Urban Digs - Bernard Tschumi@People

Ben Stechschulte/Redux, for The New York Times

Bernard Tschumi

Ben Stechschulte/Redux, for The New York Times

Interview by EDWARD LEWINE
Published: June 8, 2008

Personal style: My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn’t impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.Worst thing about his job: You go through great efforts in the middle of a project for the joy of the beginning when you come up with the idea and the end when you see it built.

Frequent flier: I have a routine in which I am in New York for two to three weeks and then I am in Europe for one. I cross the Atlantic Ocean about 40 times a year.

Favorite memento: I have this broken hand of a mannequin. I found it in SoHo in the 1970s. It’s surrealistic to see this elegant hand, connected to a precise bit of steel technology.

Future vision: I live in Paris and New York, the great cities of the 19th and 20th century, respectively. But the 21st century will have a number of great cities. You’ll choose between cities of great population density and those that are like series of islands in the forest.

Prized possession: My Concorde airplane model. It’s a symbol of extraordinary technology and how mankind is sometimes shy about pushing its intelligence to extremes. By retiring the Concorde, we no longer can cross the Atlantic in three hours. It’s a loss of nerve.

Travel habits: It’s one of the moments when I work best. I will have just white sheets of paper, and I will draw a project, develop concepts and write.

Morning routine: Because of the travel, I always have a week when I am really waking up early. I get up and start to work very quietly. I make the coffee. Then have breakfast. I get to the office before 9 a.m.

Space he’d least like to live in: A lounge in any international airport. I do not like the claustrophobic nature of waiting for planes.

Space he’d most like to live in: A building I designed, but never built. It was a large glass house atop the roof of some incredible building downtown. I’d love to have those views all over the city.

Building he’d like torn down: I wouldn’t want to tear buildings down. But there are a number of Post-Modernist buildings I would take down if I had to choose one.

Next big purchase: The latest and lightest laptop. I have one that I am happy with, but if I can get one that is even smaller I will buy it.

Best-designed object: My Terragni tubular chairs. They are minimal, intelligently made and I love them.

Favorite place in his loft: I try to keep the space as open as possible, with few walls or doors. I can sit at the glass table in the center and see everything in the apartment and have the largest amount of space around me.

Always in fridge: Some Champagne, some Bordeaux wine and some orange juice.

Always with him: I love a particular pen, the Sanford Uni-Ball Onyx; black ink. They are not expensive. I am so worried about running out of them that I may have 10 different ones in my bag.

Item that reminds him of himself: My electric pepper grinder. It makes noise and has a flashlight that lights up your plate. I love it. My family hates it.

Building he misses most: When I designed my loft, I literally framed the World Trade Center as a picture postcard I could see from my bed. I no longer have that image, and I mourn it.

City slicker: I choose to live in New York and Paris because for me they are contrasts. I love New York’s density and pulse and heterogeneity. Paris by comparison is predictable, homogeneous and calmer. It has the sentimentality of the past.

At age 5, he wanted to be: First a race-car driver; then an astronomer; then a writer. Eventually, that led to my passion for cities and wanting to become an architect.

Biggest self-indulgence: Working on a project beside a pool in a sunny, wonderful environment. I do that about one week a year every other year in a small village in the south of France, where my friends have a house.

Historic figure he identifies with: A traveler; an Alexander the Great or Marco Polo type.

Art collection: Abstract photos and cardboard and clay sculptures by my 23-year-old daughter and my 18-year-old son. They are from when the children were younger.

Last meal: I refuse to answer this question. I don’t want to contemplate the idea.

Evening routine: My wife and I will watch political shows. We are political junkies. We will eat while watching Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and end with Stephen Colbert’s program on Comedy Central. Then to bed.

By his bed: Detective stories by a writer like Raymond Chandler. I love detective stories, the way they are constructed; especially American ones.

Signature outfit: I wear the same black suit. I have five of them. I pair them with a red scarf. I was wearing a red scarf when I won the first architectural competition of my career.

Nagging injury: I was once in a very, very bad car accident. So my drawing arm is full of pins and platinum stuff. Occasionally it hurts. But I found that after the arm was put back together I could draw better than before. I have no idea why.

Recurring dream: I have plenty, but nothing I can talk about.

Speed racers: I have a group of toy Porsches of different colors. I love the design and I love the idea of going fast. I also have three real Porsches, two in Paris and one in New York. My mother-in-law used to say that for me they were both the mistress and the psychiatrist.

Personal hero: The filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, because he helped to create an art form. I have his books. I have most of the DVDs of his films. I have articles that he wrote.

Last book he read: I was rereading a script of the director Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.” I love to read movie scripts, because of the conciseness of it, and the fact that you can always break a film down into separate parts: sound without image, text without cinematography.

Procrastination technique: I work best either under pressure or by emptying my brain over the weekend. That blank state is helpful. It is like an athlete before a competition.

Obsolete item he won’t part with: I have an old camera. It is beautiful, with a big body. Though you have to put sticky tape on it to close it, I use it.

Favorite chore: I am the designated unloader of the dishwasher. I reorder the plates and glasses in a meticulous and architectural manner.

Fitness routine: Running for planes.

INTERVIEW BY EDWARD LEWINE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN STECHSCHULTE

@Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/magazine/08wwln-domains-t.html?ref=design