COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD  April 29, 1994  Vol. 19 No. 26

          TSCHUMI EXHIBIT OPENS AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

      An exhibition of the work of Bernard Tschumi, dean of Columbia's 
      Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and an 
      internationally acclaimed architect, is on view at the Museum of 
      Modern Art through July 5.

      The exhibit is the second in the Museum's THRESHOLDS series 
      devoted to thematic explorations of contemporary issues in 
      architecture and design.

      Organized by Terence Riley, chief curator, and Anne Dixon, study 
      center supervisor, department of architecture and design, 
      "THRESHOLDS/Bernard Tschumi: Architecture and Event" explores the 
      tension between the rational systems by which buildings are 
      necessarily designed and the constant transformation of these 
      buildings by the changing events within them.

   A REFERENCE POINT

      As an introduction to five major architectural projects, the 
      exhibition begins with Tschumi's theoretical project, The 
      Manhattan Transcripts (first exhibited in New York in 1978), which 
      serves as a reference for much of his later work.

      Represented in the exhibition through models and drawings are Parc 
      de la Villette, Paris (1982- ); Bridge-City, Lausanne (1988), an 
      urban project consisting of four inhabited bridges; Kansai 
      International Airport, Osaka (1988); Edge City, Chartres (1991- ), 
      an office and leisure development and Le Fresnoy National Studio 
      of Contemporary Arts, Tourcoing, France (1991- ).

      The installation, designed with Tschumi, reinforces the uneasy 
      relationship between the precision of architecture and the 
      instability of day-to-day life.Models are suspended from cables, 
      while video images of human activity underscore the importance of 
      events in defining architectural space.

      In the 125-acre Parc de la Villette, Tschumi disrupts the public's 
      expectations of stable architectural space by distorting the 
      geometry of both the plan and the structures, and by proposing an 
      unusual combination of urban activities.

      Tschumi's design manipulates the ideal forms of circles, squares 
      and triangles; when dissected and recombined, these pure geometric 
      forms become examples of imperfection and disorder.

      By incorporation an existing building of a disparate type into a 
      new design, as in Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art, 
      the architect creates multiple historic layers within one 
      structure.

      The original buildings, an indoor entertainment complex built in 
      the 1920s, are to be completely covered by a glass-and-steel 
      structure.

      Tschumi defines the irregular space between the new and old roofs 
      with unexpected pathways, platforms and foot-bridges. In some 
      projects, including Le Fresnoy, video or film projections are 
      integrated into the structures to further the sense of 
      dislocation.

      "Tschumi's work presents logical and compelling alternatives to 
      the machine as the twentieth century's source of visual and 
      ethical inspiration," says Riley.

   JOINED COLUMBIA IN 1988

      Tschumi, who was born in 1944 in Lausanne, Switzerland, studied at 
      the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, where he received his 
      degree in architecture in 1969.

      He has taught at the Architectural Association, London (1970-80); 
      at Princeton's School of Architecture (1976, 1980-81) and at The 
      Cooper Union School of Architecture (1980-83).

      In 1983 he won the international competition for the construction 
      of Parc de la Villette. In 1988 he was named dean of Columbia's 
      Architecture School.

      Tschumi is the author of "The Manhattan Transcripts" (1981), "La 
      Case Video" (1986), "Cinegramme Folie" (1987), and "Architecture 
      and Disjunction" (1994). "Event-Cities" (1994) is being published 
      by MIT Press to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, as is 
      a new edition of "The Manhattan Transcripts," published by Academy 
      Editions.