Join us for another seminar in our series co-supported by the Institute of Historical Research and organised in collaboration with the Oxford Architectural History Seminar. For more information on the series click here. Christiane Matt queers the founding myths of architecture in a paper for the Architectural History Seminar
Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture, 1753, engraving by Charles Eisen, primitive hut with allegorical figure of architecture.
The former Jesuit priest Marc-Antoine Laugier published his Essai sur l’Architecture twice: the first edition of 1753 was published anonymously through the publishing firm of Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, and two years later, the work was published under his own name. In his Essai (1753), Laugier aims to delineate the boundaries of what is considered architecture and he sets out to establish rational principles and sound rules for practice. Throughout his treatise, Laugier posits ‘la simple nature’ as the source of all principles of architecture. Implicated in his insistence on nature and the natural, however, is a strong moralistic argument against everything that is considered unnatural and bizarre. This paper will consider the implications of Laugier’s construction of nature through the lens of queer theory. As Stacy Alaimo (2010) has noted, the category of nature has a long history of being invoked to exclude marginalised communities such as women, indigenous peoples, people of colour and LGBTQIA+ people. Nature is often equated with the norm or the normal, meaning that notions of otherness are constructed on the basis of what is perceived as natural. This is also the case in Laugier’s Essai (1753), as the text posits bizarrerie as the opposite of la simple nature. This paper will interrogate the notion of nature both in relation to its supposed opposites, bizarrerie and caprice, both in the context of eighteenth-century French architectural theory and discourse as well as through a twenty-first century queer re-reading of the treatise.
Claude Perrault, East façade of the Palais du Louvre with colonnade, 1664-1667, Paris, France, commissioned by Louis XIV with the assistance of Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Christiane Matt is a PhD student at the University of York, where she is researching the relationship between the body, gender and architecture, and its connection to the supposed origins or founding myths of architecture from c.1450 up to the twentieth century. Her current research interest developed out of her MA dissertation, in which she investigated the relationship between text and image in the fifteenth-century Libro Architettonico (1461-1464) written by Antonio di Piero Averlino, better known as Filarete. She is a member of the SAHBG LGBTQIA+ Network.
For the foreseeable future the SAHGB Seminars will be virtual events via Zoom. We will circulate joining instructions via email the morning of the scheduled event. Please complete the form below to register.
Support the SAHGB
Please consider making a donation to support our virtual programme and educational mission: