MANAHTTAN TRANSCRIPT

Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also

aboutevent, action, and what happens in space.
The purpose of the Manhattan Transcripts was to transcribe an
architectural interpretation of reality.
4 sections; the park, the street, the tower and the block
The Manhattan Transcripts differ from most architectural drawings
insofar as they are neither real projects nor mere fantasies.
Developed in the late '70s, they proposed to transcribe an
architectural interpretation of reality

THE STREET

To this aim, they employed a particular structure

involving photographs that either direct or
"witness"events (some would call them "functions,
" others "programs"). At the same time, plans,
sections, and diagrams outline spaces and
indicate the movements of the different protagonists intruding
into the architectural "stage set."
The Transcripts' explicit purpose was to transcribe
things normally removed from conventional
architectural representation, namely the complex
relationship between spaces and their use,
between the set and the script, between "type"
and program," between objects andevents.

THE PARK


The dominant theme of The Transcripts is a set of disjunctions among
use, form, and social values; the non-coincidence between meaning
and being, movement and space, man and object was the starting
condition of the work.

The Transcripts aimed to offer a different reading of architecture in

which space, movement andevents are independent, yet stand in a
new relation to one another, so that the conventional components of
architecture are broken down and rebuilt along different axes.

THE STREET

While theprograms used for The

Manhattan Transcripts are of the most
extreme nature, they also parallel the
most common formula plot: the
archetype of murder.
Other phantasms were occasionally
used to underline the fact that perhaps
all architecture, rather than being
about functional standards, is about
love and death.

By going beyond the conventional

definition of use and program, The
Transcripts used their tentative format
to explore unlikely confrontations.
THE TOWER

THE BLOCK

Due to the nature of some of the things being represented in the

series of images the methods of representation normally used by
architects are brought into question. This exposes their limitations and
the limitations of the profession.
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

The methodological points made by Bernard Tschumi in 1981

known as THE Manhattan Transcripts.

1)DEFINITION
There is no architecture without event, without program, without
violence, the transcripts try to bring architecture to its limits, to
introduce programmatic and formal intentions both in Architectural
speech and graphics. What limits the current architecture are:
1) What concerning the relations of space and its use, including type
and program between objects and events.
2) The terms of representation in architecture. Limits my language
are the limits of my world.

2.CONDITION
Transcripts take as its starting point of disjunction (Separation) between
use, form and social values. They maintain that when this situation
develops between architectural confrontation, appears inevitably a new
relationship between pleasure and violence. The disjunction is an act of
separation. The disjunction indicates the discontinuity or the threshold
between nature and culture, the absence a continuous in time or in
space. The disjunction between man and object, object and events, or
events and space between being and its significance.
3.CLASSIFICATION
The transcripts offer a different reading of Architecture, in them space,
movement and events are ultimately independent classification
include:
1) Event, incident, occurrence, which has its own logic, its own
importance.
2) Area, Sensory experience, awareness, which has its autonomy and
logic, able to deform, break, compressed, fragmented and juxtaposed
through shape manipulation.
3) Movement, action or process of moving. Architecture is therefore
only an organism implicated in a constant interaction with users, whose
bodies are thrown against established rules carefully thought through

4.RELATIONSHIP
The three levels of event, space and movement are interested for
architectural experience. These maintained through contradicting
dynamically into a new relationship of indifference, reciprocity or
conflict.
1) Indifference: failure to differentiate where the spaces are.
2) Reciprocity: Architectural spaces and programs may be totally
interdependent and condition fully their mutual existence.
3) Conflict: Most relationships are taken for granted, complex and
contradictory, in a kitchen we can also sleep, fight and love.
Transgression is authentic and influential for a time, the
transgression of cultural expectations just being accepted.
5.REPRESENTATION
The purpose of the tripartite mode of representation (event,
movement spaces) is to introduce the order of experience, the
order of Weather - movements, intervals and sequences - because
all interfere inevitably reading of the work.

6.JOINT
The main feature of the transcripts is the sequence, sequence
integrated frameworks facing spaces, movements and events, each
equipped with a combinatorial structure and a number of its own
inherent rules.
These joints generate memory. Experiment and to follow an
architectural sequence is to reflect on the events, in order to place
them in successive sets.
7.TRANSFORMATION
Resources are understanding, integration, transfer, Etc. allow maximum
resource formal manipulation of the sequence, then the Supported
content frames can mix, overlap, blur boundaries, suggested or
trimmed, giving possibilities infinite sequence of narrative. All
resources can be transformative applied equally and independently to
places, events or movements.
8.COMBINATION
Going beyond the conventional definition of "function, transcripts
Served combined levels of research to address the notion of program
and explore improbable comparisons
Program: Combination of events. "An Architectural program is a list of
services required; indicates their relations, but gives no idea of

9.DECONSTRUCTION
Despite the abstract resource, transcripts presuppose existing
reality, a reality that awaits dismantling - and long, its
transformation. Isolated, joint take elements of the city.
Deconstruction is from reality, photography and cinema.
1) Reality: His intention is to use a fragment, simultaneously given
reality and rational structure abstract concepts, constantly calls
into question trial nature of architectural signs.
2) Photography: Photography can act as the source of architectural
image through events and set serve as a metaphor to the
architectural program, referring the event or individuals. They
can be read autonomously, regardless of the drawings
juxtaposed to them. The allegorical content events can severely
disrupt the neutral logic successive moves of the game by
introducing a purely subjective reading.

3) Cinema: The architectural sequentialization

shares with film the art of frame after frame and
insulation proportions of action.

10.SENSATION
All architects, rather than trying functional models try about love
and death
1) Violence. The programmatic violence should be a contrario in
order to question the past humanistic programs cover only
functional requirements. The concept of violence evokes different
readings of the spatial function, as is the fact that the definition
of architecture can be placed in the intersection of logic and
suffering, rationality and anguish, pain and pleasure.
2) Madness: "In the madness rooted balance, but that balance
masks itself behind the clouds Illusion, after a feigned disorder,
the rigor of architecture is hidden behind the artful arrangement
of these confusing violence. "...

Parc de la Villette
Paris, 1982-1998

An award-winning project noted for its architecture and new

strategy of urban organization, La Villette has become known as
an unprecedented type of park, one based on culture rather
than nature.
The park is located on what was one of the last remaining large
sites in Paris, a 125-acre expanse previously occupied by the
central slaughter houses and situated at the northeast corner of
the city. In addition to the master plan, the project involved the
design and construction of over 25 buildings, promenades,
covered walkways, bridges, and landscaped gardens over a period
of fifteen years.
A system of dispersed pointsthe red enameled steel follies
that support different cultural and leisure activitiesis
superimposed on a system of lines that emphasizes movement
through the park.