The Manhattan Transcripts

Book excerpt: Through a set of theoretical drawings developed between 1976 and 1981. Bernard Tschumi argues that the disjunction between spaces and their use, objects and events, being and meaning is no accident today. But when this disjunction becomes an architectural confrontation, a new relation of pleasure and violence inevitably occurs. 'They found the Transcripts by accident ... a lifetime's worth of urban pleasures - pleasures that they had no intention of giving up. So when she threatened to run and tell the authorities, they had no alternative but to stop her. And that's when the second accident occurred ... the accident of murder ... They had to get out of the Park - quick. And the only thing which could help them was Architecture, beautiful trusting Architecture that they had used before, but never so cruelly or so selfishly ...