On the Move
Tschumi is constantly on the move: talking to a glazier who says he has invented a new kind of glass for one of the displays, greeting workmen and discussing angles of a promotional shot with a photographer.
He designed Paris’s Parc de la Villette and is a former dean of Columbia University’s school of architecture. Tschumi has spent longer on this construction site than on any other project, working on everything from decor to structure.
“A lot of time” was used by testing glazing for the middle section, the archaic gallery. It was important to blur the view of “people putting out their washing, broken refrigerators left on the balcony,” he says.
Now, as visitors wind their way amid the freestanding statues of gods, fragments and busts, there’s only outlines of the modern city and the apartment terraces just meters away. Tschumi calls them “the ghosts of Athens.”
Artisans and builders are swarming over the structure and paving the streets outside. A dilapidated building still sits on one corner of the plot, testimony to the court challenges from residents and homeowners that helped delay construction. Tschumi says the museum will be ready.
“I’m not worried about it,” he shrugs. “The Greek way.”
He won’t be drawn into the latest debate over the museum, whether two historic buildings facing the Acropolis should be torn down to provide an uninterrupted view and archaeologists’ access to more ruins.
“Polemic is a Greek word,” he says.
For more information on the museum, go to
http://www.newacropolismuseum.gr/eng/.
To contact the writer on the story:
Maria Petrakis in Athens at
mpetrakis@bloomberg.net Last Updated: May 26, 2009 19:00 EDT