L’Architecture Francaise

Dormoy, Marie. L’Architecture Française. Boulogne (Siene) Éditions de “L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui” [1938]

Marie Dormoy explores the history of French architecture in L’Architecture Française, examining construction practices and materials to locate what is most essentially and consistently French about French architecture over time. By reducing space to its integral parts and the systems used to assemble those components, Dormoy performs a deconstructive analysis that functions to collapse all of French architectural history into itself, where essence becomes the thread of definition, signifying a relationship not only to practice but also to the projection of Frenchness in the built environment. Writing in French, Dormoy analyzes the full scope of French architectural history, and, while she provides little of substance about the varying shifts in the history of French design, she produces an excellent example of a scholar (and a woman!) attempting to locate broader meanings in space and across time.

Collection: Cret
Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 D67