Between stations and habitations : the architecture of French science at the shore, 1830-1900

This dissertation introduces a group of mutable institutions of research which emerged along the coast of France in the nineteenth century. The setting of these stations gave rise to a manner of occupation, both in the sense of physical inhabitation and of intellectual orientation, distinct from but related to the cultural institutions of the city. Their very remoteness resulted in structures with an unusual "double program": one of research and one of habitation. In examining the architectural, visual, and scientific components of this double program, the dissertation reveals a profound connection between the domestic and natural economies which ordered these places of research. This connection, I argue, provides the basis for a new understanding of ordering space on the related scales of architecture, landscape, and region. The first part of the study identifies a moment of cultural criticism in which a group of naturalists vacated the existing edifice of knowledge. Physically and intellectually abroad in a new field of research, their efforts to accommodate themselves there constituted a particular understanding of place in the production of knowledge. A tension between mobile and fixed modes of experiencing place determined the structural features of these accommodations. This tension is shown to be an important conceptual feature of nineteenth-century architectural, historic, and scientific accounts of man's place in nature. The second part of the study presents the thesis that these stations did not merely facilitate a research discipline but served as its premise. Focusing on the development of two stations which were "annexes" of the Paris Sorbonne, it shows how they were shaped by a practical and political bias against scientific institutions conceived as monuments. It argues instead that in comprehensively managing the elements of time, place, and circumstance these stations were instruments for mediating the natural world. The unique and undocumented visual practices for which they were the site ultimately revealed the physical and philosophical limits of the project of knowledge that they set in motion, and of vision itself.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Eigen, Edward

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stanford Anderson.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49795

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/49795