The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 4: The Block
Bernard Tschumi
French and Swiss, born Switzerland 1944
1980-81
An ink drawing on tracing paper into which the architect has cut and pasted gelatin-silver photographic scraps to stage a sequence of imagined actions across a fragmented city block.
Airy, translucent tracing paper is filled with precise, machine-like line drawings of architectural fragments and arrows that are repeatedly interrupted by stark, black-and-white triangular photo pieces, giving the whole composition a cinematic, disjointed sense of movement and collision.
Part of Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts, this work helped shift architectural thinking from static form to event and narrative, influencing later deconstructivist and conceptual approaches to representing space and action.
Medium
Ink and cut-and-pasted gelatin silver photographs on tracing paper
Dimensions
19 x 31" (48.3 x 78.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase and partial gift of the architect in honor of Lily Auchincloss
Accession
9.1995.11
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
