Bernard Tschumi. Advertisements for Architecture

Advertisements for Architecture. 1976-1977

In the 1960s, a small oppositional element in architecture forged its own counterculture
by turning its energies away from building toward writing. Born of a desire to foreground
the intellectual dimension of architecture by associating it with developments in conceptual
art,linguistics, and philosophy, this turn toward writing soon engaged architecture with
broader questions of pop culture, mass media, advertising, and emerging technologies.

During this period, avant-garde theorist and architect BERNARD TSCHUMI created “Advertisements for Architecture”, a series of postcard-sized juxtapositions of words and images, based on the idea that most of us experience architecture through photographs, drawings and words in books, in other words, through our imagination and not through the experience of real space.

There is no way to perform architecture in a book. Words and drawings can only produce paper space, not the experience of real space. By definition, paper space is imaginary: it is an image.

So he makes a comparison of the way that advertisements show you the same image over and over to create a desire for something that exists beyond the two dimensional page: “as there are advertisements for architectural products, why not for the production (and reproduction) of architecture?TSCHUMI wants to see if the language of advertisements can create the desire to see or to be inside the building. The first two ads are from Le Corbusier’s famous Villa Savoy of 1965 which was in a state of decay at that point, and was soon to be restored.

And good news: the book “Architecture and Disjunction” by BERNARD TSCHUMI is now available in the WFW Store. Covering roughly 20 years of theory and practice “Architecture and Disjunction” is a compilation of essays which disrupt the ideology of Modernism and Post Modernism.



4 commentaires pour “Bernard Tschumi. Advertisements for Architecture”

  1. wonderful post and amazing young tschumi (the one I prefer). May I translate this post with your permission for our selection on our blog (obviously quoting you)?

  2. thank you! No problem, take it but just link the source! I had the chance to hear him at a conference 6 years ago and he really impressed me, a real speaker! kiss kiss kiss

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