474 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Architecture and the Sciences: Scientific Accuracy or Productive Misunderstanding?
Recommended from our members
"Continuity, complexity and emergence: what is real for digital designers?"
Recommended from our members
French engineers and social thought, 18–20th centuries: An archeology of technocratic ideals.
During the second half of the twentieth century, at the time of the foundation of the Fifth Republic, French engineers endorsed enthusiastically technocratic ideals. Their attitude was not only the product of a specific context. It was rooted in a long tradition of connection between French engineering and social preoccupations. This connection emerged at the time of the creation of the first corps of State engineers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, State engineers were from the start convinced that they had a social mission. Subsequent episodes, like the Saint-Simonian reflections on the eve of industrialization, or the discussions held in the think tank X-Crise in the aftermath of the 1929 economic crisis contributed also to shape the engineers' sensitivity to social issues. Dwelling on these episodes, but also trying to go beyond their standard assessment, we would like to propose here a more general interpretation of the complex set of relations between French engineering and social thought. In this perspective, the Post-World-War-II French engineers' technocratic concerns come at the end of a long and complex evolution. This case study should enable a better understanding of the more general connivance between engineering culture and technocratic ideals
"Learning from utopia: contemporary architecture and the quest for political and social relevance."
International audienc
Recommended from our members
Ornement et Subjectivité, de la Tradition Vitruvienne à L’âge Numérique.
On parle souvent aujourd'hui d'un « retour de l'ornement » lié à l'avènement d'une architecture numérique volontiers encline à jouer sur les effets de texture et de couleur. Mais l'ornement auquel il est fait allusion n'a pas grand-chose à voir au premier abord avec celui dont parlait la théorie architecturale classique ou encore la tradition beaux-arts. Tandis que l'ornement traditionnel était localisé, l'ornement numérique règne souvent sur des pans entiers de la façade. L'ornement se parait autrefois d'une dimension symbolique affirmée ; la plupart des théoriciens contemporains de l'ornement reconnaissent qu'il ne possède aucune signification. En fait, le seul point commun entre l'ornement d'hier et celui d'aujourd'hui pourrait bien résider dans les liens qu'entretient la question ornementale avec celle de la subjectivité. Ce sont ces liens que voudrait essayer de clarifier la communication proposée
- …