The Territories of Deconstruction 1984–1986 377
Swiss Bernard Tschumi and the American Peter Eisenman. During
the 1970s, like other architects of his generation, Tschumi dedicated
himself to new concepts from outside his discipline, especially in the
arts, sciences, and philosophy. For ten years, he mainly focused on
paper architecture, exhibiting and publishing more than he built.
When he won the international competition launched in 1982 for
the Parc de la Villette, a huge area of fi fty-fi ve hectares on the site of
the old Paris abattoirs, Tschumi decided to make a big impression.
On this site, which was to bring together the Grande Halle, the Cité
de la Musique, the Cité des Sciences, the Géode, and the Zénith, he
intended to fashion ‘the fi rst park of the twenty-fi rst century’, punc-
tuating the space with a network of small red buildings which he
called the ‘Folies’. As chief architect of this huge project, Tschumi
decided to invite other artists to collaborate. He initially wished
to get Jean-François Lyotard to work with Paul Chemetov, but
the author of The Postmodern Condition was rather wary. ‘With
Derrida, it was just the opposite,’ recalls Tschumi.
He showed an immediate interest when I called him and came
to meet me at the little agency I then had near the Gare du
Nord. I told him about Peter Eisenman, a remarkable architect
from New York, born in 1932 but still not very well known,
and I introduced them to one another a few months later in
the United States. I am still struck by the generosity Derrida
displayed. However busy he might be, he always found the
necessary time.^64Even if he was mistrustful of facile transpositions between archi-
tecture and deconstruction, Derrida found the project alluring and
exciting. He wrote a fi ne text on Tschumi’s ideas, then agreed to col-
laborate with Eisenman. Tschumi gave them rather a narrow plot
of land, thirty metres by thirty; but they were at liberty to build a
‘Folie’ here as they wished. Derrida’s fi rst contribution was purely
philosophical – a text on the ‘Chora’ – or Khôra – in Plato’s Timaeus,
a term that in his view was untranslatable: it refers to the place, the
space or spacing, or the site.^65 But as soon as the discussion became
more concrete, a curious chiasm came into play. Derrida kept
coming back with extremely pragmatic questions – he was worried
about the absence of benches, plants, and shelter in case of bad
weather –, while Eisenman, irritated by his partner’s ‘architectural
conservatism’, kept upping the conceptual stakes. Derrida eventu-
ally realized this, and at one of their meetings said: ‘Peter, I have a
suggestion to make. In this association, let’s behave as if you were
the dreamer and I the architect, the technician. That way, you’ll be
the theorist and I’ll look after the practical consequences.’^66
After two years of sometimes diffi cult discussions, the plan had to