Jean Rondelet took up his career in 1770, working for Jacques-Germain Soufflot, the architect of the most conspicuous and structurally daring church of the period, now known as the Pantheon in Paris. Rondelet assumed the role of technical expert, taking on more and more control not only of the structural design but of the site organization as well. The church became a focus of acrimonious debate among architects and engineers when faults in the structure threatened a total collapse of the dome. Rondelet emerged, not quite the victor, but the man commissioned to ensure structural stability.This book, the first devoted to Rondelet, tells the story of the most celebrated architectural debate of the century. It also examines Rondelet's career in full, his publications, and his long-lasting influence on the training of architects and the administration of architectural practice in France. More than any other architect, Rondelet represents the era of change during which the foundations for modern architectural theory and practice were laid. 

Jean Rondelet: The Architect as Technician

Arts & Photography

Middleton, Robin

Baudouin-Matuszek, Marie-Noelle

Architecture

Yale University Press

"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 Boullée 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 and his 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.

Lequeu: An Architectural Enigma

Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Jean-Baptiste Rondelet and the Art of Construction (Cambridge Studies in the History of Architecture)

Baudoin-Matuszak, Marie

Cambridge University Press

Asmat Art features the world-renowned woodcarvings of the Asmat, former head-hunters who live in the western half of New Guinea. Working with stone adzes, bone, and bits of shell, early carvers fashioned the local wood into stunning masterpieces. Editor Dirk Smidt has gathered together distinguished experts on Asmat art and culture to describe the physical and spiritual world of the Asmat, the techniques and motifs used by master carvers, and to present an historical overview of European collections of Asmat art.

French Books: Seventeenth Through Nineteenth Centuries, Vol. I (Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection)

Reference

Wiebenson, Dora

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Baines, Claire

Catalogs & Directories

George Braziller, Inc.

<i>British Books</i> is the second book in the series cataloguing more than six hundred rare illustrated books and bound series of prints on western European architecture, design, and topography, collected by the late Mark J. Millard. Among the books, all published between the end of the fifteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, are numerous first or early editions. The almost one hundred titles catalogued in <i>British Books</i> trace the origins and development of architectural illustration in Britain. The collection is particularly rich in the eighteenth century, and includes almost all of the great folio albums recording the archaeological investigations of antiquity and most of the volumes documenting the architecture of Britain. These books, intended for the gentleman-amateur's library rather than the architect's office or builder's workshop, reveal the British sensitivity concerning properly architectural representation of buildings. Here, too, are practical treatises for construction, ornament patterns, surveys of monuments, views of buildings in situ, and topographical surveys. Included are works by Thomas Chippendale, John Neale, Humphry Repton, and Sir Christopher Wren.

British Books: Seventeenth Through Nineteenth Centuries, Vol. II (Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection)

Savage, Nicholas

Beasley, Gerald

Félix Duban (1798-1870): Les couleurs de l'architecte

COLLECTIFS

Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette

Wittman, Richard

Mathieu, Caroline

Leniaud, Jean-Michel

Pons, Bruno

Babelon, Jean-Pierre

Bresc-Bautier, Geneviève

Pingeot, Anne

Rose, Francesca

Boudon, Françoise

Thaon, Bernard

Pinon, Pierre

Van Zanten, David

Jacques, Annie

Jacquin, Emmanuel

Forest, Marie-Cécile

Foucart, Bruno

Garleff, Jörn

Gatouillat, Françoise

Langlois, Corinne

Bascon, Marc

Bercé, Françoise

Berdgdoll, Barry

Luynes, Thomas de

Driskel, Michael Paul

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Gallimard]

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