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The Manhattan Transcripts
Through a set of theoretical drawings developed between 1976 and 1981. Bernard Tschumi argues that the disjunction between spaces and their use, objects and events, being and meaning is no accident today. But when this disjunction becomes an architectural confrontation, a new relation of pleasure and violence inevitably occurs. 'They found the Transcripts by accident ... a lifetime's worth of urban pleasures - pleasures that they had no intention of giving up. So when she threatened to run and tell the authorities, they had no alternative but to stop her. And that's when the second accident occurred ... the accident of murder ... They had to get out of the Park - quick. And the only thing which could help them was Architecture, beautiful trusting Architecture that they had used before, but never so cruelly or so selfishly ...
83 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1982
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About the author
Bernard Tschumi
49 books30 followersBernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 2, 2022
The whole book reads like an experimental, extended metaphor, essentially framed around the premise that our relationship to architecture and the urban environment is akin to playing a bit-part in a movie.
As a theoretical project, this book is great fun, even if he stretches his ‘murder’ plot too far, too tenuously. The front and back ends of the book are ‘wordy’, whilst the middle section includes the theoretical drawings developed in the late 70s and early 80s. There is some deliberately tricky use of images, such as people slumbering on the grass, and feet racing by, re-framed to imply a death and an escape, and so on, always coupled with plans and choreography/motion diagrams. Also fun are his cut and paste montages of people's feet so that a skater appears on the ice, then on a highwire, while the footballer kicks a ball one moment, then tangos on the ice the next.
Without knowing Manhattan at all, it is impossible to know the extent to which the plans and diagrams bare any resemblance to the real as the city (the text implies they were not intended to), but even as indicative interpretations, even if they are spatiotemporally unmoored, the effect remains evocative.
His explanations of the indeterminacy of framing (the device and the material both) are useful, including his passing reference to the Kuleshov Effect (different situations > different interpretations),and the images and the words give you a strong sense of the architecture which is to follow, indeed, on the last page, Tschumi notes that Parc de la Villette would not have been possible without this book.
Of all the images, the most haunting is from his chapter "The Tower (the fall)," in which a vertical spin of pictures of a tumbling lady is juxtaposed next to a pseudo-facade of a high-rise tower. It conjurs up memories of 9/11 and makes his murder premise ring with a new resonance, realer than he potentially intended. Conversely, it places the events of 9/11 into the frame of deconstruction in an (un)expected way.
As a theoretical project, this book is great fun, even if he stretches his ‘murder’ plot too far, too tenuously. The front and back ends of the book are ‘wordy’, whilst the middle section includes the theoretical drawings developed in the late 70s and early 80s. There is some deliberately tricky use of images, such as people slumbering on the grass, and feet racing by, re-framed to imply a death and an escape, and so on, always coupled with plans and choreography/motion diagrams. Also fun are his cut and paste montages of people's feet so that a skater appears on the ice, then on a highwire, while the footballer kicks a ball one moment, then tangos on the ice the next.
Without knowing Manhattan at all, it is impossible to know the extent to which the plans and diagrams bare any resemblance to the real as the city (the text implies they were not intended to), but even as indicative interpretations, even if they are spatiotemporally unmoored, the effect remains evocative.
His explanations of the indeterminacy of framing (the device and the material both) are useful, including his passing reference to the Kuleshov Effect (different situations > different interpretations),and the images and the words give you a strong sense of the architecture which is to follow, indeed, on the last page, Tschumi notes that Parc de la Villette would not have been possible without this book.
Of all the images, the most haunting is from his chapter "The Tower (the fall)," in which a vertical spin of pictures of a tumbling lady is juxtaposed next to a pseudo-facade of a high-rise tower. It conjurs up memories of 9/11 and makes his murder premise ring with a new resonance, realer than he potentially intended. Conversely, it places the events of 9/11 into the frame of deconstruction in an (un)expected way.
November 17, 2022
For research. Quite interesting.
January 16, 2013
One of my favourite architects, one of my favourite architecture-y books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews