Interview: Bernard Tschumi Paints The

Town Red

First thing is first, if “red is not a

color”, then what is it?

Bernard Tschumi: Ah, very good. Let me just
backtrack. When I did the  Parc de la
Villette with the red follies, everybody kept
asking “Why red?” I never answered this
question, saying instead “You can say
anything you want.” Eventually, I said, “Red is
not a color”, which just added more mystery
to the project.As I developed my work over
the years, I became more and more
conscious that red was to emphasize the
concept, namely, the overriding idea of the
project. The fact that it was red was almost
like a diagram, like a way of saying “Look, this
is what structures the whole project”. The
application of the color red was irrelevant; it
was just to show how these series of
buildings belonged to one another. It was a
diagrammatic operation.

2
Winning proposal for the Parc de la Villette (1982)

3
So could one say that all of your

work can be characterized by a

certain “redness”?

In a way, yes, it continues. But it takes

different manifestations. For example, the
second building I did, the  Fresnoy Art Center ,
it was about taking an old building, floating a
roof above it and having the in-between
space that could be taken over by the artists
at this art school. There, there were a series
of catwalks that were blue to stress the
project’s diagrammatic quality.Later, I began
to use materials . I used to say and still say
that architecture is the materialization of the
concept. So when I would choose wood as
opposed to steel, for instance, the way I used
the material was a way to reinforce the main
idea behind the project. That’s how it’s always

4
New Acropolis Museum (2010); Photo: Bernard
Tschumi Architects

5
 worked because much of my argument is that
architecture is about certain concepts and
certain ideas.

The book proposes a narrative

framework or “perspective”

through/with which to view your

works, be they polemics, writings,

unsolicited designs, unbuilt and

built projects. How does it do so—

or what are the underpinnings

detectable in your work?

I would say that what connects these pieces

of work is that it attempts for every one of
them to arrive at the clarity of one particular

6
 concept. And then one moves on to arrive at
another

Alésia Museum and Archaeological Park (2012);

Photo: Iwan Baan

7
 concept, or these concepts will overlap. Now,
there are some architects for whom there is a
stylistic coherence where certain visual
effects are found again and again throughout
their work. Still, other architects’ work codifies
these re-occurrences.But in my case, what
I’m trying to do is not so much to try doing a
visual code but more a code of ideas.

Your stress of concepts begs the

question, “Where do they come

from?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? It all depends.

Some concepts are derived from the site, or
still, some from the program. Then there are
those that are derived from specific

8
architectural problems. Take how architects,
for a long time, were discussing façades and
the problem of the design of the façade.
Then, after a while, they realized that the
façade need not be distinguished from the
roof or corner, but could be described as an
“envelope”. You change the word, and the
entire discussion changes course.

When you realize this, you are very close to

getting at a concept. A concept like this one is
one that originates from the nature of
architecture. Not every project is driven by
questions such as these. Some can be quite
artificial, say, with formal or programmatic
explorations that are divorced from any “real”
context.

At the Acropolis museum, the concept came

from the site. The site with the view of the

9
 Acropolis and the Parthenon on the hill, the
ruins and archaeological site at the bottom.
The collection, somewhere in between. This
provided the impetus for the idea behind the
building.

Central to your ideas, is the

development of an architectural

thinking that goes beyond the

notion of functionalism, or even

form. Instead, you inscribe within

architecture certain qualities that

help it to overcome its historical

limits. You can see this perhaps

more evidently in the earlier

10
polemical works, say The

Manhattan Transcripts, but where

would you look to find these in

your built works, say the New

Acropolis Museum or

the Alésia Museum?

In a built work, the architect has the ability to

design conditions. You design certain
conditions that will make a building that will
generate conflicts or, on the contrary, can be
absolutely neutral. This is something that I, as
well as every architect I’m sure, am very
conscious of when designing. The way you
organize the plan is the organizing of social
relations and of the way people interact with
each other. The one is built into the other.

11
 That’s very much the intention that the
architect has, and it’s a certain power that
they have.

But, how do the ideas that exist in

the manifestos and diagrammatic

drawings transfer to the buildings?

You have to be a little subversive

to get it to work, right?

I’ll give you an example. At this  architecture

school I did just outside of Paris, there was a
space which was an “unprogrammed” in that it
was very intentionally left without a program.
It was at the top of this auditorium that was in
the middle of a central courtyard encircled by
offices. I provided a way to access the roof of
that auditorium, as some space that could be

12
taken over by students, where they could
invent anything they’d want. But I wanted it to
remain a space for students and which could
not be taken over by the administration. So it
was built on a slight slope that caused a slight
“disruption”, lending the space to creative
activities. The students could do whatever
they wanted with it, either hosting drawing
classes up there or using it as a dance space
or picnics, without the worry of losing it to
more pragmatic concerns. That was possible
because (a) such a space was there in the
first place and (b) that it was not your regular
kind of space. So yes, indeed, there is a bit of
a Machiavellian strategy needed.

13
So here, the architecture is less a

formal game of perplexity and an

occupational hindrance than a way

of creating conditions for the

concept or idea to materialize.

I would agree. It means that you are aware

that simultaneously you are trying to generate
events, and at the same time, in order to do
that, the design needs to have to have some
sort of physical presence. Sure, that physical
presence can be shaped by your own
sensibilities, but for me it’s always important
that every formal move is related to an event.

14
As you have said, “architecture

ceases to be a backdrop for

actions, becoming the action

itself”. How, in a time where

computer animations and

advanced representational tools

seek to pinpoint and navigate the

body’s interactions with

architecture, can contemporary

architecture achieve this?

There are two issues with technology, and the

technology of building, one which is important
and one which is more incidental. The one
that’s incidental is the use of computers in

15
architecture, the type of technology that
allows us to do certain things faster and helps
us visualize things we never could before. It
also helps us be more inventive and solve
problems that could not be solved, say, 100
years ago, like things about energy
conservation or structural strength. These are
the good aspects of this kind of technological
development, which I’d say is “quantitative”. It
allows us to do more of the same.

The other kind of technology is “qualitative”,

what I’d say is your iPad, the internet or
anything else that completely alters the way
we perceive our environment and define a
sense of place. Once upon a time, architects
liked to make the distinction between the
tabula rasa and the genius loci. Today, the
genius of the place is so much part of whether
I have access to the web or not.

16
 When Hurricane Sandy was happening, there
was no electricity and no internet. Having no
electricity didn’t change my life very much. No
internet did change my life. So the nature of
the city of the 21st century, or the sense of
place of the 21st century, is radically different,
and it’s a qualitative difference. I don’t think
we’re yet able to conceptualize it.

You reprised your “Ads for

Architecture” for this year’s Venice

Biennale. Considering the odd 35-

year gap between the original

project and the new images, one

wonders whether this mode of

17
critique is still appropriate or

effective.

Well, to talk about the original ads, they were

one of the early means for me to understand
architecture. At the time [1976], I was only
writing, I was not even drawing. I had just
finished my studies, and I stopped designing
altogether. I just decided that it was time to
think and stop whatever it was I was doing.
What I had been taught had been simply
recycling what had been done before. So it
was a way to start from scratch, by looking at
architecture through different disciplines to
develop a new critical sense about
architecture.But, no, the new ads were just as
a play for the biennale. The medium of the
advertisements was very important in the mid-

18
 1970s, but I would absolutely not use it today
in the same manner.

Back to the book. Is it an attempt to

contextualize your work, the built
with the non-built and the events
which shaped both?

The book comprises a new essay that does

not attempt to contextualize the work in so far
as it [the work] unfolds as it’s presented.
There are five parts, each of which is
prefaced with a lead essay that talks about
some of the issues present within the
projects. In that sense, that could be a form of
contextualizing the work for the times we now
live with and the things we now face.

However, the last essay is relatively abstract

in that it tries to understand architects in three
ways. Architecture is concept, percept,

19
and affect. I’m trying to define it not in the way
Vitruvius codified it as solidity, utility, and
beauty, but rather, somewhat as philosophical
categories—not that I wanted to bring
philosophy into architecture or the other way
around. That is, architecture is always about
ideas, about concepts, but also more. It has
to communicate an idea; it is about perception
and must be experienced in one way or
another; and it has to trigger emotions.
Architecture has to be all three. There are
always architects who will push one or the
other or the other. I think you can’t separate
them, but you can play with them. There isn’t
necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship
between a concept and an idea and an
emotion. You can have a given concept and
two very different emotions at the end.

20
What is your opinion of

contemporary architectural

production, where the idea, or any

of the criteria you’ve established

here, are subsumed or displaced

by an overemphasis on one or the

other?

I think we’re in an era that the importance of

icons has become such that they have
temporarily “killed” both the idea and the
emotion. But this will evolve, I’m sure of it.

21
Given the present state of things

[insert your pet global, ecological,

and political conflict here], how can

architecture, or the problems of

architecture, remain relevant? And

how do you remain positive about

its future?

The reason why I’m so optimistic about

architecture’s future—not that architecture is
going to “solve” things—is because we are
constantly dependent on it. I’m not obsessive
with sustainability or green building, as it’s
currently practiced. I don’t think that this is
necessarily the right way to look at the
problem. However, take, again, last month’s

22
storm. A week after, people in the Rockaways
and elsewhere were and are still homeless,
weakened and very fragile. And yet we know
that this type of occurrence may increase in
time. There, there is an enormous amount of
room for new ways of thinking that have not
been exercised before.

Hence, there are certain phenomena outside

of architecture to be assessed. Architecture
never starts or very rarely, starts from inside.
It’s generally outside forces, like over-
populations or simply to put a roof over your
head, that propels architecture. Therefore, the
idea of what is does is always part of it.

23
24