The Facult de la’amnagement and the School of Architecture at the Universit de Montral will confer an honorary doctorate to Bernard Tschumi on March 24, 2005. His candidature was proposed by the Director of the School of Architecture, and the event is one of the celebrations planned for the 40th birthday of the integration of this school at the Universit de Montral.
In 1964, joining the Universit de Montral, the School of Architecture was primarily motivated by the importance of research and the challenges generated by the modernization of society. The personality of Bernard Tschumi and the breadth of his professional and academic works expressed firmly the new challenges and the ambition of the School of Architecture in the years ahead.
Tschumi is an architect and educator. First known as a theorist, he exhibited and published The Manhattan Transcripts (1981) and write Architecture and Disjunction (MIT Press, 1994), a series of theoretical essays . In 1983, he won the prestigious competition to design the Parc de la Villette. Tschumi established his Paris office in 1983, followed by the New York office in 1988. Today, completed projects include Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing, France (1997); Columbia University’s Lerner Hall Student Center (1999); the Interface Flon, a bus, train and subway station and pedestrian bridge in Lausanne, Switzerland (2001); an 8,000-person/70,000-square-foot Concert Hall and Exhibition Complex in Rouen, France (2001); the 100,000-square-foot Florida International University School of Architecture in Miami, Florida; and the Vacheron Constantin Headquarters and Factory in Geneva, Switzerland. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens, and a student center at the University of Cincinnati are projects currently under construction. Tschumi was one of the three international finalists selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1997 to design its new expansion. He is currently designing the Museum for African Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in So Paulo, and a concert hall in Limoges, France, which were all winning entries to international competitions.
A permanent US resident who holds both French and Swiss nationalities, Bernard Tschumi came to the United States in 1976. Tschumi studied in Paris and at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, from which he received his degree in 1969. He taught at the Architectural Association in London (1970-79), the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York (1976), Princeton University (1976 and 1980) and the Cooper Union (1981-83). He was Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York from 1988 to 2003. Tow books, INDEX Architecture (MIT Press, 2003) and The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century (Monacelli, 2003) document his tenure there.
Tschumi is a member of the Collge International de Philosophie in France and the recipient of many distinguished honours, including the Lgion d’Honneur, and the Ordre des Arts et Lettres. He was awarded France’s Grand Prix National d’Architecture in 1996, as well as awards from the American Institute of Architects and the National Endowment for the Arts. A monograph, Tschumi, has recently been released in English (Universe/Thames and Hudson, 2003) and in Italian (Skira, 2003).