1st Edition

Architecture in Words Theatre, Language and the Sensuous Space of Architecture

By Louise Pelletier Copyright 2006
256 Pages
by Routledge

256 Pages
by Routledge

256 Pages
by Routledge

What if the house you are about to enter was built with the confessed purpose of seducing you, of creating various sensations destined to touch your soul and make you reflect on who you are? Could architecture have such power? This was the assumption of generations of architects at the beginning of modernity. Exploring the role of theatre and fiction in defining character in architecture,... Read more

Acknowledgements  Introduction  Part 1: Character and Expression: Staging Architecture  1. Architecture as an Expressive Language  Character Theory and the Language of Architecture  Le Camus de Mézières and the Metaphor of the Theatre  2. Character Theory at the Theatre  Servandoni, the Master of Special Effects  The Modulation of Light and Darkness  Unity of Place and the Perfecting of an Illusion  3. Rules of Expression and the Paradox of Acting  Le Brun's Theory of Expression  The Paradox of the Actor  Part 2: Playacting and the Culture of Entertainment: Architecture as Theatre  4. Theatre as the Locus of Public and Social Expression  The Rules of Civility and Conventions at the Theatre  Louis XV and the New Taste for Private Performances  Society Theatre and Diderot's Drame Bourgeois  The Staging of a Play  5. Theatre Architecture and the Role of the Proscenium  Rethinking the Space of the Auditorium  The Beginning of a New Tradition and the Relocation of the Spectator  The Theatricality of the Marketplace  Part 3: Language and Personal Imagination: An Architecture for the Senses  6. Taste, Talent and Genius in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics  Theatre Theory and the Decadence of Taste  Genius and the Complex Relationship Between Rules and Talent  Génie and the Encyclopédie  7. Newtonian Empirical Sciences and the Order of Nature  The Expression of Nature in Architectural Theory  Newtonian Empirical Science and the Role of Tradition  8. Empirical Philosophy and the Nature of Sensations  Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and the Nature of Imagination  Edmund Burke and the Materiality of Light and Shadow  Denis Diderot and the Importance of Language  Part 4: Plotting an Architectural Program: The Space of Desire  9. Staging an Architecture in Words  The Space of Seduction  The Genius of Architecture and the Distribution of a Hôtel Particulier  10. The Narrative Space of Desire  Aabba, a Romance   Chantilly, a Picturesque Garden  Conclusion: The Temporality of Human Experience  Endnotes  Selected Bibliography

Biography

Pelletier, Louise