Avant-garde theorist and architect Bernard Tschumi is equally well known for his writing and his practice. Architecture and Disjunction, which brings together Tschumi's essays from 1975 to 1990, is a lucid and provocative analysis of many of the key issues that have engaged architectural discourse over the past two decades -- from deconstructive theory to recent concerns with the notions of event and program.The essays develop different themes in contemporary theory as they relate to the actual making of architecture, attempting to realign the discipline with a new world culture characterized by both discontinuity and heterogeneity. Included are a number of seminal essays that incited broad attention when they first appeared in magazines and journals, as well as more recent and topical texts.Tschumi's discourse has always been considered radical and disturbing. He opposes modernist ideology and postmodern nostalgia since both impose restrictive criteria on what may be deemed "legitimate" cultural conditions. He argues for focusing on our immediate cultural situation, which is distinguished by a new postindustrial "unhomeliness" reflected in the ad hoc erection of buildings with multipurpose programs. The condition of New York and the chaos of Tokyo are thus perceived as legitimate urban forms.
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About the Author
Bernard Tschumi is Principal of Bernard Tschumi Architects, New York and Paris. He was dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture from 1988 to 2003.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In an amazing collection of essays, Tschumi criticizes both modernism objectivity and post-modern nostalgia. His most important proposition -- that there is no cause and effect relationship between function and space -- is a kick in the teeth of functionalist thinkers. Instead of "form and function", he proposes an architecture based on "space, event and movement", in which the conflit and contradictions between the terms of the equation is its most relevant aspect. "Architecture and disjunction" is a Pandora's Box -- some of the questions it proposes are painful and disturbing (like "what is space?", for instance), but have been overlooked long enough. To paraphrase Morpheus in the movie "The Matrix", "you can take the blue pill, and believe whatever you like, or you can 'read the little red book', stay in Wonderland, and I'll show how deep the rabbit hole goes..."
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a compilation of essays regarding several architectural themes under a particularly radical point of view. Tschumi proposes, all through the 20 or so years of intellectual work, a complex architecture based on the heterogeneous nature of human behavior and the events it produces and leads, but also introduces an element of architectural reflection criticizing contemporary concepts -the architecture as skin- and its ephemeral condition, a postmodern zeigeist. I personally think is a manifest upon architectural themes conditioned by the unconscious prejudices carried by architectural scholars formed under the shade of modernism, showing the particular fracture of theory and practice in the field work and calling the things by its names, evidencing the mediatic circumstance of architectural development amidst the revolution of communication and -as an excel teacher- imparting his own good points of view. I think it's a book from and for heterotopia.
11 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Architecture and Disjunction, will undoubtedly be one of the seminal books of the millenium. This priceless collection of essays hammers out, quite artfully, Tschumi's slank on architecture. Covering roughly 20 years of theory and practice A&D pokes at the ideology of Modernism and Post Modernism. A brilliant read for the antagonist!
12 of 22 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Tschumi states more-or-less obvious truths about the failure of modern architecture to create meaningful places. The arguments are clear, if simply stated. - My big regret is that the writer never heeds his own message. Tschumi himself is one of the worst practitioners of the very ideologies he criticizes. [Anyone who has looked at the Columbia building by Tschumi will know how poor, cold, puerile, vacuous and dumb (that's right DUMB) a building it is.] Tschumi has fallen into the trap so common in architecture these days, of believing that writing ("theorizing") is more important than observing and building for a true reality. Pragmatics and real life issues are not his bag. - In the end, Tschumi is just another architectural hypocrite. He sort of knows the real stuff, but is too much of a wanker (ask your British friends if you don't know what a wanker is), to care about real architectural problems enough to solve them. - A few diagrams here, a few poorly assembled details there ... who cares if it falls apart three days after he photographs it. - It's just such a pity this flaky poof is allowed to teach. - If you read it, (and I don;t recommend you waste your time doing so), just ask yourself if the doctor seems to use his own medicine.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By K. Schulte
Format:Paperback
This book was required for our studio (third year), and I am very glad that it was. I found it to be thought-provoking and helpful to my studio project.
7 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Disjuntion indeed. More BS pontification than valuable commentary. The arguments are poorly considered, heavily flawed and bear no tangible relationship to the projects they are supposed to describe. Tschumis is just one of the many theoretical architects who make great claims about the buildings and cities they design for, but in practice produce the same tired cliched sculptural rubbish that has ruined Paris and other great places. But worse, Tschumi's buildings are poorly built and look even worse after a few years. - Check out his work at Columbia Campus in New York. The loading dock of any warehouse looks better than the entry ramp that he designed. - Time to wake up from the rubbish Tshumi and his ilk have been getting away with for years.
6 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Vishuna
Format:Paperback
If the architecture of Frank Gehry, has been described as a movie composed entirely of special effects, then Tschumi's is like special effects that don't quite come off. Herbert Muschamp, the modernist cheerleader who is the architecture critic for the NY Times, began his review of Tschumi's Lerner Student Center at Columbia University by saying "By now, everyone knows that Bernard Tschumi's new Lerner Hall is a dud." And City Journal described his work as ""an agitated, irrational mix of limestone, brick, metal, and glass... giving the impression of a building on the edge of a nervous breakdown." Journalist Robert Locke has written, ""Tschumi's theoretical writings, the basis of his reputation, are a tangled mess that alternately induces dizziness and puzzlement as to whether the author actually knows what philosophy is, or merely heard it described by someone in a bar once ...... The worst of this stuff is so self-evidently empty as to defy attack". - It only remains for you to ask yourself whether you are one of those fools who will be taken in by this confidence trickster who has ruined the cities we live in, or whether you will move on to more intelligent reading. [Hint: Try Louis Kahn. It's a good start!]
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