Papers by Isabelle Gournay
Oxford University Press eBooks, 2003
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Jun 1, 2013
Caroline Maniaque-Benton French Encounters with the American Counterculture, 1960–1980 Farnham, U... more Caroline Maniaque-Benton French Encounters with the American Counterculture, 1960–1980 Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011, 244 pp., 51 color and 58 b/w illus. $99.95, ISBN 9781409423867 This handsome book investigates an intriguing and novel topic: the French attraction to American “alternative architecture,” which was prompted by the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and which is being revisited by historians as a harbinger of today’s sustainability movement. The book’s protagonists were young Frenchmen, mostly recent graduates of the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts and architecture students, who discovered America’s alternative architecture through publications and road trips in the western United States, including visits to iconic settlements such as Drop City (pictured on the cover of the book). These young travelers became prominent educators (Pierre Joly and Marc Vaye), practitioners (Francois Lombard and Jean-Louis Veret), writers (Patrice Goulet), and publishers (Jean-Paul Jungman and the founders of the Editions Parentheses). Maniaque-Benton interviewed them around 2000 and pored over their personal archives and book collections. Extensive quotes from these interviews, as well as reproductions of travel photographs and book covers, bring substance and vivacity to her account. Readers will notice that the book’s cast of characters includes no women, with the exception of a cameo appearance by Agnes Varda. In 1967, the movie director shot a twenty-two-minute film, Uncle Yanco , in the Sausalito houseboat community, “a place of pilgrimage for European architects who were attracted to these strange and wonderful constructions” (27). One is left to wonder whether male bonding, as experienced by several protagonists in tandem or as a trio of travelers, was integral to this rite of passage through a distant and exotic culture. Chapter 1, “Framing the Debates around Technology,” accounts for the rich and complex historical context behind this initiation into American counterculture, which took place at a time when France’s “aversion to American imperialism” (3) was extreme and when architectural training in Paris became pluralistic, as the previously centralized Ecole des Beaux-Arts atelier system …
Planning Perspectives, Oct 18, 2022
Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2017
Urban History Review-revue D Histoire Urbaine, Mar 1, 2001
Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y ... more Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.
Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2017
... Building (Fulton National Bank Building) 55 Marietta Street, NW 1958: Wyatt C. Hedrick (Dalla... more ... Building (Fulton National Bank Building) 55 Marietta Street, NW 1958: Wyatt C. Hedrick (Dallas) with Wilner and Millkey, Architects FP 7 Walton Place (Georgia Railway and Power Building) 75 Marietta Street, NW 1907: Morgan and Dillon, Architects. Restoration 1988: Stang ...
Journal of Architectural Education, Jul 1, 1985
Urban History Review-revue D Histoire Urbaine, Mar 1, 2001
In 1920, Jacques Gréber published what was and still is the largest book on U.S. architecture and... more In 1920, Jacques Gréber published what was and still is the largest book on U.S. architecture and urban design ever issued in France. His dual agenda was to stress the impact of Beaux-Arts design methods (presenting his gardens and Philadelphia parkway as highlights of this trend), and to advocate the practical accomplishments of a pragmatic and affluent civilization. Showcasing an "edited" North American city, devoid of commercialism and filled with civic structures of great dignity and comfort, L'Architecture aux États-Unis looked back to ideals and accomplishments of the American Renaissance and ahead to the metropolitan culture of the 1920s. For the first time in France, ventures by U.S. architects in the field of civic art were acknowledged as major achievements. Gréber formulated ideas about modern North American civic centres, business districts, parks, and model suburbs that would affect his proposals for Ottawa and on his French career. His book triggered the evolution of French views of the U.S.-built environment toward greater interest and generally more positive views.
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Papers by Isabelle Gournay