Marne School of Architecture
Disclaimer: I got in trouble for taking these photos, and had to promise, using my best fren-glish that they would not be published on a website…. So if anyone from Bernard Tschumi’s office is reading this, these photos are being used for educational purposes only……
For those of you UIUC alum, the organization of this school of architecture will look familiar to you. (no, not flag hall) The building is essentially three volumes of programmed spaced organized around a 25x100 meter un-programmed space in the center. In the center of the un-programmed space hangs the lecture halls, sort of symbolically the center of knowledge. Tschumi is interested in “event” and “motion”. An event is different than function in that events are unpredictable and cannot be planned for. Because of this, Tschumi sees the circulation paths as “activators” for “events”. When bodies in motion (people) collide, the potential for the event is realized. For Tschumi, events cannot be planned, but architecture can encourage them. At marne, events are encouraged in the “in-between” space through dynamic and expressive circulation routes.
The concept for this project is to put all of the program functions to the exterior, and force circulation through the un-programmed space in the center which becomes “a space for celebrations and balls, encounters and debates, projections and artist installations, the most serious symposia and avant-garde exhibitions. A social and cultural space, the central hall gathers together all of the circulation in the school. Whatever the level of attendance on any given day, one sees the constant movement of students, giving the hall liveliness and dynamism.” Of course, having the café in the center doesn’t hurt either!
Here are some more of Bernard Tschumi’s own words…….
On architecture…..
“The contemporary world is a dislocated space of constraints that may find few common denominators. Yet we should remember that there is no architecture without everyday life, movement, and action; and that it is the most dynamic aspects of their disjunctions that suggest a new definition of architecture” Bernard Tschumi, 1994
Specifically on the Marne School of Architecture, which he refers to as a “city of architecture”.....
“How an “in-between” space is activated by the motion of bodies in that space;
How programmed activities, when strategically located, can charge an un-programmed space (the in-between);
How architecture is about designing conditions, rather than conditioning designs;
How architecture is about identifying, and ultimately, releasing potentialities hidden in a site, a program, or their social context.
They could suggest the following equation: (motion x in-between)program=event.”
The following are some interesting questions that this project addresses:
“1.1 Conceiving of a new school of architecture located 30 minutes outside Paris raises two questions. The first has to do with the direction that architectural education will take in the next decades. The second has to do with the attraction that a school situated on the edge, the periphery, the margin of social, economic and cultural density of an urban center can have.
“1.2 Today, a triple revolution – informational, interdisciplinary, and ideological – is in the making. At Marne-la-Vallee, located a short distance from the heart of Paris, one is at the same electronic distance from London, Berlin, Tokyo, New York or Dehli. Now there is global architectural culture and information; the conditions alone are local.”
“1.5 Our project starts from the following thesis: there are building-generators of events. They are often condensers of the city. As much through their programs as through their spatial potential, they accelerate a cultural or social transformation that is already in progress.”
Disclaimer: I got in trouble for taking these photos, and had to promise, using my best fren-glish that they would not be published on a website…. So if anyone from Bernard Tschumi’s office is reading this, these photos are being used for educational purposes only……
For those of you UIUC alum, the organization of this school of architecture will look familiar to you. (no, not flag hall) The building is essentially three volumes of programmed spaced organized around a 25x100 meter un-programmed space in the center. In the center of the un-programmed space hangs the lecture halls, sort of symbolically the center of knowledge. Tschumi is interested in “event” and “motion”. An event is different than function in that events are unpredictable and cannot be planned for. Because of this, Tschumi sees the circulation paths as “activators” for “events”. When bodies in motion (people) collide, the potential for the event is realized. For Tschumi, events cannot be planned, but architecture can encourage them. At marne, events are encouraged in the “in-between” space through dynamic and expressive circulation routes.
The concept for this project is to put all of the program functions to the exterior, and force circulation through the un-programmed space in the center which becomes “a space for celebrations and balls, encounters and debates, projections and artist installations, the most serious symposia and avant-garde exhibitions. A social and cultural space, the central hall gathers together all of the circulation in the school. Whatever the level of attendance on any given day, one sees the constant movement of students, giving the hall liveliness and dynamism.” Of course, having the café in the center doesn’t hurt either!
Here are some more of Bernard Tschumi’s own words…….
On architecture…..
“The contemporary world is a dislocated space of constraints that may find few common denominators. Yet we should remember that there is no architecture without everyday life, movement, and action; and that it is the most dynamic aspects of their disjunctions that suggest a new definition of architecture” Bernard Tschumi, 1994
Specifically on the Marne School of Architecture, which he refers to as a “city of architecture”.....
“How an “in-between” space is activated by the motion of bodies in that space;
How programmed activities, when strategically located, can charge an un-programmed space (the in-between);
How architecture is about designing conditions, rather than conditioning designs;
How architecture is about identifying, and ultimately, releasing potentialities hidden in a site, a program, or their social context.
They could suggest the following equation: (motion x in-between)program=event.”
The following are some interesting questions that this project addresses:
“1.1 Conceiving of a new school of architecture located 30 minutes outside Paris raises two questions. The first has to do with the direction that architectural education will take in the next decades. The second has to do with the attraction that a school situated on the edge, the periphery, the margin of social, economic and cultural density of an urban center can have.
“1.2 Today, a triple revolution – informational, interdisciplinary, and ideological – is in the making. At Marne-la-Vallee, located a short distance from the heart of Paris, one is at the same electronic distance from London, Berlin, Tokyo, New York or Dehli. Now there is global architectural culture and information; the conditions alone are local.”
“1.5 Our project starts from the following thesis: there are building-generators of events. They are often condensers of the city. As much through their programs as through their spatial potential, they accelerate a cultural or social transformation that is already in progress.”
Thaks for your post! Now I'm doing my diploma work , it's a progect of Arch. Academy, and try to find more information about this school, and find it here! thank you!
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