Bernard Tschumi On Competitions
Interview with Stanley Collyer
COMPETITIONS: You grew up in an architectural environment; so was this always going to be your future, or did you speculate about doing anything else?
BERNARD TSCHUMI: My father was an architect, and I believe a very good one. But at first my inclination was more in the literary and philosophical realms. But then, living in cities, experiencing cities had a great fascination for me. And that’s how I became an architect.
COMPETITIONS: I was in Parc de la Villette in Paris shortly after it was completed. Winning that competition must have been a game changer for you.
BT: It was a real game changer, because, until then, I had never entered a real competition. I had pursued rather theoretical research for almost ten years, and I decided it was time to test some of the conceptual ideas in a real project. Clients don’t just appear out of the blue; so like many young architects I entered an anonymous competition with a lot of entries. By an incredible set of circumstances, out of 476 entries, I won it. In a way, it was really an attempt to translate and transpose certain ideas and concepts that had been explored prior to the competition and through the competition.