they can, to push
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the limits. And so in this respect I feel I haven't changed that

much. The thing is of course that architeaure is a strange thing.
It is like life in that you never know everything you keep
learning. 1 started to build late, and now that I have been doing it
for sixteen years I realize I am still learning and I will do so until I
die. You are not better but you have more experience. The same
applies with social issues, society and politics: you have more
experience and it is not necessarily a nice thing, but you know
that things rarely change overnight. So, some of the fascination
that I had at age 28 was about things that change overnight. And
you realize as you go through life that things sometimes change
overnight but so many things stay the same. Hence life's always
dancing to different tempos—slow time, medium time, quick
time. 1 see my role at Columbia trying to manage time—slow
time, medium time and fast time.

GH: In an interview with Metropolis in 1988, reflecting on institutions, you characterized ideology in
terms of its capacity to purpon a 'naturalized' image of architeaure. What would be your advise to a
young architect who might want to follow your path and maintain a critical position today?

BT: Yes, I think there are a lot of things that have changed. And
so it's very difficult to give advice, because circumstances change
from culture to culture. I would give different advice to a young
American architect than to a young European architect. It would
be different again on the other side of the world where you are at
the moment. So all 1 can say is that you cannot be innocent, you
cannot be naive; you have to know exactly how things are
moving. Sometimes it's good to learn about the past and about
history. I'll just mention a couple of things happening at the
moment that are quite charaaeristic and did not exist before:
increasingly the mediaization (not mediation) of architecture, in
other words dealing with the faa that the image of architecture
is often more important than the fact of architecture, that the

87
 Tschumi

consumption of architecture is increasingly following the same

cycles as fashion cycles, and so on. Hence, architeaure, which is
a very slow thing in terms of how long it takes to build, is
increasingly replaced by a very quick consumption. Reputation
and fame both become related to this and therefore it also
relates to the way practice is being constructed. On die one hand
you have architects who are design architects, and on the other
you have construction architects, which I think is a terrible
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distinction and a very reductive one, because increasingly the

architect becomes a decorator of facades, and hence the son of
person who will provide for the public relations of architecture.
So 1 will not give advice to young architects, except to warn them
not to be fooled, and to understand that the mechanics of
architecture are a lot more complex than one would think. You
can choose one of die realms but you cannot ever forget die
others. After that people take their own route.

GH: Thanks.

January 2001, New York City

88