ATHENS THE MUSEUM DESIGNER A GIFTED ARCHITECT

Bernard Tschumi

Bernard Tshumi tries to produce a building "as precise and pure as the Parthenon would have been 2,500 years ago". Indeed, this latest project, awarded in 2001 following an international competition for which there were fifteen candidates, can be seen as the apotheosis of a great architect. Bernard Tschumi met one of the great challenges of the third millennium - to build something new in a city so charged with history. On piles, he constructed a glass trapeze at the foot of the Acropolis while conserving the almost mathematical purity of the spirit in which the Parthenon was built 2,500 years ago.