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 combines photographed fragments, diagrammatic plans, and headline-like captions to stage a theatrical sequence in the park and probe how events and movement define architectural space.
You’re struck by the spare choreography of three numbered panels across a wide white field—a cropped photo of an arm drawing, a schematic plan traced with dotted movement, and a stark newspaper-style caption reading “FEW CLUES AT SCENE,” which together make space feel like an acted-upon script.
This work belongs to a seminal series that reframed architecture as sequences of actions and narratives rather than only static forms, opening the discipline to filmic, theatrical, and programmatic approaches influential in later theoretical and deconstructivist work.
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
3.1995.8
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
