Systems

Tschumi : Strategic Tools | Disjunction

The design strategy employed by Bernard Tschumi for the Parc de la Villette finds its roots and inspirations from a strong theoretical research from the concepts in Architecture and Disjunction and The Manhattan Transcripts. Tschumi’s ideas of a space being an instrument for the social transformation and the changing relationship between the individual and society are translated in the La Villette proposal. He professed the concept of the inevitable disjunction in architecture’s inherent confrontation of space and its use. This makes architecture operate as constantly unstable, constantly on a verge of change.3

The systematic exploration of themes in the Manhattan Transcripts is based on frames and sequences, whereas in La Villette it is based on superimposition and repetition. The common denominators of the idea of disjunctive projects is the rejection of the idea of synthesis and an opposition between use and the architectural form. Instead, there is an emphasis on dissociation as a method, superimposition and combination that channel and trigger dynamic forces, resulting in an explosion of limits and boundaries. Tschumi’s ideology towards La Villette aims at unsettling both memory and context, refusing to function as a result of the expression of any pre-existing content, be it subjective, formal or functional True to its meaning, it absorbs the essence of the his theory that architecture is more of the signifier than the signified Reaching a level of interpretative infinity, the tools used to formulate multiplicity of impressions explore the concept of a ‘folie’ . The use of grid acts as an agent, an abstract parameter that mediates between architecture and programme, creating a sense of distanciation between the built realm and the user’s demands.4