It would have been a good declaration for Tschumi to make – perhaps he needs a speechwriter.
But landscape designers cannot be as single-minded as, for example, a Steve Jobs. They have too many clients, including bees, frogs and hedgehogs.

“The park’s architecture refuses to operate as the expression of a preexisting content, whether subjective, formal or functional. Just as it does not answer to the demands of the self (the sovereign or “creative” architect), so it negates the imminent dialectic of the form, since the latter is displaced by superimpositions and transformations of elements that always exceed any given formal configuration. In a Nietzschean manner, La Villette moves towards interpretative infinity, for the effect of refusing fixity is not insignificance but semantic plurality.”

Plain English translation by Lee Monks: Parc de la Villette is a bit different. There are no phallic or weird signature shapes, thankfully, although it is tricky to describe as the architect was a bit mental.

Ike Ijeh translation: Not even Doctor Who could unravel this one. Without doubt, Bernard Tschumi is the Grand Wizard of Obfuscation, the undefeated Master of Miasma. One imagines that he would answer even simple requests for directions with sonnets and soliloquies charged with such withering uber-intellectual ferocity as to transform even the most ardent linguist into a pile of smouldering ash by the time he had finished. Like Eisenman he has spent much of his career tormenting architectural students, but at least Eisenman’s bleating provides unintentional humour; Tschumi is just blow after blow of cerebral haemorrhaging. It is a matter of extreme injustice that while one imagines that his buildings are subject to all manner of health and safety scrutiny, his pen is allowed to proceed unimpeded. Read him at your peril.

Unintelligibility rating: 5*/5

It is the exaggeration from the ‘scientists’ (and princes) which troubles me. So far as I know, nobody is denying the existence of climate change or any other kind of change (for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return) and to make a glancing comparison with holocaust deniers is outrageous, especially from a prince. Hearing a tired old cliche from him is also depressing. He has landed far better insults in the past and, like, Adam, I fear for his health.

Thank you for some much-needed moral support – I think you may be right about the need for a get-well card.

I am sure it is something akin to deciding the shape of the earth and the position of the planet within the universe – it is really better not to jump to any conclusions – but rather to proceed with intellectual caution and circumspection.