Abstract
What conditions are necessary for avant-garde design? Who determines whether a work is avant-garde? This essay explores these issues through the lens of a particular park, the Parc de la Villette. Here, Tschumi's creation is discussed within the context of landscape design so that its avant-garde claims can be situated. If a work is to be avant-garde, it must consciously reject the traditions of its genre. The vehicle for placing the Parc de la Villelte within the general boundaries of landscape design and, specifically, French park design traditions is a comparison with the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Alphand's 19th-century masterpiece. By comparing Tschumi's written text to Alphand's physical text, an argument is made that Tschumi's invention was realized in the 19th-century Parisian park. Alphand's systems aesthetic, however, differs in a significant way from that of Tschumi—it acknowledges the site as one of its “superimposed layers.” It is this recognition of the landscape medium's expressive potential that differentiates Alphand's park from Tschumi's and that opens up new interpretations of Tschumi's work as avant-garde landscape design.
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