Lequeu

Lequeu PDF Author: Philippe Duboy
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
Jean-Jacques Lequeu does in fact hide behind the most enigmatic and controversial smile in the history of art, writes Philippe Duboy in a book that is one of the most tantalizing examples of architectural investigation ever produced. It is an extraordinary compilation - part speculative biography, part meticulous research, with hundreds of intriguing drawings, many in color - that unravels the mystery of this eighteenth-century maverick artist whose drawings have established him variously as a visionary architect associated with Boullee and Ledoux, forerunner of surrealism, and inventor of bad taste. Lequeu's architectural drawings from the legendary portfolios Architecture civile and Nouvelle methode are presented here in their entirety, along with his Lewd Figures, perhaps the oddest feature of the whole collection. The drawings are accompanied by long captions, misspelt and ungrammatical, but written in a flawless bureaucratic hand. The artist's marginalia provide insights into his visions, which seem dominated by an obsession with petrified forms and a recurring preoccupation with sex. Interleaved with the drawings are curious autobiographical papers. And it is here that Duboy's investigation of Lequeu begins to reveal strange clues. He discovers that Lequeu was not an architect at all but a government bureaucrat, a draftsman who ended up living in a brothel. Between the brothel and the obscure office from which he was eventually fired, he produced his encyclopedia of the universe - bizarre portraits of nuns baring their breasts and other lewd figures, and architectural fantasies of vast imaginary cities. Duboy takes his study further, into the realm of Charles Fourier andhis brother-in-law Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and from there to the world of the dadaists, surrealists, and futurists, particularly the circles of Marcel Duchamp and Le Corbusier. He suggests that Duchamp and Raymond Rousell tampered with the Lequeu drawings to concoct a character and oeuvre even more puzzling. There are glimpses of Duchamp's convolutions of mind that will stir a reassessment of his work. Duchamp emerges here, for the first time, as an intrepid and unwavering despiser of Le Corbusier. Twentieth-century reputations are as much at stake in this study as those of the eighteenth-century artist, notes Robin Middleton. Philippe Duboy is Professor of the History of Cities, Paris-Belleville School of Architecture.

Chora 1

Chora 1 PDF Author: Alberto Pérez Gómez
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773511934
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
Volume I in the new series Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture explores fundamental questions concerning the practice of architecture and examines the potential of architecture.

Built upon Love

Built upon Love PDF Author: Alberto Perez-Gomez
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262264226
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
A vision of architecture that transcends concerns of form and function and finds the connections between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture—opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression—obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell—one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics—between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia—the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals—and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.

Chora 3

Chora 3 PDF Author: Alberto Pérez Gómez
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773517127
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
This collection on the philosophy of architecture is intended for historians and theorists of architecture, and anyone interested in issues of space, body, and architectural meaning.

Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu

Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu PDF Author: Jean-Claude Lemagny
Publisher: Houston, Tex. : Printed by Gulf Print. Company
ISBN:
Category : Architects
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
The drawings and engravings of the French visionary architects Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu lie on the nervous cusp of Neoclassicism and hallucination. The three designed vast, impractical monuments, villas and temples, cathedrals and libraries, incorporating motifs from the classical era informed by the new intellectual freedoms of the Enlightenment. The resulting drawings and plans are like nothing done before or since, and their daring has reverberated through to us in the work of such architects as Speer, Graves, Sant'Elia, and Stirling.

Henri Bertin and the Representation of China in Eighteenth-Century France

Henri Bertin and the Representation of China in Eighteenth-Century France PDF Author: John Finlay
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315467356
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
This is an in-depth study of the intellectual, technical, and artistic encounters between Europe and China in the late eighteenth century, focusing on the purposeful acquisition of information and images that characterized a direct engagement with the idea of "China." The central figure in this story is Henri-Léonard Bertin (1720–1792), who served as a minister of state under Louis XV and, briefly, Louis XVI. Both his official position and personal passion for all things Chinese placed him at the center of intersecting networks of like-minded individuals who shared his ideal vision of China as a nation from which France had much to learn. John Finlay examines a fascinating episode in the rich history of cross-cultural exchange between China and Europe in the early modern period, and this book will be an important and timely contribution to a very current discussion about Sino-French cultural relations. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual culture, European and Chinese history.

Queer Lyrics

Queer Lyrics PDF Author: J. Vincent
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137065656
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Queer Lyrics fills a gap in queer studies: the lyric, as poetic genre, has never been directly addressed by queer theory. Vincent uses formal concerns, difficulty and closure, to discuss innovations specific to queer American poets. He traces a genealogy based on these queer techniques from Whitman, through Crane and Moore, to Ashbery and Spicer. Queer Lyrics considers the place of form in queer theory, while opening new vistas on the poetry of these seminal figures.

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models PDF Author: Federica Goffi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100055032X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 869

Book Description
Architectural drawings and models are instruments of imagination, communication, and historical continuity. The role of drawings and models, and their ownership, placement, and authorship in a ubiquitous digital age deserve careful consideration. Expanding on the well-established discussion of the translation from drawings to buildings, this book fills a lacuna in current scholarship, questioning the significance of the lives of drawings and models after construction. Including emerging, well-known, and world-renowned scholars in the fields of architectural history and theory and curatorial practices, the thirty-five contributions define recent research in four key areas: drawing sites/sites of knowledge construction: drawing, office, construction site; the afterlife of drawings and models: archiving, collecting, displaying, and exhibiting; tools of making: architectural representations and their apparatus over time; and the ethical responsibilities of collecting and archiving: authorship, ownership, copyrights, and rights to copy. The research covers a wide range of geographies and delves into the practices of such architects as Sir John Soane, Superstudio, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wajiro Kon, Germán Samper Gnecco, A+PS, Mies van der Rohe, and Renzo Piano.

The Architecture of the French Enlightenment

The Architecture of the French Enlightenment PDF Author: Allan Braham
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520067394
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Allan Braham's comprehensive treatment of this brilliant and complex period introduces the reader to the major buildings, architects, and architectural patrons of the day. At the same time, it explores the broader determinants of architectural production: the rapid economic expansion of Paris and the main provincial centers and the increasing demand for improved public amenities--theaters, schools, markets, and hospitals. This generously illustrated book provides a vivid commentary on society and manners in pre-Revolutionary France.

Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire

Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire PDF Author: Penelope Haralambidou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351919997
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
While much has been written on Marcel Duchamp - one of the twentieth century's most beguiling artists - the subject of his flirtation with architecture seems to have been largely overlooked. Yet, in the carefully arranged plans and sections organising the blueprint of desire in the Large Glass, his numerous pieces replicating architectural fragments, and his involvement in designing exhibitions, Duchamp's fascination with architectural design is clearly evident. As his unconventional architectural influences - Niceron, Lequeu and Kiesler - and diverse legacy - Tschumi, OMA, Webb, Diller + Scofidio and Nicholson - indicate, Duchamp was not as much interested in 'built' architecture as he was in the architecture of desire, re-constructing the imagination through drawing and testing the boundaries between reality and its aesthetic and philosophical possibilities. Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire examines the link between architectural thinking and Duchamp's work. By employing design, drawing and making - the tools of the architect - Haralambidou performs an architectural analysis of Duchamp’s final enigmatic work Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas... demonstrating an innovative research methodology able to grasp meaning beyond textual analysis. This novel reading of his ideas and methods adds to, but also challenges, other art-historical interpretations. Through three main themes - allegory, visuality and desire - the book defines and theorises an alternative drawing practice positioned between art and architecture that predates and includes Duchamp.