La rhtorique visuelle du livre architecturalspring semester 2013

prof Tim Benton

Event and Movement in ArchitectureThe Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects

Selena Savic, PhD Candidate, SINLAB

Event and Movement in ArchitectureThe Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects1

I would like to begin this text with a statement: I do not understand Manhattan Transcripts. Their systematic structure is intriguing; the photographs reproduction quality gives them a mysterious feel, while the structural manipulation of architectural volumes brings a taste of playfulness. The drawings and photographs intertwined here in a research tool are an inspiring material for building an architectural theory, but they can not be interpreted in any singular way. Manhattan Transcripts are a response to its contemporary architectural establishment discourse. They are not there to be understood in the first place.

Context and Procedure

Bernard Tschumi came to New York in 1976 to teach at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. Between 1977 and 1981 he developed a series of paper spaces (Bernard Tschumi Architects, 2010) inspired by the Manhattan urban tissue. The results of this endeavour were exhibited at four consecutive exhibitions, thus forming the 4 parts of The Manhattan Transcripts.

The character of this work follows the tradition of Architectural Association in London, where Tschumi was just coming from. The design of buildings was long gone from the avant-guard discourse at this institution, focusing instead on the process of design and a critical reflection of architectural theory and practice. Aware and discontent/resentful by the impossibility of designing perfect architecture, they withdrew themselves to the position of active observers. The rebellious tone of the 1968 events is mirrored here in attempts to develop an analogue to the contemporary production in art and literature. The idealistic practice of non-building had for a consequence the blossoming of research oriented experimental projects.

In this context, Tschumi conceives his practice around two distinctive premisses: reflection on architecture cannot be understood and it cannot lead to buildings. Architecture had to negate what society expects from it. Buildings should be built only for pleasure and for the same pleasure destroyed (Tschumi, 1977). His strategy

1 The research presented here is done based on the Manhattan Transcripts publication published on the occasion of the exhibition of Bernard Tschumi's Manhattan Transcripts 4 at the Max Protetch Gallery in New York, 1981. (Tschumi, 1981)

is in trying not to design at all, while arguing against the predominantly functionalist discourse of modernism and the overly stylistic concerns discussed by his contemporaries. His focus on activities that are unnecessary (luxury, wars, games, art, erotics) is part of his attempt to overcome the paradox of architecture (identified with the dualism of the pyramid and the labyrinth (Hollier, 1989)). The pyramid and the labyrinth represent the two aspects of space in Tschumis dualist view of architecture: the conceived and the perceived space (Martin, 1990). The paradox is that architecture is at the same time both pyramid and labyrinth. Furthermore, it always misses something - either reality or concept, due to "the impossibility of both questioning the nature of space and experiencing a spatial praxis at the same time" (Tschumi, 1975). The only way to address this paradox is to reach the point where the subjective experience of space becomes its' very concept.

A strong influence of Structuralism on architectural debate can be observed here. Moving the borders of architectural theory after 1968, Tschumi was inspired by Roland Barthes's writings on language, linguistic analysis and literature. He attempts to conduct a reading of the city following Barthes's procedures, relaying on Kristevas notion of intertextuality. If the meaning of a text is produced by the reader, in relation to the all other texts invoked in the reading process, the reading of the city is giving the meaning to city blocks, streets, events, and other city elements depending on the complex network of ones experiences of the city. Tschumis use of the concept of intertextuality is extreme and provocative, sometimes leading to reappropriation of full paragraphs from other texts while replacing their topic with architecture. This is obvious in titles of his early texts like "The Pleasure of Architecture" (Barthes: "The Pleasure of Text") and "Architecture and its Double" (Artaud: "Theatre and its Double"). He simply substitutes the word text, theatre or science with architecture (Martin, 1990).

Tschumi is strongly against any sort of disciplinary autonomy. Architecture for him is a means of communication, defined by the movement as well as by the walls. Architecture can thus be compared to language, a discourse of events and spaces; and its experience to reading. Because architecture is an intertextual experience, semantic analysis can be applied to it. This is what he does with city blocks, building shapes, volumes, questioning their constituting parts and their inter-relationships. He is looking for the way to conceptualize the subjective experience of space.

The same year when Koolhaas published his "Delirious New York" (a somewhat different approach to research with a similarly strong propagandistic element and focus on the process) Tschumi exhibited his first Architectural Manifestos, part of which were Manhattan Transcript 1 and 2.

The notions of event and movement are essential for this work. In his later writings

he claimed that space is created by an event taking place within it (Tschumi, 1983). How can movement carve space? How can space carve movement, in turn?

Transcribing the city

With Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumi tries out for the first time his philosophy of event and movement in architecture, a topic he will develop further throughout his writings and practice. Seeking to reveal an internal logic underlying buildings and cities, he conducts playful drawing exercises, while at the same time working on the logic of a structure to represent and interpret space.

The juxtaposition of carefully selected visual material is supposed to offer an interpretation of architecture and experience of the city. Photographs and drawings form a relation that should offer a particular understanding of the relationship between architecture and event. If we take for example a sample from the MT1 (Figure 1), it is not difficult to make the connection:

On the left we have a photograph of a persons legs, the person presumably running. The middle square is a segment of the park map - an objective representation of architecture in its most conventional view from above. To the right, we find a scheme of movement (straight arrow with a solid line) and a dashed line describing architecture. This line presumably represents the experience of architecture, as only a part of its actual shape is found here. Thus it should be a part of architectural fact that determines or affects the movement. Because MT1 is dedicated to an accident of murder and the following attempt of escape (running), we could argue that what we see on photographs is what the person experiencing this event was seeing while making the movement described by the arrow, in the space represented in the middle square of each take. But this is far too simple.

Figure 1: a scene from Manhattan Transcripts 1: The Park

The second transcript is a mapping of the reading onto the plan of the Manhattan island's 42nd Street (Figure 2). The fact that it matches the proportions of real space emphasizes the coexistence of different levels of reality. This superimposition of the real map with fragments of buildings and photographs offers a multidimensional reading of space. The use of film stills on top of each block diagram suggest a character or possibility of an event.

In the fourth transcript Tschumi treats the inside of city blocks with skaters, dancers, marching soldiers, football players. He measures the space against these unlikely activities. While they operate as an indicator of potential the space has to satisfy them, they also serve as an enrichment to be injected into the city tissue (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Manhattan Transcripts 2: The Street. Tschumi's drawing overlaid on top of the actual map of the 42nd street in Manhattan

The role of the film roll

Architects like Koolhaas and Tschumi are serious about fashion; they consider it their task to set trends. Thus, as a consequence of the contemporary interest in the possible parallel between the two disciplines - the spatiality of film and the dynamics of architecture - the Transcripts operate as a film sequence. The relation between Manhattan Transcripts and film is multi-threaded, at the same time formal and ideological.

Tschumi insists on a sequence of frames, rather than a narrative. In his introduction to the Manhattan Transcripts publication, he states that the temporality of the Transcripts suggests the analogy of film. It is not only the temporality that is at work here; the film analogy is reflected in the use of framed sequences, as well as the organisation of the material in timelines (in the case of MT2 and MT4) and takes (in the case of MT1). The metaphor is finally reinforced in the MT4 with the stylised perforated tape drawn around the imagined architectural frames of the object timeline.

The film metaphor is at the same time an important support for the theory of space created by event.

Figure 3: Manhattan Transcript 4: Panel 11/15

Notation experiments

The work on Manhattan Transcripts was a notation experiment, with the intention to arrive at new tools and methods of representation. Needing to go beyond methods usually used by architects (plans, sections, elevations, etc) Tschumi complements his work with photographs, schemes and collages (combining axonometric projections, drawings, cut out photographs). He develops the formula object-movement-event and uses it consistently throughout MT1, MT2 and MT4 (Figure 4). Usually represented with a photograph, the event appears in the first of three squares in the MT1, at the top line of the MT2 and in the bottom track of the MT4. The object is always in the middle between event and movement. Movement is often represented with a dashed line and an arrow. This simple tool is yet another graphical solution to represent a dynamic component of architecture.

Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects

Architectural Manifestos I were first developed for an exhibition at Artists Space in New York in 1978. The exhibition featured three rooms of different material concept expressions Tschumi developed over the years. First room: Space of Manifestos. A waiting room with poster advertisements for architecture. The first two Manhattan Transcripts were presented in one of three rooms, as drawings on walls. They were exhibited in Architectural Association the following year at the Architectural Manifestos II show. The first transcript, "The Park" tells the story of an event in the park, a murder. Photographs from the news show fragments of a story Tschumi included at the beginning. Park views, the accident of murder, an attempt to escape,

Figure 4: Notation experiment: A comparative arrangement of Manhattan Transcript elements

and the arrest. Next to the photographs we have architectural plans and schemes, presumably linked to the images. The park, a space supposedly free from architecture is a metaphor for its murder, as suggested in the press release for this show.

MT1 is organised in takes, each take showing a scene from the event (Figure 1). It starts with a rather objective juxtaposition of the event, object and movement, referencing real space like the street names (Figure 5). As the scenes progress, we notice that the objectiveness of the middle square changes, as it starts exchanging elements with the square to the right. Musical scores, posters, map labels appear, then the two rightmost images begin to overlap, with elements of one appearing on the other, (Figure 6), ending up with a white square. (Figure 3)

Figure 5: Manhattan Transcript 1: The Park. First 'take'. Movement map overlaid on top of the actual map.

Figure 6: Manhattan Transcript 1: The Park. The gradual deconstruction of 'object' and 'movement'

Figure 7: Manhattan Transcript 1: The Park. The last 'take'. Stylised pattern of the facade and ground plan. Movement frame is blank.

MT2 is a proof of concept. The most consistent sequencing of the city as an event is applied here, under the title "The Street" or "Border Crossing". It is an analysis of the changing experience of walking from the East Side UN building to the West side of the New Yorks 42nd street. The shift from the deserted quays of the Hudson River to the respectable edges of the UN building complex is characterised by movie stills he uses, showing the prison, dark alley, touching, making love, and full darkness frames, finishing with stills of mysterious women and a curtain. The diversity here is a metaphor for real border crossing, the walk offering enough diversity to contain the city. In his transcription process this time, Tschumi takes a sample of each block and shows its event, its section and its plan. While the plan includes a path with demarcated movement (dashed line), the most interesting part is the middle drawing. It is a combination of the actual building section with imaginary elements overlapping and dissolving, exploding the view.

A central vertical axes starts to shape here (Figure 8), an element which will reappear in the MT3 in a more stylised form (Figure 9). Whether accidental or not, this appearance confirms the playful character of the work, parts of it being a kind of a volumetric exercise. If we interpret the vertical line motive in MT2 as intentional, then we can think of the MT3 as a transcription of reality into an imaginary architectural world Tschumi creates for his own pleasure.

MT3 titled "The Tower" was exhibited at the MoMA PS1 gallery in New York in 1980. It is a sequence of architectural exercises through five iterations of volumetric experiments. Four abstract blocks are followed by a representation of a possible city block, including openings and shades (Figure 10). At the end, four episodes of "The Fall" are featured, in a slightly different style. A rotating silhouette of a person in fall is shown on the last vertical arrangement only. This movement of the silhouette through 5 vertical frames is translated into a shaping line for the juxtaposed play of volumes. The connecting vertical line appears red in some publications, (this research is based on the publication printed for the occasion of the fourth Manhattan Transcripts exhibition at Max Protetch Gallery in which the vertical line appears without any colour).

The MT3 has a somewhat different structure and style from the other three. Because the formula object+movement+event is so consistent throughout the transcripts, the structure of MT3 is a surprise. While its title "The Tower" suggests an experience of architecture, floors of a building; in the description Tschumi talks about the fall. A succession of volumetric exercises of form is followed by four pages of vertical development. The fall here is described by a silhouette of a body falling. The titles of the five frames suggest a hierarchy of spaces one experiences in this fall. From home through office, hotel and asylum, the person falling ends up in prison. Does this suggest loosing of freedom, a fall in liberty?

Figure 8: Manhattan Transcript 2: The Street (Border Crossing). Vertical line motive in the 'heart' of city blocks

Figure 9: Manhattan Transcript 3: The Tower. Vertical line connecting frames and buildings.

Figure 10: Manhattan Transcript 3: The Tower.

Figure 11: Manhattan Transcript 4: The Block. The film metaphor. Frames resemble a film roll, and at the same time look like arches of buildings.

The fourth and the last transcript titled The Block demonstrates Tschumis experimental language in its most developed form. The architecture-film analogy is the strongest here too. On the 'object timeline', Tschumi draws a frame around each square. This frame resembles a film roll, while at the same time representing an arched building complex, with doors at the bottom and windows all around (Figure 11). He reinforces the analogy with the movement timeline appearing as animation frames. The focus on unnecessary activities is at its peak here: tightrope walking, ice-skating, dancing, marching and playing football are all rather unlikely activities to take place within an urban Manhattan block. Tschumi however chooses them to play the deconstructive role in the dissection of the architectural structure. Architecture itself is on the move here, with playful volumes curving and intersecting, carving out the movement.

The Visual Front

Square is the big brother of the right angle, containing four of them at equal distances. Its use in architecture is unsurprisingly essential. Square almost stands for an equal of normality. Tschumi decided to give it another role. He acknowledges the square as healthy, conformist and predictable, regular and comforting, correct. He then uses the square as a unit of event, a frame of experience, subverting this highly architectural symbol for the purpose of his theory.

Square is the building block of all MT phrases, whether coming in successive formations of three (MT1) or as part of a timeline (MT2 and MT4). Even in the fully deconstructed pages that end MT4, the underlying square matrix is indicated with little crosses. It is only the first part of MT3 that escapes this normalizing tool.

In contrast to the healthy square are dark, black and white photographs used to describe the event in architecture. Consistently abstract details of unnecessary activities (as discussed above, Tschumi emphasizes the subjectivity of experience through these fragments that are not necessarily experienced by everyone), they serve as a layer of reality, of lived space in this visual experiment. Their poor quality is partly a result of the source quality and the technique used for their manipulation (gelatin silver photographs). However it is also an agent of pluralism, opening the territory for multiple interpretations of the work.

The visual language Tschumi developed here is rich in linear drawings, showing plans and elevations of architectural spaces and schemes of movement. Drawings are for Tshumi both; a key means and a limitation of architectural inquiries.

Eager to represent the dynamic component of architecture, he uses notations of movement with dashed lines and arrows indicating a direction (Figure 12); he also uses dotted line to represent the underlying structures (Figure 13).

MT1 and MT2 consist mostly of plans and elevations drawings, which are replaced by axonometric projections in MT3 and MT4. The use of axonometrics in his drawings is an attempt to offer a multidimensional view of space. The play of intersecting volumes is at the same time dynamic and informative.

The title of Tschumis recently published a book Red is Not a Color (Tschumi, 2012) suggests another topic on his aesthetic choices. If red is not a colour than what is it? In an interview given to Samuel Medina for the Architizer blog, he

Figure 13: Manhattan Transcript 3: The Tower. Square matrix indicated with the dotted line. Apart from this appearance, square is not featured of the first 5 panels of MT3.

Figure 12: Manhattan Transcript 2: The Street (Border Crossing). Dotted line clearly indicates a path of movement through the city blocks.

explains his use of colour to emphasize connections, to mark out buildings or concepts that belong to each other (Medina, 2012). First applied with the colour red in the competition entry for Parc de la Villette (1982), this approach is not focusing on a particular colour choice (although Tschumi likes to appear wearing a red scarf), but on demonstrating the relation between elements of an architectural drawing. The colour thus has a diagrammatic function, it demarcates a thread of architectural thought. The colour red materialised in his first architectural experiment with folies that were indeed painted red, as well as the Fresnoy Art Centre, whose diagrammatic colour is blue. In Manhattan Transcripts red has the same diagrammatic role, connecting pieces of volumes or contrasting black shapes.

Even though it is popular today to distance oneself from the contested concept of deconstructionism, deconstruction in architectural discourse and practice of the late 70s and 80s was a form of activism, a way to protest by questioning and recomposing the elements of (architectural) establishment. In his writings prior to Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumi talked about putting architecture into crisis. He did this by applying a semantic analysis to the city elements and urban experience.

In his work on MTs, he took city elements apart and overlaid them, arriving at a collage of the real and the imaginary. This method becomes the most obvious in the fourth transcript, where the initial multi-track structure (a reference to film editing technology) gradually transforms in a collage manner and finally explodes in bits and pieces of architecture and people.

Conclusions

The importance of Manhattan Transcripts lies on bridging the gap between architectural practice (building and representing buildings) and thinking about architecture, its meaning to the person experiencing it and its role in the society. They are a particular kind of gallery architecture, one that calls for attention of not only architectural, yet very particular audience. The cultural milieu of the Artists Space in New York (where the first Architectural Manifestos were exhibited) allowed the architectural discourse to join a broader cultural polemics.

The work is partly dedicated to process, this process having no other result for a goal, but the process itself. The objective here is not to arrive at a building. It is rather a stylistic exercise. Tschumi is searching for an ideal architectural process, a process of design that is determined purely by design decisions. Any attempt at building would compromise his architecture.

Thus the way the transcripts are is closest to an aesthetic exercise, a play with shapes and volumes, recombining and changing meaning through the overlap of elements. Especially in the last two transcripts, volumes are the main protagonists of the city-saga. They are examined through the prism of other volumes, recombined and recomposed. What Tschumi is doing here is a kind of 'architectural push-ups'.

Tschumi takes on a novel approach to architectural design, one that would recognize the dynamic activity architecture is supposed to become. He is looking for a dynamic definition of architecture and experience of urban space. For him, the Manhattan Transcripts are a device for analysing the city. The Transcripts are a means of putting this experience on paper. Tschumi calls this process 'transcription'. He transcribes episodes of city experience using photographs and architectural drawings (plans, diagrams, axonometric projections). The Manhattan Transcripts are a book of architecture and not about it. They are a quest for ideas underlying the built habitat with its own existence and logic.

Tschumi is a man of mystery, or at least thats what he would like to be. The fantastic abstraction aims at perfection in its experimental practice, emphasizing the impossibility of building perfect buildings. He is intentionally unclear in his visual suggestions, allowing for multiple readings of his material. This text is one attempt at it.

References

Bernard Tschumi Architects, 2010. Bernard Tschumi Architects > Projects > Advertisements for Architecture. [online] Available at: [Accessed 20 Jun. 2013].

Hollier, D., 1989. Against architecture: the writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Martin, B., 1990. Transpositions: On the Intellectual Origins of Tschumis Architectural Theory. Assemblage, [online] (11). Available at: .

Medina, S., 2012. Architizer Blog Interview: Bernard Tschumi Paints The Town Red. [online] Available at: [Accessed 22 Jun. 2013].

Tschumi, B., 1975. Questions of Space: The Pyramid and the Labyrinth (or the Architectural Paradox). Studio International, 190(977), pp.137142.

Tschumi, B., 1977. The Pleasure of Architecture. Architectural Design. Mar.

Tschumi, B., 1981. The Manhattan transcripts. London: New York, N.Y: Academy Editions; St. Martins Press.

Tschumi, B., 1983. The Discourse of Events. Architectural Association.

Tschumi, B., 2012. Architecture Concepts: Red is not a Color. New York; Enfield: Rizzoli; Publishers Group UK [distributor].

La rhtorique visuelle du livre architecturalprof Tim BentonEvent and Movement in ArchitectureThe Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical ProjectsSelena Savic, PhD Candidate, SINLAB

Event and Movement in ArchitectureThe Manhattan Transcripts: Theoretical Projects1Context and ProcedureTranscribing the cityThe Visual FrontConclusionsReferences