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 print from Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts that pairs a grainy snapshot of bodies with schematic diagrams to show how events and movement activate and redefine urban space.
You first notice the cropped, blurred photograph of legs and motion placed beside spare, numbered line drawings on a vast white field, the contrast making human action read like a sequence of architectural operations.
Tschumi’s Transcripts reframed architecture as produced by events and movement rather than solely by form, shaping a narrative and drawing practice that influenced the turn toward deconstructivist and performance-oriented architectural theory.
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
3.1995.3
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions