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 fragment of a park, a schematic diagram of movements, and an empty dashed frame to argue that architecture is defined by events as much as by form.
You’re struck by the triptych’s choreography—an eerie black-and-white snapshot of two circular objects in grass beside a compact diagram of dashed trajectories and symbols, followed by a deliberately empty dashed square—so that image, plan, and absence read together as one staged action.
Tschumi’s Transcripts helped shift architectural thinking from static form to sequences and events, pioneering diagrammatic storytelling that opened up conceptual and deconstructive approaches in late twentieth-century architecture.
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
3.1995.9
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
