Contract, crowd, corpus and plasma. Architectural and social assemblages

Date
2009
Authors
Douglas, C
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Auckland, NZ: Enigma
Abstract

This paper springs from Joseph Rykwert’s observation, in On Adam’s House in Paradise (1981), of a conceptual correlation between Marc-Antoine Laugier and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It discerns, in the condition of joints in Laugier’s Essay on Architecture (1753) and social bonds in Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762), an underlying structural logic: what I will call an implicit theory of assemblage. From this initial reference point in the mid-eighteenth century, the paper moves to consider theories of crowds in the late nineteenth century as implicit theories of assemblage, and ultimately advocates the work of Gabriel Tarde as a basis for explicitation of these underlying theories.

Description
Keywords
Architecture , Crowds , Assemblage , Architectural , Details , Marc-Antoine Laugier , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Joseph Rykwert , Gabriel Tarde , Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
Source
Interstices, vol.10, pp.97-108
DOI
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