28 - La Villette

28 - La Villette - Bernard Tschumi - 1987

211 Av. Jean Jaurès, Paris

Bernard Tschumi is a Swiss-French architect who used deconstructivist concepts of disorder and contrast to develop radical theories about how to inject ideas of movement, spectacle and event into architecture.

Tschumi won an international competition in 1983 to design the 55-hectare Parc de la Villette. The park contains 35 architectural follies intentionally departed from the classical interpretation of a park as an ordered space for relaxation, they are arranged in a grid system of 120x120 square meters. The red follies distributed across the landscape feature forms that appear to have been broken apart and reassembled, enhancing the sense of imperfection and disorder that gives the park its distinctive personality. Each unique structure is built using concrete and red-enamelled aluminium panels. The repetition of forms and colour creates a sense of coherence and their even spacing helps visitors orient themselves in the large park. Like the rest of the park, the follies are designed to exist independently and even their functions are arbitrary, with several having been used for different purposes since their completion. Many of the follies are purely sculptural, while others provide spaces for amenities including cafes, ticket offices, lookouts and a 700-seat concert hall.

Tschumi did not design the park in a traditional mindset where landscape and nature are the predominant forces behind the design . Rather he envisioned Parc de la Villette as a place of culture where natural and artificial are forced together into a state of constant reconfiguration and discovery. He wanted the park to be a space for activity and interaction that would evoke a sense of freedom within a superimposed organization that would give the visitors points of reference. The award-winning project noted for its architecture and strategy of urban organization, La Villette has become known as an unprecedented type of park, one based on “culture” rather than “nature.” 134