Customer Reviews

Architecture and Disjunction

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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..."

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!]