Bernard Tschumi and “Event Architecture”

Bernard Tschumi, one of the leading figures of the contemporary architecture, developed his ideas mostly on space, experience and human movements as opposed to the analogy between machine and building that was brought by the modern architecture. The concept of event architecture, that he introduced to the architectural literature emphasizes that a building is not only a form but gain meaning with the presence and activity of the user inside of it. About the events, that is the user activity, he defended that architect can only facilitate the conditions; users would generate their own events with the aid of encounters and activities. For Tschumi, design is the fiction of the scenario and encounters, in this fiction, random meetings are proposed in relation to void and vectors. In this regard, Tschumi produced certain concepts such as in-between, flow and vectors and dis-programming. Focusing on Tschumi’s concept of “event architecture”, the paper analyses the suggested vectors of stair, bridge, bridge-ramp, and platform and the voids in which these vectors are located to meet the potentials needed and to divert the movement. As a result of the inquiry on the examples of Le Fresnoy Art Center, School of Architecture Marne-la-Vallée, Lerner Hall Student Center and ANIMA Cultural Center, it was revealed that the architect, as consistent with his discourse, repeated and brought together similar elements in different fictions. It was anticipated that in various compositions designed, the probability of encounters and therefore events to take place would increase. According to Tschumi event is a fact which cannot be created but conditioned.