http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7750 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:55:08 GMT 2013-06-19T05:55:08Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79319 Under(lining) Leh : the order of consciousness Bagai, Radhika "Because it is beautiful, there must be a formal order." - Leonardo Da Vinci. The thesis is an investigation into the idea that nothing built evolves naturally, that there is an explicit or implicit structure and an order to things. This order may be a result of clear intentions or of a collective consciousness, even behind forms that appear spontaneous. The city too is not immune from the order of a deep structure. The thesis concerns the 17th century city of Leh, situated in the captivating, but remote, region of Ladakh in India. The royal citadel of Leh is a dramatic example of the genius deployed in the conception of the settlement as a unified, complete, and highly evolved entity. It lends credibility to the idea that form is a highly controlled and meaningful expression of content (culture). The logic and consistency that I found in Leh's settlements could only mean one thing: that there was a "method to the madness", that there was an order to the disorder, that there was in fact a "jewel in the lotus". A fragment of the city was selected for an exploration which consists of an extensive survey resulting in a documented, original set of drawings. These original drawings and information gathered over a period of three months served as a resource for the exploration which uncovers some underlying orders in the city. The form of Leh is highly organized, where the source is not the drawing board but a consciousness among the people which exists as embedded, non-cognitive ideas about life, manifest in a clear physical form and order. The selected foci consists of five normative elements which are found to be relevant at the macro, as well as, the micro level. These are: 1. Hierarchy 2. Position and Direction 3. Assemblage 4. Generic Dimensions and Geometry 5. Invocation of Light The exploration reveals how these abstract normative elements translate into concrete design principles. Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1994.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 75). Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79319 1994-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79318 Community participation--a tale of two projects Merriell, Andrew Franklin Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1973.; Unbound Archives copy in Rare Book Room, folio section. Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79318 1973-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79183 Spectacles Plastiques : reconstruction and the debates on the "Synthesis of the Arts" in France, 1944-1962 Pezolet, Nicola My dissertation examines the collaborative efforts of different individuals and groups - such as Le Corbusier, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Groupe Espace, and the Internationale Situationniste - which advocated a "synthesis of the arts" in the time period that corresponds to the Liberation until the beginning of the Fifth Republic. I consider a wide range of archival sources and projects, from the collective decoration of permanent buildings to temporary installations in galleries by way of outdoors art exhibitions and theatrical performances, many of which were sponsored by Eugene Claudius-Petit and the newly founded French Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism. The "synthesis of the arts" discourse was more than a faint humanist echo of the Wagnerian model of the Gesamtkuntwerk, or "total work of art": it was one of the primary routes along which the cultural and political conflicts of French modernization and governmentality were discussed. My study locates the "synthesis of the arts" amidst the effort to renovate a universalizing discourse linked to modernist art, on the one hand, and a nascent welfare state notion of public space (and its correlative rhetoric of beauty, hygiene, functionality, and accessibility), on the other. As such, the postwar synthesis discourse not only reflected but directly participated in the development and expansion of the French "cultural state". Rather than showing this discourse as unitary, the dissertation explores its complex and sometimes contradictory dimensions by analyzing the political and social connotations of three different categories: a heroic model, associated with the figure of Le Corbusier; a bureaucratic model, developed by Groupe Espace (1951-1956); and an oppositional model, deployed by AsgerJorn, Pinot-Gallizio, and others who became associated with the Situationists (1954-1962). Case studies include Le Corbusier's Usine Claude et Duval in Saint-Dié and Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, Bernard Zehrfuss and Felix Del Marle's Regie Nationale Renault factory complex in Flins, Michel Ragon and Jacques Polieri's first Festival d'Art d'Avant-Garde, and Cobra and Situationists enviroments such as the Architects' House and the Cavern of Anti-Matter. Thesis (Ph. D. in Architecture: History and Theory of Art)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2013."; Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-332). Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79183 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79182 Ornament after the orders : Percier, Fontaine and the rise of the architectural interior in post-revolutionary France Moon, Iris (Iris Jee) This dissertation explores the collaborative work in interior decoration undertaken by the French architects Charles Percier (1764-1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762- 1853), in order to argue that their shared aesthetic positioned the interior at the crux of a modem architectural discourse no longer dependent upon a Vitruvian theory of the orders. Percier and Fontaine's influential decoration book, the Recueil de décorations intérieures (1801-1812) serves as my point of departure for investigating their idea of interior decoration and its engagement with the complex cultural milieu of France, circa 1800, from the end of the ancien régime to the rise of a militarized empire under Napoleon Bonaparte. Approaching Percier and Fontaine's interior decoration partnership from different thematic angles, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates their vital role in shaping the unexpected contours of modem architectural thought. Against the widespread revolutionary destruction of monuments, ornament, rather than the orders, ensured architecture's survival. Percier and Fontaine's vision of the interior signaled a movement away from an architecture of monumentality towards one of mobility, a shift precipitated by the violence of political events, the disciplinary pressure of engineering and the emergence of new conceptions of history. Scholars have argued that the utilitarian techniques of engineering constituted the primary impetus behind the formation of a post-Vitruvian building culture in France. By contrast, Percier and Fontaine reaffirmed architecture's alliance with sculpture, painting and engraving, harnessing these artistic forms to new ends in their design practice. Through the Recueil, Percier and Fontaine claimed the interior-untouched by the spatial symbolics of the revolution-as architectural theory's proper terrain. Yet their publication simultaneously presented a fragile discourse of fragments, in which architecture was subject to the vagaries of fashion, commerce and history. Percier and Fontaine turned to their experiences designing theater sets in order to construct settings that would legitimize Napoleon's military conquests, beginning with the bellicose motifs at the château de Malmaison. Although the architects sought to colonize the interior as a site of Napoleonic power, it proved to be a porous and itinerant site of meaning that could not be claimed as the central domain of imperial force-or architecture alone. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2013."; Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-290). Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79182 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z