Architecture and Disjunction [Paperback]

Bernard Tschumi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0262700603 | ISBN-13: 978-0262700603

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 28, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262700603
• ISBN-13: 978-0262700603
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #455,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most relevant study on Theory of Architecture in decades, March 19, 2000

By 

Francisco Rasia (Curitiba, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Architecture and Disjunction (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:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a book from and for heterotopia, August 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Architecture and Disjunction (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:

4.0 out of 5 stars priceless collection of essays by Tschumi, October 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Architecture and Disjunction (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!