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 presents a triptych—photographic image, abstracted plan, and movement diagram—trying to translate events in a New York park into architectural information.
You first notice three numbered panels: a grainy high-contrast snapshot of a seated figure, a tight, ornamental plan-like pattern, and a dashed-grid scheme traced with arrows and numbered points that maps movement like a choreography on a map.
The Transcripts helped change how architecture is represented by making actions, sequences, and narratives legible alongside plans and drawings, opening the field to diagrammatic, event-based thinking that influenced later theory and practice.
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
3.1995.20
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
