The exhibition—based on Bernard Tschumi's work as an architect, educator, and writer—explores the making of architecture as a series of arguments, ideas, influences, and responses to the contemporary definition of architecture today. Tschumi's major architectural projects are organized around two primary ideas and five themes. These primary ideas are
concept and notation: there is no architecture without an idea or
concept, just as there is no architecture without a method of notation to express its content. Architecture is not a study of form, but rather a form of knowledge. The five thematic zones in the exhibition each propose a fundamental area in the definition of architecture. The themes are: Space and
Event;
Program and Superposition;
Vectors and
Envelopes;
Context and Content; and
Concept-forms. Tschumi illustrates these themes through a series of well-known and lesser-known projects, from the historic Parc de Ia Villette in Paris to later projects such as the Acropolis Museum in Athens, as well as the new architecture for the redesign for the Paris Zoological Park. Alongside the projects are a series of tables that extend and amplify the main narrative of the exhibition through topics related to architectural thought and production.