Architecture and Deconstruction: A Critical Analysis of Jacques Derrida and the Parc de la Villette

ARCHITECTURE AND DECONSTRUCTION A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JACQUES DERRIDA AND THE PARC DE LA VILLETTE

Student Number: 778131 Dissertation Tutor: Martin Pearce U21330-17YR Dissertation (ARCH) (320) Year of Submission: 2018 Word Count: 5253

Contents

Introduction ....................................................... 2 Dissecting Derrida ............................................. 3 Abstract Mediation and Strategy ...................... 7 Folie ..................................................................... 9 Grid as the Palimpsest ...................................... 13 Grid as the Mediator ......................................... 17 Cinegram ........................................................... 19 Conclusion ........................................................ 21 Bibliography ..................................................... 23 List of Figures .................................................... 25

Introduction

This year is the twentieth anniversary marking the completion of Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in 1998. The winning entry for a design competition run by the city of Paris and “the largest demonstration of ‘deconstruction’ in architecture” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.67). La Villette is significant because Tschumi uses ‘deconstruction’ to understand and realise “the massive, 500-page park program written 1

by committees” (Tschumi, 2012, p.118). This substantiates Tschumi’s project as a suitable case study because it is a built example that uses Derrida’s theory to interpret a complex architectural brief at a public urban scale.

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher of the late twentieth century responsible for the ‘deconstruction’ theory that attacked the Cartesian search for truth. Derrida’s adversity

to absolute certainty and determination to fundamentally reconsider what guides our thinking led to a new understanding of text. First and foremost Derrida was a literary critic who was interested in understanding the multiple interpretations found in text. Anti-modernist thinkers like Derrida prioritised the multiplicity of meanings associated with exciting and engaging the senses over clarity of meaning advocated by orthodox modernism. The argument of how to understand the world using either mathematics, science and order or human experience through the senses derives from the conflict between rationalism and empiricism.

The year 1988 “is remembered in architecture as the year Deconstruction was promoted” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.11). Thirty years later humanity is still on the hunt for certainty whether it be how to live the perfect life according to social media or how to build a public space according to the conceived rules of architecture. In a world of certainty what place is there for the human mind? Our understanding of the world from interpreting our sensory experience is forgotten. Everything has a certain meaning and there is nothing for the mind to interpret. Experience of one context can be completely different to another context but the stimulation of our sensory experience can be just as exciting. Perhaps the biggest threat to the urban environment is the human desire for certainty. Creating built form according to ‘conceived’ rules of architecture is diluting the characteristics of urban environments that provide the great variety of human experience.

Finding a strategy that maintains a sense of continuity with its context could be argued as a method of architectural design that allows new variety while marking traces of the past.

Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi engaged with Derrida and his theoretical ideas

Figure 1: Exterior Photograph of a Folie by PierreEmmanuel Rastion (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A.

recognising they had potential in architecture.

Deconstructivism is a visual manifestation of Derrida’s literary ‘deconstruction’ theory.

Derrida’s textual ambiguity of meaning is achieved in architecture metaphorically by layering contrasting architectural geometry against one another to create unexpected meanings. The layers of geometry derive from a Derridean textual analysis of the context. The fundamental ideas of a Derridean textual analysis are contained in the terms Derrida devised which include “différance, metaphor, archive, pharmakom, fraternity, signature, maintenant and chora” (Coyne, 2011, Prologue xxii). The result is a new understanding of the context which underpinned what Eisenman describes as the ‘origin’ of the context. A common denominator that relates to the understanding of former traces within that context. It mediates the new understanding of a context with the continuity of prior understandings to create architecture of variety which builds on the layers of the past.

Breaking away from an understanding of cartesian ideals and using Derrida’s opposing ambiguity of meaning created the opportunity to form a new approach for our urban environment.

Unlike universal modernism or the international style, the context orchestrates the program not the function. Through analysing what it means to be in one context, and not another, the urban environment can be designed to form an integral relationship with the society it serves. A future environment where the dissolution between humanity and the places we dwell can be reversed to offer new variety.

Understanding the background to Derrida’s ideas, and how they are realised as architectural theory by Eisenman and Tschumi, will provide an insight to why Deconstructivism is of value in creating an architecture of variety. Assessing how successfully Derrida’s ideas are realised at La Villette could argue Deconstructivism as a feasible design strategy that after twenty years should perhaps be revisited.

(2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

2

Dissecting Derrida

3

Jacques Derrida published his key philosophical texts namely Dissemination, Of Grammatology, Positions and Margins of Philosophy in the same period as postmodernist architect Robert Venturi. Venturi was interested in breaking the rules of architectural typologies and repurposing these recognised architectural forms as responses to contemporary culture. Venturi captured this with Vanna Venturi House where classical architectural geometry was applied to provide the modern spatial requirements of the vernacular Pennsylvanian home. Broadbent states both “he [Venturi] and Derrida were thinking on equivalent lines of ‘Both-And’ or ‘undecidables’, or ‘transparency’ and how undesirable it [finding certainty] was. And whilst his approach may seem, and actually is, chaotic, Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ is at least sustained” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.64).

Both opposed the orthodox rules of the modernist world stemming from Descartes ideas of finding truth through reasoning as a way of understanding existence. Broadbent argues “Venturi rejects the physical transparency of walls and Derrida rejects the mental ‘transparency’ of speech” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.64). The idea of rejecting transparency of meaning is an interpretation of the Heideggerian term Destruction. Martin Heidegger was interested in the nature of what it means ‘to be’ and the nature of the divine force that coordinates the context of our ‘being’ or Ontotheology. The task of depicting the basic structure of conscious experience or Phenomenology was Heidegger’s specific interest. Heidegger states each person finds themselves thrown into the world, indeed part of a world that pre-exists them and that is their given context. The inherent desire to make sense of the world so our significance can be impressed upon the future is simply a distraction. Our lives

are bound by the rules, structures and customs of the context in which we exist. Ultimately our existence is limited by our own mortality thus Heidegger suggests that the presence of our mortality often prompts the most authentic living. Derrida’s understanding of context is transparent with Heidegger but Derrida is primarily interested in literary representation which leads to his development on Destruction.

Heidegger believed words are spoken too casually without due thought and attention.

Destruction is the process of looking beyond the everyday understanding of words and interpreting the inconsistencies of what we think we mean but we may not make apparent.

Derrida reinterprets this Destruction as Deconstruction which is a quest to find ‘gaps’ within meaning. Derrida uses a French term ‘Différance’ to encapsulate the idea that words only have meaning in the context of other words. This meaning can change depending on the context in which the word is used. This is figuratively captured in the dual meaning of Différance which means both ‘difference’ by dissimilarity and the idea of deferred meaning or ‘delay’ (Coyne, 2011, Prologue xxi).

Derrida’s proposal that meaning is ambiguous is a critical response to Saussure’s semiotics in that words have a fixed meaning which Saussure describes as ‘signifiers’ and the ‘signified’ (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.32).

For Derrida, absolute truth is provisional so to find meaning in words we must penetrate beyond their perceived definitions and look for alternative interpretations. Derrida embodies this idea in the term ‘fissure’ which means both a fracture in the earth’s surface and a condition of incompatibility or disagreement. The term ‘fissure’ was chosen by Derrida because of its dual meaning. It can be used to evoke a state of

Figure 2: Exterior Photograph of a Folie juxtaposed with a submarine by J.M. Monthiers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

4

incompatibility or disagreement which relates to the opposing views Derrida wishes to expose.

The term also defines a geological phenomenon of a breakage in the earth’s surface which could be interpreted as a metaphorical representation of Derrida’s idea where we delve beyond surface meaning to find new interpretations hidden beneath just as when a fissure opens it may uncover unexpected objects beneath the earth’s surface.

In Derrida’s essay Phaedrus, he explores the origin of writing using Plato’s texts and this provides an insight to what leads Derrida’s keen interest in text. Derrida studies the Greek term, Pharmakon, which “can be translated either as something that cures or that on the contrary makes you unwell” (Mikics, 2010, p.148 as cited in Coyne, 2011, p.28-29). Coyne interprets Derrida’s strategy as a way “to establish through all these examples intertextual connections and traces, that writing is in fact denigrated, as a poison.”

(Coyne, 2011, p.30) This idea develops in line with the Heideggerian view that words are used too casually to a new conclusion where words have been degraded to a form of representation.

Coyne declares “the turning point in Derrida’s argument hinges on his identification of a section in Phaedrus where Socrates and his student [Plato] agree the right way of using words” (Coyne, 2011, p.30). Derrida’s interpretation recognises “if conventional wisdom claims that the act of speaking is closest to the mind, soul, of the human being then this inner being is already permeated by concepts of writing (on the soul)” (Coyne, 2011, p.31). Derrida agrees with Saussure that writing is simply a representation of speech and it is only with speech that one can stir intimate meaning. However, Derrida decides if this ‘inner soul’ gives speech its fuller meaning the act of writing must have the ability

5

to evoke some qualities of speech because writing ultimately derives from speech. Derrida suggests that this inner soul or understanding of the world can transcend not only through speech but writing as well. Derrida now recognises extended meaning in writing can be revealed where it has conventionally been concealed when he observes Plato trying to, “describe what is special and authentic about speech” (Coyne, 2011, p.31). Coyne captures Plato’s process as resorting “to the metaphor of words as written in the soul” (Coyne, 2011, p.31). Coyne interprets this writing in the soul as a kind of ‘proto-writing’ where symbols convey meaning but are devoid of a fixed relationship with language. This is conceived through the figurative language device of the metaphor where language can be applied to represent something without being literal.

Derrida is transfixed by this idea where meaning is variable according to its context. To develop this further Derrida reinterprets diachronic and synchronic language in Saussure’s linguistics structure. Broadbent discovers Derrida’s inclusion of hierarchy when he analyses Plato’s understanding of binary oppositions like ‘true’ and ‘false’ or ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’

Derrida finds that one of the two polarities “as having some kind of precedence over the other” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.38) according to the context in which they are found. Derrida deduces that language comes with an inbuilt hierarchy which is dependent on context. Derrida concludes that meaning is ultimately undecidable because not only are there meanings to be uncovered between given polarities but the polarities themselves also fluctuate in meaning depending on context.

Inside becomes more important when you are stood outside in the cold wind. Outside becomes more important when you are trapped in a humid auditorium. Prior experience of a context may

negate the associated polarities of that condition to form an altogether new meaning independent of the polarities. Derrida hypothesises therefore that nothing is certain because there can be no static meaning.

Derrida studied etymology and the origin of words throughout history and unsurprisingly found a metaphor that embodies the hypothesis that language is constantly being re-contextualised. The term palimpsest formed when “medical scribes, short of vellum, would, sometimes rub out the traces of text and write another on top of it” (Mikics, 2010, p.91). When a text is written with the presence of absent texts new unexpected meanings appear. “Life, he [Derrida] suggests, is a multi-layered collection of traces, a palimpsest rather than a continuous, linear plotline” (Mikics, 2010, p.91). Here Derrida makes reference to Heidegger in that we are inherently part of a context that Derrida suggests is reliant on layers of past traces. From this there is a sense that meaning is only tangible in the present because as soon as meaning is formed it is partially lost and reinterpreted. Importantly as Heidegger suggests it is the present and past contexts that shape our future. Derrida suggests to live authentically like Heidegger intended within text we must read and write with the presence of an absent past to make meaningful conclusions.

6

Parc De La Villette Abstract Mediation and Strategy

“Crossprogramming: Using a given spatial configuration for a programme not intended for it, i.e.: using a church building for a bowling alley.

Similar to Typological Displacement: a town hall inside the spatial configuration of a prison or a museum inside a car park structure.

Reference: crossdressing Transprogramming: Combining two programmes, regardless of their incompatibilities together with their respective spatial configurations.

Reference: Planetarium + Roller-coaster Disprogramming: Combining two programmes, so that the required spatial configuration of programme A contaminates programme B and B’s possible configuration. The new programme B may be extracted from the inherent contradictions contained in programme A, and B’s required spatial configuration may be applied to A.” (A+U, 1989, Issue 10 as cited in Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p67)

7

“Tschumi seeks to demonstrate that complex architecture can be organised without reference to the traditional rules of ‘composition, hierarchy and order” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.67).

Tschumi uses the methodology of Derrida’s deconstruction to mediate the ‘context’ and ‘program’ with a contemporary understanding of the site based on his own ideas of space and program. Tschumi set out three ‘PostDeconstructivist’ strategies for deconstructing the brief which are all anti-functional and anti-traditional (Figure 3). They provide an interpretation of how conventions of architecture combined with conventions of cinema, literary criticism, philosophy and psychoanalysis can be used to dismantle and reimagine architecture.

myths and impose their own pragmatic limits” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.68). These terms defined two other design strategies Tschumi set out for urban programmes which leaves one strategy. The “search for an intermediary – an abstract system to meditate between the site, the constraints of the programme and some other concept quite beyond the actual city or programme (as a mediator)” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.68).

From a traditional architectural standpoint this approach renders the scheme undecipherable.

The contrast of the layers and form of the folies distracts you from trying to form any traditional architectural understanding.

Eisenman hails a similar direction where architecture becomes ‘internalised so that its value lies in its own logic” (Eisenman, Hofer and Kipnis, 1985, p.3). Broadbent credits Tschumi’s desire of “a reversal of the classical oppositions and a general displacement of the system” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.67) to Derrida’s ideas in Marges. In terms of architectural theory this can be defined as rejecting the traditional relationships between “form and function, structure and economics or (of course, architectural) form and programme” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.67). The purpose of subverting the traditional rules of architecture is to ignore the desire to realise the program as perfect built form because that is what modernism has already achieved.

Instead Eisenman and Tschumi look to find contemporary cultural ideas associated with the context in which they are designing to inform their architecture.

Broadbent deduces that “Tschumi rejected both ‘composition’ and ‘complement’ at La Villette since these evoke ancient architectural

Figure 3: Definitions of Tschumi’s programming stragies (A+U, 1989, Issue 10 as cited in Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p67)

8

Folie

9

“Tschumi saw it as an open-air cultural centre with separate buildings – fragments, as it were, of a single structure designed within “an integrated policy” which related both to the city’s needs and to its current limitations” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.68). Broadbent captures Tschumi’s intentions for his follies as a series of reorganised unique fragments deriving from the shattering of one singular cube. This can be likened to a jigsaw where the pieces are not placed together to complete the conceived ‘correct’ image but instead reorganised to create a new image. This is an architectural representation of Derrida’s re-contextualising of the text where new meaning is found when the context changes. Tschumi’s understanding of the context revolves around the term madness which “serves as a constant point of reference throughout La Villette because it appears to illustrate a characteristic situation at the end of the twentieth century-that of disjunctions and disassociations between use, form and social values” (Tschumi, 1996, p.175). This contextual understanding of the disconnect between program, space and society contrasts with the rational way humanity claims to live by. It is suggested that humanity is unaware of the multiple interpretations it encounters in the same way that Derrida says the different interpretations of text are often ignored. “There is no intention here to descend into an intellectual fascination with madness, but rather to stress that madness articulates something that is often negated in order to preserve a fragile cultural or social order” (Tschumi, 1987, p.17). In this sense Tschumi chooses the term madness because it has a similar contextual meaning in both society and architecture. The condition of living chaotically does not fit into the rational model of ‘normality’ that we attempt to live by. Tschumi says this transcends into architecture where our chaotic movement in space is incompatible with

the rational forms humanity inhabits.

The cubes or fragments from the initial explosion form the folies which are fragmented again into a nine-square plan cube. “Tschumi is anxious to break the ‘binary oppositions’ of ‘architecture and program’, of form and function” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.71). The programmatic strategies of crossprogramming, transprogramming and disprogramming attempt to break up the relationship between form and function where certain spaces are conceived as only being able to house a certain function. The nine-square plan enables these strategies as squares that can be missed out, misplaced, warped or even attached to a spiral staircase. “For just as Derrida rejects the idea that meanings are ‘immanent’ in words – inherent to them – so Tschumi rejects the idea that meanings are ‘immanent’ in the structures and forms of his buildings, that his architecture has a direct capacity for signifiying” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.71). The folies symbolise Tschumi’s architectural response to the Derridean idea that the world is constantly being re-contextualising. The folies are not static space just as Derrida says there can be no static meaning. Tschumi recognises function will change with context so architecture must be able to adapt to accommodate the chaos. It was successful as “one of the folies was indeed was changed from restaurant to gardening centre to arts workshop; these changes could be accommodated easily, whilst the Park as a whole retained its overall identity” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.69). This can be expanded as an architectural response to Derrida’s ‘différance’ where architecture can accommodate the opposing interpretations and deferred interpretations of human activity while the etymological origin or the grid at La Villette maintains a continuity with its context.

Figure 4: Exterior Photograph of a Folie by J.M. Monthiers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

10

The term folie is chosen for its meaning in the French language as madness rather than the English meaning of folly as a built form. The folie for Tschumi is an architectural metaphor where the meaning of folie as madness is directly applied to an object the folie the built form to which it is not literally applicable. In this context however, the metaphor is applied to the object which is significant because Tschumi’s folies achieve the quality of a fissure where there are hidden meanings beyond the surface meaning of the folie as an object. Although unfortunate the folies at La Villette have acquired the unintended English meaning of folly. Similarly, to the costly ornamental buildings of the English picturesque that had no purpose the folies at La Villette are also almost entirely uninhabited. This illustrates that Derrida’s re-contextualising is a constant process that prompts the association of different meanings with different contexts.

11

12

Grid as the Palimpsest

13

Eisenman believes there is the presence of a palimpsest at La Villette because Eisenman observes how his unrealised Cannaregio housing project and Tschumi’s La Villette have a common denominator in Le Corbusier’ Cartesian grid system (Derrida, Eisenman, Kipnis, Leeser, 1996, p.72). In addition, both schemes were conceived on the sites of former slaughterhouses and both feature red built forms at intersections of their grids. Importantly the projects were informed by two architects with a keen theoretical interest in Derrida. Both architects taught at the AA in the early 70s where Tschumi first realised the grid in the Joyce’s Garden project at Covent Garden where “intersections of an ordinance survey grid became the locations of each architectural intervention” (Bernard Tschumi Architects, n.d., para.1). Tschumi says this “was consciously reused as the organizing strategy for the Parc de la Villette five years later” (Tschumi, 2012, p.125).

Evidently there is some sense that the idea of the grid has some value as a trace of the past where prior understanding of the grid informs current understanding.

Tschumi alludes to this further and dismisses the claim as Eisenman does that the Parc de la Vilette was directly informed by the Cannaregio project. “On second thought, however, I [Tschumi] felt that the plot was thickening; if my Parc de la Villette had been generated by a point grid originally staged to provide a common denominator between a text (Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake) and a garden (London’s Covent Garden), Joyce would now be added into the Plato-Derrida-Le Corbusier-EisenmanTschumi ‘equation” (Derrida, Eisenman, Kipnis and Leeser, 1996, p.125). This evokes an understanding of the Cartesian grid beyond its definition as a tool of composition but also as a trace that inherits qualities of previous architectural interpretations. This relates to

Derrida’s understanding of ‘fissure’ where there is a presence of past underlying meanings that inform current understanding beyond our surface understanding of the Cartesian grid as a compositional tool.

“Grids always provide the common point among uncommon commonalities” (Derrida, Eisenman, Kipnis and Leeser, 1996, p.125). Tschumi is suggesting the Cartesian grid as a common language that allows the understanding of different contexts. The grid is not just a signifier with a signified meaning as a compositional tool like Saussure would suggest. The grid can be interpreted to contain its own language that prompts the human mind to formulate new understandings. Using a common denominator like the grid that was first used to form settlements by the Romans enables inhabitants to use prior knowledge of what the grid means from experience of being in other contexts.

When we experience new contexts where the grid or language is conceived in a different way we conceive new meanings through cognitive comparison between our present and prior experience of other contexts. This is similar to Derrida’s idea of palimpsest where traces of prior knowledge are subconsciously being read alongside new experiences to form a current understanding.

“The point grid also allows you to retain what is already on the site and gives it character, like the canal and the remains of nineteenth century buildings” (Tschumi, 2012, p.118). In this Tschumi alludes to the grid as a tool that is used to recontextualise the prior understanding of the site as an abattoir complex. The proportions of Tschumi’s grid are very similar to the grid that organised the buildings of the old abattoir complex. In this sense there is an idea of Derrida’s palimpsest where a historical trace of a context

Figure 5: A collection of photographs and plans documenting the old abattoir complex at La Vilette (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

14

has been used to inform a new understanding.

In Tschumi’s understanding of La Villette the folies are placed at intersecting points of the grid rather than within the grid lines like the abattoir sheds. Unlike modernist architecture which was conceived using a singular understanding according to Cartesian ideals the scheme at La Villette has a continuity with its context. There is a presence of absence with the historical trace of the abattoir complex and the numerous architectural projects that inform Tschumi’s grid that enable La Villette to be ambiguous and suggestive. La Villette is conceived using its own rules that were formed in response to the multiple layered historical understanding of the context that Derrida says is required to find new contemporary understandings without constraints.

15

16

Grid as the Mediator

17

When read alongside the layers of lines and planes the grid prompts a new understanding which is typically Derridean where a change of context prompts a new interpretation. The “superimposition of the three systems” is credited to “Wassily Kandinksy’s book Point and Line to Plane” (Tschumi, 2012, p.119). The superimposition of the three components forms the final design strategy that Tschumi chose for La Villette. The ‘abstract system’ where context and program are mediated by a concept not associated with either.

the points and the spatial layer of the planes.

Tschumi is keen to discourage any impression of sign, signifier and signified present with the international style where the beholder is told using mathematical proportions how to move through a space. La Villette does not suggest a singular interpretation of experience so the mind must engage with its senses to explore La Villette rather than relying on signs of architectural hierarchy that tell it how to understand the space.

The intention of the program at La Villette is to discourage the cartesian search for certainty through an urban scale strategy.

Tschumi states “each [layer] represents a different and autonomous system (a text), whose superimposition on one another makes impossible any ‘composition,’ maintaining differences and refusing ascendancy of any privileged system or organising element” (Tschumi, 1987, Preface VI). This relates to the premise of Derrida’s palimpsest in that the individual meaning of a layer is partially lost when observed in the presence of other layers.

Tschumi suggests this resists the Cartesian urge to find meaning because the beholder can only experience the layers as a multiplicity where there meaning as a single component is partially lost.

By its nature “the abstraction of the grid as an organising device suggested the disjunction between an architectural signifier and its programmatic signified, between the space and the use that is made of it” (Tschumi, 1987, Prologue VI). Tschumi is referencing Derrida’s attack on Saussure and how cause and effect should be opposed in architecture concerning form and program. The contextual layer of the grid mediates the programmatic layer of

Figure 6: A concours poster representing the three layers and the journeys through the layers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

18

Cinegram

19

Eisenman argues that Architecture should be realised as an ‘independent discourse, free from external values’. (Eisenman, Hofer and Kipnis, 1985, p.3) Typically, Architecture is judged on the strength of its rational design and how well it realises an idea or program as built space but this Cartesian quest for certainty is rejected

by Eisenman and Tschumi. An independent discourse relates to the Derridean idea that meaning is provisional and belongs to one context. In the case of La Villette it is Cinegram that is used as an independent discourse to illustrate the scheme at a contemporary cultural level. The proposition of an independent discourse informing architecture is powerful because unlike an architecture of totality it offers a new strategy that is associated with the provisional understanding of a present context.

Tschumi presents a collection of perspective drawings with the presence and deferred presence of different fractures. In other words, the différance that Derrida perceives as the motion within our inner soul that contains conflicting and deferred knowledge to interpret the present.

“In ‘montage’ independent fragments may be juxtaposed thus permitting ‘a multiplicity of combinations. There can be repetitions, inversions, substitutions, insertions and so on ‘but in each film, each frame (or photogram) is placed within a continuous movement” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.70). The system of composition is independent of architectural conventions and instead is based on cinematics. A contemporary artform with its own contemporary social, historical and cultural condition realised as an architectural built form but conceived using the internal coherence of cinematics so it resists the external values associated with rational architecture.

The idea of the Cinegram is first visited in Tschumi’s publication the Manhattan Transcripts where the individual frames formulate a plot based around a murder. Tschumi says “three disjointed levels of reality are presented simultaneously in the transcripts: the world of objects, composed of buildings abstracted from maps, plans, photographs; the world of movements, which can be abstracted from choreography, sport, or other movement diagrams; the world of events, which is abstracted from news photographs” (Tschumi, 1981, p.9). Importantly, the frames are the point of contact where all three levels are observed against each other by the beholder. Similarly, in La Villette this is achieved through the point, line and plane layers. The purpose of these drawings is to convey the point that architecture must be experienced in the provisional context of the moment. In the Manhattan Transcripts this has a strong relationship with Heidegger’s authentic living where we should live with the presence of our own mortality. Significantly for Tschumi the collision of objects, movements and events in each cinematic frame represents how the human mind can be introduced to experience architecture through the senses.

Figure 7: Exterior perspectives conveying the collision between Tschumi’s three levels (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books)

20

Conclusion

21

In Tschumi’s theoretical publications the disconnect between humanity and architecture is exposed and it is suggested this should be accepted as a provisional understanding of our current existence. The Parc de la Villette was knowingly designed as a response to the interpretation that humanity lives chaotically.

The bond between architecture and program, architecture and meaning is lost as Tschumi breaks any association between them. Tschumi compares this separation to “distanciation first elaborated in the performing arts as the principle of non-identity between actor and character” (Tschumi, 1987, p.49). The actor does not represent the qualities of the character he plays in the same sense that architecture does not have to represent the programmatic qualities it contains. Tschumi believes architecture should be able to accommodate multiple interpretations in the same way that words contain multiple meanings when viewed in the context of other words as sustained by Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ theory.

“La Villette symbolises, more than anything else, more than any other building complex in the world, the application into architecture of Derrida’s ‘Deconstruction” (Broadbent and Glusberg, 1991, p.71). While this legacy is its foremost achievement it can be argued to have a more contemporary importance contained within the design strategies realised in accordance to ‘Deconstruction.’ The significance of Tschumi and indeed Eisenman resides in their proposition that architecture can be informed by an independent discourse devoid of fixed architectural values. Unlike Venturi’s approach an independent discourse makes a sustained effort to inform architectural design with contemporary interpretations of the context in which humanity lives. In addition, the inclusion of a Derridean palimpsest where new interpretations of a

context build on the traces of the past creates a sense of continuity between new and old.

Both these strategies can be argued as being more effective than Venturi’s approach because they extend beyond the theoretical realm of architecture and attempt to closely relate the context, space and program using contemporary culture interpretations relevant to the people the architecture communicates with.

The significance of the Deconstructivist approach devised by Tschumi at La Vilette relies in its relationship with Ontology and the experience of being. Twenty years on from La Villette and the value of human experience has not become an inherent part of architecture which is still restricted by the rational relationship between form and function advocated by Descartes. Encouraging the interaction between architecture and the senses is argued

by Tschumi and exemplified at La Vilette not only as a feasible design strategy for complex programs but also as an architectural theory that recognises Derrida’s view that ultimately there is no meaning outside of the context. This fundamental idea resonates that without the people and places that surround us there can be no variety of experience.

Figure 8: Exterior photograph conveying how the the folies encourage engagement with urban space (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014). Tschumi : Parc de La Villette.

London : Artifice Books)

22

Bibliography

23

Coyne, R. (2011). Derrida : for architects. London : Routledge.

Toy, M. (1993). Re:working Eisenman. London : Academy Editions/Ernst and Sohn.

Moneo, J. R., & Cariño, G. (2004). Theoretical anxiety and design strategies : in the work of eight contemporary architects. Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT Press.

Eisenman, P. (n.d). Peter Eisenman. Tokyo : A & U Publishing Co. Derrida, J., Eisenman, P., Kipnis, J., & Leeser, T. (1996). Chora l works. [New York] : Monacelli.

Glusberg, J. (1991). Deconstruction : a student guide. London : Academy Editions.

Tschumi, B. (2012). Architecture concepts : red is not a color. New York : Rizzoli.

Georgiadis, N. (1998). Tracing architecture.

London : Academy Editions.

Tschumi, B. (1981). The Manhattan transcripts.

(London) : Academy Editions.

Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and disjunction.

Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT Press Tschumi, B. (1987). Cinégramme folie : le Parc de la Villette, Paris, dix-neuvi eme arrondissement.

Seyssel : Champ Vallon.

Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., Vidler, A., & Boyarsky, A. (1986). La case vide : La Villette, 1985. London : Architectural Association.

Eisenman, P., Hofer, N., & Kipnis, J. (1985).

Fin d'Ou T Hou S. (London) : Architectural Association

Eisenman, P. (1986). Moving arrows : Eros and other errors : an architecture of absence. London : Architectural Association Bernard Tschumi Architects. (n.d.). Joyce's Garden. Retrieved from http://www.tschumi. com/projects/49/# Bernard Tschumi Architects. (n.d.). Parc de la Villette. Retrieved from http://www.tschumi.com/ projects/3/ Eisenman Architects. (n.d.). Cannaregio Town Square. Retrieved from http://www. eisenmanarchitects.com/cannaregio.html Eisenman Architects. (n.d.). La Vilette. Retrieved from http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/lavillette.html Eisenman Architects. (n.d.). FIN d'OU T HOU S. Retrieved from http://www.eisenmanarchitects. com/fin-d-ou-t-hou-s.html Mikics, D. (2010). Who Was Jacques Derrida?: An Intellectual Biography. London : Yale University Press Derrida, J., & Spivak, G. C. (1998). Of grammatology. Baltimore ; London : Johns Hopkins University Press.

Krier, L., & Porphyrios, D. (1984). Léon Krier, houses, palaces, cities. London: Architectural Design AD Editions.

Baljon, L. (1995). Designing parks : an examination of contemporary approaches to design in landscape architecture, based on a comparative design analysis of entries for the Concours International: Parc de la Villette, Paris 1982-3. Woodbridge : Garden Art ; Amsterdam : Architectura & Natura.

Bernard Tschumi 1983-1993. (1994). Tokyo : A & U Publishing Co.

24

List of Figures Figure 1: Folie by Pierre-Emmanuel Rastion (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 70) Figure 2: Exterior Photograph of a Folie juxtaposed with a submarine by J.M. Monthiers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 35) Figure 3: Definitions of Tschumi’s programming stragies (Glusberg, J. (1991). Deconstruction : a student guide. London : Academy Editions, Page 67) Figure 4: Exterior Photograph of a Folie juxtaposed with a submarine by J.M. Monthiers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 67) Figure 5: A collection of photographs and plans documenting the old abattoir complex at La Vilette (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 17) Figure 6: A concours poster representing the three layers and the journeys through the layers (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 208) Figure 7: Exterior perpesctives conveying the collision between Tschumi’s three levels (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 72) Figure 8: Exterior photograph conveying how the the folies encourage engagement with urban space (Tschumi, B., Derrida, J., & Vidler, A. (2014).

Tschumi : Parc de La Villette. London : Artifice Books, Page 78) 25