Abstract
International Competition for Parc de la Villette has evoked the old architectural question that is about the conflict between unchanging architecture and ever changing time. Tschumi and Koolhaas suggested well-known solutions for it, both of which had started from the criticism of general urban design approach that ignored changing factors in time. However, this study argues that the approaches of Tschumi and Koolhaas are even opposite to each other in spite of their common aims. Influenced by deconstructivists' theories, Tschumi tries to generate the 'text' on the surface of la Villette so that the different users of the park can read it differently. The text is built by 'superimposing' different systems such as points, lines, and surfaces. This study criticizes such formalistic approach since such 'forms' do not generate any dialogue with the real users but just stay as a backdrop for irrelevant events. Meanwhile, Koolhaas concentrates on the 'ground-ness' of la Villette. What he deals with is the real ground which embraces all the potentials on it already. His 'bands' express nothing but the metamorphosis of the ground, and the ground generates the 'differences' out of itself by repeating itself ceaselessly. This study tries to clarify all those happenings and meanings by intimate investigation of various drawing works for the la Villette project by Tschumi and Koolhaas.