The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 1: The Park
Bernard Tschumi
French and Swiss, born Switzerland 1944
1976-77
A gelatin silver photograph from Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts that pairs a photographed texture, a schematic plan, and a numbered diagram to test how movement, events, and sequence generate architectural meaning.
Three matched squares read left to right like a visual sentence — a spiraling fingerprint-like photograph, a fragmented plan of paths and objects, and a dashed, numbered grid — their clinical black-and-white clarity turning space into choreography and instruction.
Tschumi’s piece helped shift architectural thinking away from pure form toward events and narratives, using diagrams and staged images to argue that program and action are central to how architecture is experienced and designed.
Medium
Gelatin silver photograph
Dimensions
14 x 18" (35.6 x 45.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase and partial gift of the architect in honor of Lily Auchincloss
Accession
3.1995.19
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
