Parc de la Villette

The park was designed by Bernard Tschumi, a French architect of Swiss origin, who built it from 1984 to 1987 in partnership with Colin Fournier, on the site of the huge Parisian abattoirs (slaughterhouses) and the national wholesale meat market, as part of an urban redevelopment project.

Since the creation of the park, museums, concert halls, and theatres have been designed by several noted contemporary architects, including Christian de Portzamparc, Adrien Fainsilber, Philippe Chaix, Jean-Paul Morel, Gérard Chamayou, on to Mr. Tschumi.

The park houses museums, concert halls, live performance stages, and theatres, as well as playgrounds for children, and thirty-five architectural follies.

These include: Le TARMAC (former Théâtre de l'Est Parisien), venue for world performance art and dance companies touring from "La Francophonie", has moved to 159 avenue Gambetta in the 20th arrondissement.

With its collection of museums, theatres, architectural follies, themed gardens, and open spaces for exploration and activity, the park has created an area that relates to both adults and children.

Tschumi's design was in partial response to the philosophies of Jacques Derrida,[3] acting as an architectural experiment in space (through a reflection on Plato's Khôra), form, and how those relate a person's ability to recognize and interact.

[5] These categories of spatial relation and formulation are used in Tschumi's design to act as a means of deconstructing the traditional views of how a park is conventionally meant to exist.

[6] The Parc de la Villette has a collection of ten themed gardens that attract a large number of the park's visitors.

[13] While the follies are meant to exist in a deconstructive vacuum without historical relation, many have found connections between the steel structures and the previous buildings that were part of the old industrial fabric of the area.

Bernard Tschumi designed the Parc de la Villette with the intention of creating a space that exists in a vacuum, something without historical precedent.

[15] The park strives to strip down the signage and conventional representations that have infiltrated architectural design and allow for the existence of a “non-place.” This non-place, envisioned by Tschumi, is the most appropriate example of space and provides a truly honest relationship between the subject and the object.

By allowing visitors to experience the architecture of the park within this constructed vacuum, the time, recognitions, and activities that take place in that space begin to acquire a more vivid and authentic nature.