Bernard Tschumi Architects
227 West 17th Street, second floor
New York, New York 10011
Tel.212.807.6340
New York, Paris
www.tschumi.com
Interview with Bernard Tschumi
January 2, 2004
Vladimir Belogolovsky: How did you become interested in architecture?
Bernard Tschumi: I became interested in cities before architecture. When I was 17 I spent a year as an exchange student in Minnesota and visited Chicago. I was very fascinated with that city as a European kid so I decided to become an architect. Well, I intended to go more towards literary studies to be a writer, but seeing that city and then New York made me want to be an architect. I knew a little bit about architecture. My father Jean Tschumi was an architect. But it is really cities that made me become an architect.
VB: When you say Chicago and New York you mean skyscrapers, right?
BT: Absolutely, but you know, the reason why I organized my life between Paris and New York is because these cities I like the best and not because of my family or professional practice. In Paris there are no skyscrapers, in New York there are only skyscrapers. So I balance different fascinations.
VB: Your architecture is deconstructivist, right?
BT: Well, so it is labeled. (Laughter)
VB: How do you define deconstructivist architecture?
BT: Well, let’s go back a little bit into history. The year is 1988. The architectural scene is dominated by historicist postmodernism. Most architects are rediscovering the past. They are trying to build with signs and symbols, coming from 18th or 19th century. The big corporate firms all put little heads and colonnades on their buildings and so on. A few architects, at the time are very much against it and want to reclaim the legacy of avant-garde. Among these few architects are people who were at the MoMA show: Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelblau (Wolf Prix), Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, and I. Among us there were at least two architects who were interested in literary theories and ideas of deconstruction by Jack Derrida. So curators of the show invented something called deconstructivism, which is deconstruction plus Russian constructivism. But, as we all said at the time it is not a movement. It is not a school. It is the title of the exhibition. But what is interesting is that 1988 was the most conservative period in architecture in the 20th century. And we, those few architects were among the first to go against that conservative period and now look – everybody is doing, so called contemporary architecture.
VB: You are referring to the historic exhibit at MoMA in 1988; titled “Deconstructivist Architecture.” As an introduction to so called deconstructivist projects there were also projects by the Russian constructivists. So what are the differences and similarities between Russian constructivism and deconstructivism?
BT: Oh! Many! First of all these are time and geography, time and space. Look, 70 years later in a different social, economic, and political context. So there is a very big difference. Let’s start with the similarities. They are: a wish to reinvent architecture, to discover a new world, a new vocabulary, a new attitude, and new programs. The Differences are, of course, social, political, and economic. Social and political because all of the conservative institutions: the family, the state, the church. In other words, the whole series of certainties were destroyed. Russia was an extraordinarily fertile ground for discovery not only in architecture but in cinema, in poetry, and so on. This was not quite the situation in the West in the 1980’s. What we did was more superficial, more related to creativity then the real social movement, right? Nevertheless, I still believe that what we were doing was important, because it was about placing architecture back in the realm of ideas and invention.
VB: And what about the similarities and differences of stylistic language of constructivists and deconstructivists?
BT: Let’s start with the similarities. It is the fascination with elements of movements, because architecture is not only static, but is also dynamic, in other words: staircases, ramps, towers, cranes, elevators, and so on, right? This fascination with technology is a means of introducing a new vocabulary. Now what are the differences? This is interesting. It is a move away from primary forms: the sphere, the cube, the cylinder, and the cone towards much more fluid and dynamic forms. And of course, a few years later we arrived at the discovery of what we can do with computers, which the Russian constructivists didn’t have, right? So this led to the invention of the formal vocabulary, which is in itself a very dynamic form of expression.
VB: Could you explain how the use of computers can not only help to solve a problem, but also to enhance the quality of design?
BT: Let’s take the famous Brunelleschi’s Cupola in Florence. That is a work of engineering and to calculate it required a mixture of intuition, calculus, and geometry. Today, of course, you would never do that by hand. Never, never, never, but you would use computers almost in the same way as the mind calculates. However, we also use computers in a different way, in a way that is going to explore certain spatial configurations that our mind has difficulty to imagine. Hence, suddenly the computer, which is always an amplification of the mind, becomes many times more effective.
VB: Who in your view was first to use deconstructivist ideas in architecture?
BT: Well, it is hard for me to name one person. You have Frank Gehry who is using both a form of bricolage of materials in a very liberated way and then later uses computer software which allows him to do complex curvilinear geometry. You have Peter Eisenman who develops obsessive formal investigation and theoretical discourse. He is also interested in what is happening in other disciplines. You have Wolf Prix who in a very intuitive way, in the early 1970’s is testing collisions, distortions, tensions, and compressions in materials. You have Rem Koolhaas who is fascinated with Leonidov and the Russians. I am interested in film theory and literary theory, and new social programs. You have Daniel Libeskind who is interested in symbolism. You have Zaha Hadid who has an incredible intuition in purely formal issues. So I took you chronologically at who was first developing certain things, but we were all different.
VB: Were you all aware of each other?
BT: Oh yes, absolutely!
VB: So some of you influenced the others, right?
BT: No, I don’t think so. I think it was about the spirit of that period.
VB: Did you ever meet to discuss your work?
BT: We didn’t meet as a group, but we all new each other. In the 1970’s Wolf Prix, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, and myself were all at the Architectural Association in London. Then in the late 1970’s Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas again, and myself again were at the New York’s Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. So we all knew each other. But there was no one person to influence the others.
VB: Why do you think all of these architects from London and New York, and Frank Gehry from Los Angeles simultaneously developed deconstructivist language in architecture?
BT: Please, don’t call it deconstructivist! Call it contemporary language of architecture, because at that time and today none of us would consider our architecture deconstructivist. We didn’t even like the name. We wanted to be contemporary. We didn’t want to be another movement, because movements come and go. They are born and then they die. But we wanted to be the present.
VB: You keep saying that deconstructivism was not a movement. So why do you think it never became a movement?
BT: Simply because it was never meant to be a movement. It was just a title of the exhibition. Everybody wanted to avoid to what happened to Postmodernism, which was intensely marketed as a movement.
VB: You lived and worked in Paris in 1968, the year of acute student upraises. How did it affect you?
BT: What happened then was a radical questioning of all social institutions, including architecture. So a number of people of my generation became radically critical of architecture and what it symbolized. I decided to explore the definition and the limits of architecture, in other words, find a way to define architecture beyond all the preconceived ideas and clichés. And that is what my work is about. So it starts with questioning.
VB: Who influenced you most as an architect?
BT: You know it is not an architect; it is a filmmaker Sergey Eisenstein. And Eisenstein was interested in architecture. And interestingly enough, now we are working on the New Acropolis Museum in Athens and I’m rediscovering his studies of the dynamics and the movements of the Acropolis. Also I’m influenced by Dziga Vertov, again another Russian filmmaker whose technique of montage was very crucial. And then more contemporary filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders; in other words, my starting point comes from film studies.
VB: And Parc de La Villette in Paris is conceived as the cinematic promenade, analogous to a film strip.
BT: Yes, this idea was developed before La Villette. It was already in “The Manhattan Transcripts”. So in many ways La Villette is based on my research.
VB: You said that you are suspicious of architecture that wants to tell a story. Then how do you explain your famous slogan – “Form follows fiction?”
BT: That’s a good question. Let’s try to make a difference between story and fiction. Form follows fiction is of course, a play on famous formula – form follows function, emphasizing the difference between function and fiction. This has to do with a program, or how architecture is used, since for me architecture is never about form, but about ideas and what it can do. Instead of starting a project with questions about specific requirements, such as so many square feet for a bathroom or a living room I’m interested in looking at literature or film. Here is an example. In the 17th century there were no corridors. Then the corridor was invented in order to introduce privacy. That is not an architectural idea. That’s a cultural idea. So I said – let’s look at literature. What are the changing cultural sensibilities? So when I said – form follows fiction I really meant – let’s look for what is before function. Because before functions there are stories, there is culture, there is fiction. But I have to admit it was just an easy play on words.
VB: After teaching at the AA in London for a decade, why did you move to New York and how do you see its place in contemporary architecture then and now?
BT: When I was In London I was very interested in what was happening at the art scene. And the center of the art world in the 1970’s was New York. That’s why I came to New York and I had more friends among artists than among architects, because the architectural scene for me was very conservative. We went to the same galleries and clubs, and so on. I was also the first architect in New York to exhibit projects in art galleries. This was very important time for me. I was very fascinated by this city and decided to make it half of my home. The other half is in Paris. Around this time I was influenced to write “The Manhattan transcripts.”
Now let’s talk about New York then and now. New York is always battling between commerce and culture. That was the case then and that is the case now, in other words, on one hand there were big commercial firms like SOM, HOK, and so on. On the other hand there were intellectuals like New York Five and others, affiliated with universities. The major word at that time was autonomy. The architects were very rigid. They were defending their territories. The architects thought that they possessed a special knowledge that was only theirs. And when I arrived I was interested in breaking the boundaries to other disciplines and to other fields. So I couldn’t work with them. I was teaching at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, but I was very uncomfortable there and therefore I was spending more time with my artist friends.
Today we still have very large commercial firms, actually the same ones. But in the early 1990’s it became clear that new ideas were not at the architectural offices, but in schools, in other words, for the first time and maybe for the first time in the 20th century the new discoveries were happening in schools. And in Columbia, for example, with the young faculty we were developing new vocabulary that no one else was doing and of course, we had computers better then the commercial offices. There is one more difference. And that is the role of the media. In the 1970’s the media was more specialized and more educated. There were architectural historians, architectural theorists, and architectural critics. Today, there are much less. But there are architectural journalists and architecture is publicized everywhere, but in a more populist manner. And that is an interesting shift.
VB: What about the place of New York in the world?
BT: It is amazingly alive. It is not the only place, by the way, but it is a big center of ideas. There is also a culture of architecture in England and Spain, much less in France and Italy. Holland is amazingly alive, thanks also to a lot of support from the Dutch government. I don’t know any other country which has so much strategic support. In any case, the world of architecture has become enormously global, in other words, the polemics are everywhere. The strength of New York is, of course, in publicity and the power of its institutions. Whenever something happens it has a worldwide resonance. And one of the reasons we were able to make Columbia the most powerful school in the world because we are in New York. Everybody comes through New York and we are all fascinated by this city. But New York is only one of the centers.
VB: Speaking of “The Manhattan Transcripts” you said that perhaps all architecture, rather than being about functional standards, is about love and death…
BT: I think so. These are some of the key pieces of architecture. Architecture has a dimension of pleasure and risk, which are rarely discussed. So I wanted to introduce a discourse on architecture, which goes beyond professionalism, right? Because everything about our life intersects with architecture and it always has, no matter six thousand years ago or today.
VB: How would you describe your architecture?
BT: Areas of my investigations over the years are in the ideas of vectors and envelops. In other words, architecture is always about movement. Another area of my investigation more recently has to do with the intersection of three terms: concept, content, and context. In other words, these are three terms that often play with one another or exclude one another. Concept, because, I believe that architecture is always about ideas. Forms are not important, ideas are. Context, because architecture is always located somewhere, including nowhere. Nowhere is somewhere. I’m not talking about visual context (I hate contextualism), but more about political, economic, cultural, and also city context. And then content, because architecture is always about events that happen in space. And these three things don’t necessarily intersect in a predictable way and this is part of my investigation. So my architecture in not about forms, but it is about ideas.
VB: Do you have a set of questions that you usually ask yourself when you start a new project?
BT: Generally, I always start fresh, as it were the first project ever. We are very analytical. For me architecture is like a theorem. Architecture is the demonstration, right? So we test several hypotheses before we make a statement. And I’m more interested in strategies than formal solutions.
VB: That is a lot of work!
BT: Yes, but I don’t like when clients ask me to produce a quick image or when they want me to do a project, similar to what I have done in the past. For that they better go to architects who have a more predictable range. Those who come to me are more interested in an approach.
VB: The Lerner Center at Columbia University is a very controversial building because of the strict zoning requirements within the University campus. But what often gets criticized is the middle part, the glass atrium where you had the most freedom to express yourself. The students who use the building say it is not functional. As an architect how do you respond to that criticism?
BT: Because it is not meant to be functional. It is meant to be social. Look at the grand steps in front of the Low Library. It is not functional either, right? But it is used as a gathering center of the community. The student Lerner Center and its ramps is a place where you can see everything from everywhere. It is a very large building and it is a vertical building. So as an architect, I asked myself – how do you establish a vertical community? How do you establish a vertical connection? And I think that part works very well! (Laughter)
VB: Why have you decided to step down as the dean of the Architecture School of Columbia University?
BT: There are two reasons. I’m first of all an architect and I have a lot of projects. The other reason is that I’ve been the dean for fifteen years and that is a generation in architecture. I think I succeeded in making a major statement about architectural education. And now another generation has to come.
VB: How did you select the faculty at Columbia?
BT: Generally, I looked for people who had a capability to be creative and inventive, and not only in terms of students, but also in terms of themselves. In other words, I wanted the school to become a sort of laboratory of research in design and architecture. In my view, research is a category of design. Hence, the faculty was selected among the most creative people of the next generation. As you know, it is very difficult for young American architects, especially in New York City to build. So I invited these young people who are in their mid 30’s and early 40’s, who are full of energy and good qualities, and they are fantastic teachers. You know the names: Greg Lynn, Jesse Reiser, Stan Allen, Hani Rashid, Laurie Hawkinson… All of them were very young faculty members, when they started at Columbia.
VB: Are you involved in the selection process of the next dean?
BT: I’m not and I can’t be. That is always the policy of the University.
VB: Can you talk about your paperless studio?
BT: That is a great word, but we generated a lot of paper. (Laughter) Well, we decided to introduce the computers in 1994/95 and we said that every student was going to have a computer. Before there were computer labs, but we were the first to bring computers into the studios. In other words, the idea was that all of the work would be done on computers and there would be no paper. But then the plotters were introduced… (Laughter)
VB: Did you encourage students to use real materials as well, in a model making shop?
BT: Yes, we are not ready to use computers in the first year. To teach with computers is academically and pedagogically very different. We are still doing a lot of models and drawings. I wanted to introduce computers to student culture little by little. So we introduce computers in the second year. In my office also we do everything on the computers. But we do a lot of working models, because as I often say – models never lie and computers do.
VB: What is your favorite teaching assignment?
BT: I was always trying to explore assignments that would break habits. I was giving short stories or novels by James Joys, Italo Calvino or Edgar Allan Poe for students to read and to produce a project or anything that forces students to think on their own and not to use recipes. I welcome anything that brings a challenge. I’m very much against the teachers who try to reach preconceived goal. My case is the other way around. I have a preconceived starting point, but I have no idea what the goal is. I want to be astonished by what the goal is.
VB: Will the new Acropolis Museum open on time for the Olympics?
BT: I would be very surprised. The politics of Greece are extraordinarily complicated. So…it will open, but I can not imaging... Look, we finished our work and submitted the construction documents on time, months ago. Now we are waiting for the work permit, which is issued not by the City of Athens, but by the Parliament.
VB: What about the Elgin marbles?
BT: The Marbles is another political thing. That will be interesting. I’m absolutely sure that once the museum is built the Marbles will come back. I feel the marbles themselves want to come back. They are tired of being in exile.
VB: While working on the Museum what did you learn about the Parthenon that you were not aware of before? And to what extend do you use knowledge of historical architecture in your work?
BT: I knew a fare amount about the Parthenon. I have been there before and like any student of architecture I was quite aware of its history. So I rediscovered its history and got to know more about it. But there were no major surprises. I rediscovered the fascination with the Parthenon by Sergey Eisenstein and Le Corbusier, who spent three months there. So all this was interesting, but the influence of the Parthenon on my work was not direct. What we have in common is a very strict view of materials. One of the extraordinary beauties of the Parthenon is the coherence, which is relentlessly repeated because of the stone. I would like to have that relentless coherence in three materials, which we use in our building: glass, marble, and concrete. But I’m aware that I’m giving it a contemporary reading. As you know, the original Greek temple was conceived in wood and then built in stone. Our building was not conceived in wood, right? And that’s where the difference is. But what I find fascinating with the Parthenon is its conceptual reading and the mathematical rigor. If I can achieve that with our building I’ll be happy.
VB: What about the fact that there is not a single straight line in the Parthenon?
BT: Well, the equivalent of that, in our project is captured in movement and the ramp that moves through the building. And that is about a perception in movement. Don’t forget I’m not building a temple, I’m building a museum. I’m not building for the God; I’m building for the people.
VB: What is your view of the WTC rebuilding process?
BT: It is a very difficult issue, because of the layer of symbolism that is attached to it. I completely disagree with the political symbolism. I think architecture should be independent of political symbolism. The worst examples are the fascist architecture or the Stalinist architecture. There should be no political representation. I have a problem with buildings that remind people of such symbols as the Statue of Liberty. The whole discourse hides enormous deficiencies. There is no discussion about what that place should be and what it should do. One needs to ask not what architecture should look like, but what it should do. The enormous complexity of ownership and interests made it extremely difficult to have one single voice. Therefore the lowest common denominator was a very simplistic view of patriotism translated into architecture.
VB: Some critics see contemporary architecture in a crisis because architects are constantly searching for new ideas and directions, while others see it as flourishing and for the same reasons. What is your view?
BT: Yes, it is flourishing. It is very alive now! Before, let’s say in the 1970’s there was interesting critical work and theoretical work, but there were very few good buildings. Now good architecture is everywhere! It is a very good time!
VB: What is your dream project?
BT: Well…there is no one project. As I said, I’m fascinated with cities, with multiplicity, heterogeneity, the conflict, and the contradictions.
