‘Architecture and transgression’ was written by Bernard Tschumi in 1970’s exploring the relationship of concept and experience in architecture, provoking the architects and theorists to explore architecture beyond its rules. He discusses the predominance of visual over the sensory experience of architecture nowadays, the presence of constraints within the architectural production and the need of the architects to be more critical and transgressive when producing architecture, instead of been just ‘form-givers’.
Rethinking about the theme and considering the changes in the world, Tschumi makes reference to the domination of image within the architectural experience. Architecture students, adapted as they are to the new technologies, rarely have the sensory experience of the buildings they are designing. The question of materiality is largely discussed during the classes but the real experience is not achieved. What students learn is mostly how to represent the materiality, but the understanding could just be achieved with the sensory experience.
The first time he thought about the possibility of architecture being produced not just by the architects desire, but by what happens to it after completion, through inhabitation or decay for example, was during a visit to the decayed Villa Savoye. It made he think about exploring transgression in architecture. Architecture can be seen as inherently transgressive since it has to deal with many constraints, whether they are the gravity or rules and regulations. It is transgressive even when it doesn’t mean to be.
Rethinking about the theme and considering the changes in the world, Tschumi makes reference to the domination of image within the architectural experience. Architecture students, adapted as they are to the new technologies, rarely have the sensory experience of the buildings they are designing. The question of materiality is largely discussed during the classes but the real experience is not achieved. What students learn is mostly how to represent the materiality, but the understanding could just be achieved with the sensory experience.
The first time he thought about the possibility of architecture being produced not just by the architects desire, but by what happens to it after completion, through inhabitation or decay for example, was during a visit to the decayed Villa Savoye. It made he think about exploring transgression in architecture. Architecture can be seen as inherently transgressive since it has to deal with many constraints, whether they are the gravity or rules and regulations. It is transgressive even when it doesn’t mean to be.
The Tower of David was designed to be an office building, but it was abandoned unfinished due to a financial crisis in Venezuela. Since 2007 it is inhabited by 2500 people that ‘completed’ the building to make it habitable. It represents a transgressive architecture, not just because it has been used for a different purpose that it aimed to have, but because it sparked interest to a critical discourse and became a case study for vertical informal living. It creates a sensory experience for those who live there, an intellectual experience for those who study the building in a critical way, and a revolutionary experience for those who lives with it in the urban context, since it works the capacity of been pleased with it when it becomes familiar.
When asked if transgression is inherently necessary for progression in architecture, he answered with another question: ‘Is it progression or simple evolution?’. It might be necessary to be transgressive in some way to attend the needs of a society constantly changing. As he points out, transgression is temporally conditioned: what was transgressive in the past, may not be today.
Mosley, J., Sara, R. (2013). Architecture and Transgression: An Interview with Bernard Tschumi.Architectural Design, [online] pp.32-37. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1671/abstract [Accessed 7 Feb. 2015].
When asked if transgression is inherently necessary for progression in architecture, he answered with another question: ‘Is it progression or simple evolution?’. It might be necessary to be transgressive in some way to attend the needs of a society constantly changing. As he points out, transgression is temporally conditioned: what was transgressive in the past, may not be today.
Mosley, J., Sara, R. (2013). Architecture and Transgression: An Interview with Bernard Tschumi.Architectural Design, [online] pp.32-37. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1671/abstract [Accessed 7 Feb. 2015].