Tschumi le Fresnoy

Conceived for new art forms of the twenty-first century, Bernard Tschumi's Le Fresnoy, the National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing, France, is part experimental art laboratory, part multimedia production center, part school, part cinema and exhibition and performance space. This highly celebrated building defies categorization, encouraging crossovers between architectural programs and art forms. A huge, technologically advanced roof covers both existing and recent construction, housing the renovated spaces of a former entertainment complex built in the 1920s. In Tschumi's remarkable building, the "in between" or residual spaces located between the existing tiled roofs and the new, hovering steel structure punctuated by glass "clouds" becomes a place where artists can take cover. Much as Tschumi invented a new concept of urban park with his Parc de la Villette in Paris, he brings to Le Fresnoy an innovative concept about the spaces generated by collisions between forms, programs, and the varied systems of contemporary culture. A group of essays by authors including Sylviane Agacinski, Alain Guiheux, Alan Fleischer, and Sylvia Lavin, among others, provides a theoretical and historical context. Extensive photographs and illustrations document the design, construction, and completion of this most polemical of new buildings.