Parc de la Villette - Bernard Tschumi - Paris, France - Master Architects - Deconstructivism on Waymarking.com

[FR] Le Parc de la Villette est un rencontre entre les bâtiments anciens et les ouvrages nouveaux, entre l'eau, le végétal et le minéral, entre l'immense et l'intime, entre la ville et la nature… Cet esprit de rapprochement a guidé le travail de Bernard Tschumi, l'architecte du Parc de la Villette, qui a articulé l'aménagement du site autour d'un triple système de points, de lignes et de surfaces.

Telles les constructions ludiques qui parsemaient les parcs et jardins royaux des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, les folies de la Villette viennent de la façon la plus contemporaine, à la fois rythmer le parc, comme un leitmotiv architectural et l'égayer de leur vive couleur rouge, contrepoint harmonieux à la verdure des arbres et des prairies.

Au nombre de 26, elles sont toutes conçues sur la base d'un cube de 10,80m de côté et disposées selon une trame régulière de 120m x 120m. Chacune d'elle est cependant unique de forme et de fonction.
Certaines folies sont bordées d'une large surface minérale appelée carré de la découverte qui ont pour vocation, par la dureté de leur traitement minéral, de perturber et donc de souligner l'environnement végétal immédiat.

Du point de vue architectural autant que du point de vue du visiteur, ce principe des folies constitue la spécificité première du Parc de la Villette. Parmi les plus connues, on peut citer les folies observatoires qui donnent des points de vue d'altitude sur le site de la Villette, la folie Kiosque à musiques qui accueille les concerts de plein air l'été ou encore la folie Information qui accueille le public à l'entrée du parc, côté sud.

[EN] Bernard Tschumi's theories on architecture, developed in the 1970's through gallery installations, texts and "advertisements" focused on contemporary society's disjunction between use, form and social values, rendering any relationship between the three to be both impossible and obsolete. His thoughts on disjunction led to the design of the Parc de la Villette in Paris, in which he won a competition for construction in 1983. The Parc consists of 35 red follies, sport and recreation areas, playgrounds, a science and technology museum, and a music center. Tschumi was in charge of planning, in addition to the design of the follies, and superimposed three ordering systems: the points of the follies, the lines of the paths, and the planes of the sport areas. This network questions the order that is inherent to architecture with a superimposition that attempts to bring together three non-related systems. The process and arbitrary result ignore the basic tenets of architecture throughout history-composition, hierarchy and order. Each follie is based on a cube and deconstructed, according to rules of transformation (repetition, distortion, superimposition, interruption and fragmentation), without any functional considerations.

The grid of red follies create reference points and are non-contextual in their form and color, in favor of an intertextuality that leads to a dissolving of a priori meanings. The forms of the follies become signifiers as opposed to signified (which carries meaning) in order to mean nothing. The process of shaping the follies, and the ideas extrinsic to them, represents a conscious reaction to multiple meanings associated with Jaques Derrida's philosophy of Deconstruction. It is futile to attempt a summation of Derrida's philosophy, but this text defines it as the impossibility of one meaning in a text, or language in general, due to a deconstruction of language to its foundation, where multiple meanings can be found. Unlike many of his contemporaries, though, Tschumi's references to Deconstruction take place at more than a formal level. Although the follies are physically deconstructed, their intended lack of meaning relates his use of the philosophy to its essence, not stylistic applications.

The assertion that the follies lack any historical precedent is important to the idea of "non-meaning" and valid in terms of classical styles and their parts (columns, arches and so forth). When looked at in relation to Constructivist architecture, though, the follies have a definite influence in the formal characteristics of the Russian movement earlier in the century. The similarities are evident in the drawing style and form, as well as the use of structure, evident in his sketch with its similarities to Chernikov's drawings from the early 20th Century. The influence of the Constructivists is apparent in the formal qualities of the Parc and Tschumi's desire to upset the traditional aspects of architecture, though he is never explicit of this influence. Instead he relates his work to French philosophers; such as Bataille, Foucault, Baudrillard and, as mentioned, Jaques Derrida.

It is through these and other sources (mainly philosophic, literary and cinematic) that Tschumi witnesses a disjunction between architectural space and the events taking place within them. This realization, coupled with his belief that architecture should import from other fields of culture in order to influence society, has contributed to an architecture that responds to the disjointed nature of the contemporary world to upset the conventions that have been passed down through history.

Architect: Bernard Tschumi Building name: Parc de la Villette Year built: 1983 Building's primary use: Culture/Entertainment City: Paris Country: France

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