All posts by ashleychadwick

Rudiment D’Archeologie: Architecture Religieuse

Caumont, Arcisse de. Abécédaire; ou Rudiment d’Archéologie: Architecture Religieuse. 5th ed. Paris: Derache, 1886

In this French-language text, Arcisse de Caumont imagines medieval architecture as an aberrant rupture in the history of architecture in France. Situated outside the dominate classicist paradigm which flanks the period, Caumont perceives Middle Age architectural objects as degenerate. He classifies buildings according to two major eras which he terms ère romane and ère ogivale, further subdividing these categories into three epochs that express the initial moments of each in pejorative terms (terming one primordiale and, the other, primitive). This language denotes a specific attitude about the medieval period that might be reflected in contemporary literature.

As a reference work, Rudiment d’Archéologie provides access to a number of woodcuts that document buildings and architectural elements in varying states of decay. The images proliferated in this text demonstrate the specific iconographic concerns of medieval religious architecture and suggest a relationship with their architectural milieu.

The notion of aberrance is perhaps the most interesting historiographical element in this otherwise linear narrative documenting the iconographic in medieval architecture.That this degeneracy is so duly noted and then supplemented with visual expressions of space in ruin creates a curious dialectic.

Collection: Cret
Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 C376 1886

L’Architecture Francaise de Jean Mariette

Mauban, André. L’Architecture Francaise de Jean Mariette. Paris: Van Oest, 1945.

In L’Architecture Francaise de Jean Mariette, André Mauban indexes the collected works of engraver and book collector Jean Mariette whose own publishing efforts included the completion and dissemination of at least five volumes concerning French Architecture. L’Architecture Francaise de Jean Mariette is divided into to two sections, the first indexes each work represented in Mariette’s five volumes and the second assembles notes, references, and plates that demonstrate Mariette’s work and explore his significance and influence. Throughout this French-language tome, Mauban is considerate of the reader, providing explicit instructions for using and understanding the book.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 M3 M3

Three Hundred Years of French Architecture

Blomfield, Reginald. Three Hundred Years of French Architecture, 1491-1794. London: A. Maclehose, 1936.

This is the second installment from the pen of Sir Reginald Blomfield to be included in our series on French Architecture. In Three Hundred Years of French Architecture, the English scholar and architect, whose own architectural work represents a rejection of what he considered “the paralysing conventions of the Victorian era,” explores the relationship between the evolution of style in French architecture and its historical backdrop. Blomfield addresses Three Hundred Years of French Architecture to the everyman, whose collective cultural curiosity he believes should be tempered by history. To that end, he parallels an indulgent listing of canonical works with often entertaining prose, generating a well-illustrated, linear narrative of the intellectual history of style through the rich period of Neoclassicism in France.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 B53

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

Versailles

Arizzoli-Clémentel, Pierre, ed. Versailles. 2 vols. Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2009.

A recent acquisition to the Architecture & Planning Library Special Collection, Versailles is a compendium documenting the rich architectural, art and cultural histories of the 17th century palace. This two-volume work juxtaposes plans, sections, and other drawing that express the palace’s design with high-resolution photographs of its resplendent interior and exterior spaces, and a number of essays that explore its art, sculpture, and landscape and architectural design. Versailles includes additional essays that examine the cultural and political activities that took place within the palace.

 

The Vernacular and Academic Nostalgia

Farm Houses, Manor Houses, Minor Chateaux and Small Churches: From the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, in Normandy, Brittany and other parts of France. New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Company, P. Wenzel and M. Krakow, 1917.

Another selection from the Paul Philippe Cret collection, Farm Houses, Manor Houses, Minor Chateaux and Small Churches is a collection of nearly 100 pages of images documenting vernacular architecture throughout Normandy, Brittany and other parts of France. While there is no index or table of contents, the book’s preface provides some unique insight into the function of this assembly. Written by AIA Fellow Ralph Adams Cram, we once again hear from a scholar seeking to return to a simpler moment, a time when architecture possessed “human scale.” Whether this response reflects the broader attitude toward the social and cultural activities that precipitated the First World War, or a more individual perspective, Cram suggests that the images compiled in the pages of this book are rooted in nostalgia, a time gone by and yet a moment his contemporaries should return to.

Collection: Cret
Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 F3

The Modernist’s Agenda

Emerson, William and Georges Gromort. The Use of Brick in French Architecture: Part One The Midi. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1935.

Written by architects William Emerson and Georges Gromort, The Use of Brick in French Architecture represents an historiographical shift in the writing of architectural history, where the architect-authors’ primary agenda reflects the desire to establish the parameters of appropriate usage. This professional concern is indicative of what we like to call modernism and suggests that the materials themselves possess specific meaning outside of their function in an architectural system. The Use of Brick in French Architecture represents one such endeavor, where examinations of the great brickwork architecture in the French Midi (this region includes Albi and Toulouse) results in the assembly of a body of work that establishes a relationship between building function and materiality while celebrating the majesty of works executed in brick.



Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 E55 PT. 1

Visual Memory

Townsend, Charles Harrison, T. S. Boys, William Callow, J. Coney, S. Prout, David Roberts, and C. Wild. Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium: Including Many which have been Destroyed during the War. London: T. F. Unwin, 1916.

This unique document reconstitutes historical renderings and paintings of gothic architecture in France and Belgium. Elegiac in tone, Beautiful Buildings of France & Belgium is an exercise in preservation, rehabilitating the obscured architectural object whose historical state was, in many cases, disrupted by the Great War. This type of visual doubling provides an early example of how what we see constructs social memory and nostalgia, and demonstrates the importance of certain types of documents in maintaining or proliferating a specific memory. Here, highly romanticized prose organized by location (Amiens, Bruges, Ghent) accompany each rendering to both celebrate and mourn these sites of tremendous cultural activity and the abundance of meaning that they represent.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 T6

Interior Design in 18th Century France

Mariette, Jean. L’Architecture de Mariette. (Paris: A. Guérinet, 192?).

Oeuvre de Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Peintre, Sculpteur, Architecte and Dessinateurd de la Chambre et Cabinet du Roy. (Paris: A. Guérinet, 192?).

Briseux, Charles-Etienne. Dessins de Menuiserie, de Serrurerie etc.: Propres à la Décoration Interieure et Extérieure des Appartements. (Paris: A. Guérinet, 192?).

Bound in a single volume, these three titles provide access to over 130 plates that document the history of interior design during the 18th century. Including the work of engraver Jean Mariette, architectural theorist Charles-Etienne Briseux, and architect and designer to contemporary European royalty, Juste Aurèle Meissonier, this collection assembles engravings of interior and exterior design details, mostly of doorways, paneling, apertures of varying types and columns. Though the engravings are not richly detailed, this type of documentation nevertheless provides a unique opportunity to explore the history of taste, style and even collecting during the 18th century.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1041 M343

Detour au Moyen Âge

Mortet, Victor. Recueil de Textes Relatifs à l’Histoire de l’Architecture et à la Condition des Architectes en France au Moyen Âge, XIe-XIIe siècles. Paris: A. Picard, 1911.

Sorbonne Archivist Victor Mortet assembled 153 primary sources concerning the history of Gothic architecture in France in Recueil de Textes Relatifs à l’Histoire de l’Architecture. Originally composed in Latin, the texts incorporated into this collection were generally composed by members of the clergy and describe the construction of churches and other religious architecture between the 10th and 12th centuries. Each text includes a brief introduction in French and copious footnotes that contextualize these sources historically while cross-referencing contemporary scholarship. Accompanied by an extensive index and glossary, this is an invaluable resource to the medieval French scholar.

Library of Congress call number: NA 1043 M6