Week 9: Tschumi’s Sequences

The idea that “any architectural sequence implies at least three relations” (Tschumi, 153), of which he opens his chapter “Sequences” with, was a novel concept to me. While I have my reservations about the value of reductionism, something Tschumi has weighed in on in his own essays, I appreciate when a theorist attempts to use reductionist logic on a complicated matter and boil it down to core principles. In the case of Tschumi in his chapter, “Sequences” the SEM theory. Nine pages later, Tschumi elaborates on his opening statement explaining, “The final meaning of any sequence is dependent on the relation space/event/movement” (Tschumi 162). SEM: Space, event, movement, we learn are the three fundamental relationships that any architectural sequence according to Tschumi implies. As I said, the idea that we can supposedly take any example of an architectural sequence and essentially boil it down to three core criteria: space, event, and movement, is a compelling notion and one that I only wish I had the adequate context for to be able to test its integrity. Just as an theory goes, it must be tested rigorously, and while I think that Tschumi has strong evidence in favor of his theory, it would be interesting to see what Modernist critiques earlier or later critics might have had. Specifically, I wonder how Mies might have reacted to such a proposition given the inextricable relationship between space, which Mies perceived as infinite, and event, which Mies perceived as irrelevant, and how it might have challenged his belief in architectural sequence. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding Tschumi’s context, in saying that imagining such a debate between the two seems like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, but at the very least I only mean to say that I am a fan of Tschumi’s ingenuity in his theory, and only wish to see how it was hold up to various pressures.