Bernard Tschumi Pompidou Exhibition

Bernard Tschumi, Musée de l’Acropole 2001-2009, © Peter Mauss / Esto

BERNARD TSCHUMI CENTRE POMPIDOU, GALERIE SUD, LEVEL 1 30 APRIL - 28 JULY 2014 Following exhibitions devoted to the work of Jean Nouvel, Thom Mayne, Richard Rogers, and Dominique Perrault, the Centre Pompidou will host the first major European retrospective of the architect and theorist Bernard Tschumi. The exhibition, which opens to the public on April 30th and runs through July 28th, 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 forty projects in Europe, the United States, China, and the Middle East, including architecture for the Parc Zoologique de Paris, scheduled for inauguration shortly before the exhibition opens. 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. An illustrated catalogue with over 600 color and black-and-white reproductions and essays by exhibition curators Frédéric Migayrou and Aurélien Lemonier accompanies the exhibition. The essays examine the development of Tschumi’s work since the1970s, the dialogue of his work with the history of architecture, and his influence on architecture and educational and cultural environments and institutions. The catalogue also contains an extensive interview with the architect. http://www.centrepompidou.fr