PARC DE LA VILLETTE

For this assignment, we picked one of the folies in Parc de la Villette, created by Bernard Tschumi to create in Revit. My folie was N8, which is a grid stricture with a floating staircase.

Parc de la Villette is Paris’s third largest park, and it was designed by architect Bernard Tschumi. Instead of an average park, it has 26 different follies with different representations of architectural deconstructionism. According to Tschumi, he wanted to create a place that people could appropriate and use in their own way without constraints. Because of this, each folie is unique in their design and structure.

The Villette and its follies are arranged in a grid system across the 35 hectares of land. Tschumi laid the park out in this manner because he wanted the visitors to gain a sense of direction. The bright red follies stand out tremendously from the greenery and aid in the navigation throughout the space. The entire park was built on the grounds of what used to be a slaughterhouse for cattle. When Bernard Tschumi was asked “Why are the follies red?”, he only responded with red is not a color. This is because for him, it is not a color, but instead an architectural concept. Each project has a concept, as well as its own history to go along with that concept. Parc de la Villette’s artificial bright red color signifies the land’s slaughterhouse history and the revolutionary concept of being able to use the space as one pleases.

My folie was labeled as N8 on the grid system and it is named “Folie Janvier”. The folie itself is a grid structure with something similar to a floating staircase. It is very simple compared to the other follies in the park; it has a very blocky structure made with beams and flat surfaces instead of a circular structure with spiral staircases and uneven flooring. In connection to Tschumi’s Point, Line, Surface concept, the park is comprised of 26 points of interest, organized on a grid of lines, with a series of surfaces on each point.

If I were to design a park in the future, I would probably incorporate different aspects into the many points of interest. Although the park does not have a specific use for each folie and each folie is unique, I would like to add a little more variety instead of all metal structures. I also think I would use a different material other than metal, especially if the park is in a city with warm weather. I remember being terrified to go down the metal slide as a child because it would get extremely hot in the summer, and I wouldn’t want any visitors to feel that way at my park, regardless of whether they are a child or not.

INVISIBLE CITIES: ZENOBIA

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, we chose one of the passages and created our interpretation of the city. We used Revit to create the city and Lumion to render.