Bernard Tschumi — Centre Georges Pompidou — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 30 → July 28, 2014

Following exhibitions devoted to the work of Jean Nouvel, Thom Mayne, Richard Rogers, and Dominique Perrault, the Centre Pompidou hosts the first major European retrospective of the architect and theorist Bernard Tschumi. The exhibition showcases some three hundred and fifty drawings, sketches, collages, and models, many of them never shown previously. The installation designed by the architect also features archival documents and films.

On view will be over thirty projects in Europe, the United States, China, and the Middle East, including the new Parc Zoologique de Paris, scheduled for inauguration shortly before the exhibition opens.

Bernard Tschumi, Alésia Muséoparc, 2002-2012 © Christian Richters

Exploring the process by which an idea or concept is transformed into an architectural project, the exhibition offers unique insight into Tschumi’s approach as well into individual works. Since the late 1970s, Tschumi has been redefining architecture through a series of conceptual arguments rooted in film, literature, the visual arts, and philosophy, producing an expanded definition of the discipline that has radically renewed architectural design methods.

The exhibition casts a spotlight on Tschumi’s influence and work as a theorist, a cultural presence, and a builder. The scope of his approach is developed through five thematic and chronological sections devoted to the concepts of space and event; program and superimposition; vectors and envelopes; context and content; and the “concept-form”. These five themes are illustrated by the architect’s most iconic projects, ranging from his early theoretical project titled The Manhattan Transcripts to the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Parc de la Villette in Paris, the National Studio for Contemporary Art (Le Fresnoy) in Tourcoing, France; the Headquarters and Manufacturing Center for Vacheron Constantin in Geneva; and projects in the United States and the Dominican Republic.