The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 4: The Block
Bernard Tschumi
French and Swiss, born Switzerland 1944
1980-81
A page from Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts that uses ink drawings and cut-and-pasted gelatin silver photographs on tracing paper to stage architectural plans as cinematic sequences, showing how movement and events animate space.
At a glance the sheet reads like a storyboard: crisp, linear plan fragments across the top and middle and a regimented run of stark black-and-white photo squares below, which together make the drawing feel like a filmed sequence of actions within space.
Tschumi’s Transcripts helped remake architectural representation by arguing that buildings are defined by events and movements, turning plans into narrative devices and anticipating later theoretical and deconstructivist approaches.
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
9.1995.6
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
