Parc de la Villete
Parc de la Villette has become known as an unprecedented type of park of “culture” rather than “nature.” Photo courtesy of Bernard Tschumi Architects.

Equal parts avant-garde theorist, radical author/educator, and pioneering practitioner, architect Bernard Tschumi  will undoubtedly make an impression as the 2013 Architecture Exchange East (ArchEx) Keynote Speaker.

Currently working from both New York and Paris, Tschumi first gained recognition in 1981 as a theorist with the exhibition and publication of The Manhattan Transcripts (and again later with Architecture and Disjunction, a series of theoretical essays published by MIT Press in 1994).

In 1983, he won the prestigious competition to design and build the Parc de la Villette, in Paris, prevailing over entries from Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Jean Nouvel.  Since then, he has made a reputation for groundbreaking designs that include the New Acropolis Museum, Le Fresnoy Center for the Contemporary Arts, and the Alésia Archaeological Museum, among other high-profile projects.

Acropolis Museum
The Acropolis Museum’s transparent enclosure provides ideal light for sculpture in direct view to and from the Acropolis.

Tschumi’s work has been widely exhibited, with solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Venice Biennale.  He served as Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York from 1988 to 2003. His most recent publication is Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color (Rizzoli, 2012), a comprehensive collection of his conceptual and built projects.

Registration for ArchEx begins in late August at www.archex.net. The ArchEx Keynote is sponsored by Froehling & Robertson, Inc.

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