The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part III: Tactics
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Bernard Tschumi
no park! There was quite a battle, which went all the way up to the level of
President Mitterand. A sort of compromise was worked out, whereby housing
would be located next to the City of Science and to the City of Music.
WM: Was this compromise in the spirit that you had proposed for the park?
BT: It was not in the spirit of anything!
WM: I understand your impulse not to want to be a master planner, but on
the other hand that seems to be one of the strengths of the project.
BT: Yes, but this is a question which is bigger than oneself, and I am increasingly
convinced that the architect has the ability, is the best person to have
the overview. Generally the politician has one particular agenda, which is
usually for two, three, four years depending on their time in power. Or you
have the developer who is also thinking short term, or the social commentator.
They all have very narrow agendas. The same applies to actual buildings:
there are others involved—the structural engineer, the HVAC designer, for instance—but
the only one that has the overall picture is the architect. That
overview is the most interesting part of the work. The word project in Italian
is progetto—you put forward into the future. That is exactly what the architect
should be able to do best, and so the notion that I call “designing the
condition” has always been the aim. It means that from one project to another,
the architect does not follow the same strategy, because they do not
function according to the same circumstances. New circumstances always
require new strategies. The building which is being completed right now in
the north of France, La Fresnoy, is also interesting for these urban notions of
which we have been speaking. It happens to be a center for art and film, and
the ambition is to encourage crossovers between disciplines, for the sculptors
or visual artists who want to use film or video or digital technology.
WM: What is the site condition that you are dealing with in this project?
BT: It is an urban site in a working-class area of a place called Tourcoing. Like
Lille and Roubaix, these are all old mining and textile towns, which today are
going through profound changes because of technology, which is affecting
their social makeup. What has happened is not unlike what had happened at
La Villette, where an ambitious cultural program was injected into a neighborhood
which had ceased to exist according to its previous logic. I have injected
something with the hope that it is going to revitalize or change the
nature of the area. The art and film center, which consisted of two experimental
cinemas, exhibition halls, performance areas, library, and postgraduate
school, was an interesting starting point for me because of that
“crossover.” In other words it was not the Bauhaus, where everything was