The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 4: The Block
Bernard Tschumi
French and Swiss, born Switzerland 1944
1980-81
A mixed-media architectural work—ink drawings with pasted black-and-white photographs on tracing paper—in which Tschumi reconceives architectural drawing as a film-like montage to narrate movements and events in imagined Manhattan spaces.
What strikes you is the split composition: a crisp, filmstrip-like row of schematic interior views and abstracted plans above, and below five small, high-contrast photographic squares of legs and motion that violently animate and contradict the clinical diagrams.
The Manhattan Transcripts helped reframe architecture around events and programs rather than solely form, introducing filmic montage and collage into architectural representation and profoundly influencing late-20th-century theory and practice.
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
9.1995.9
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
