The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 1: The Park

Bernard Tschumi

1976-77

A gelatin silver photograph in three numbered panels that juxtaposes a photographed building fragment, a schematic grid of repeated plan-elements, and an empty dashed outline to argue that architecture is made of events and sequences as much as walls and rooms.

You first notice the grainy black-and-white photograph of a high-rise and a tiny crowd, then the clinical regularity of a repeated diagrammatic column, and finally the stark dashed square—together reading like a cinematic storyboard or instruction manual.

Part of Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts, this piece helped reframe architecture as choreography and narrative, using photographic montage and diagram to influence later thinking about program, movement, and deconstructive design.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Photography Architecture Photomontage Architectural fragment Choreography Conceptual art

Exhibitions

The New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal

1967

Architecture in Government Housing

1936

Architecture and Imagery: Four New Buildings

1959

Visionary Architecture

1960