Following the French Revolution, a new administrative division of France was put in place. Several departmental division plans were proposed, including a grid map of France, with each square representing a department.
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Systematization and Composition
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand was an architect and professor who developed a process of architectural systematization based on a square frame. His theory is augmented by numerous architectural references, organized by typology.
Roger Leenhardt, l’Intelligence
The director and screenwriter Roger Leenhardt made an appearance in the film Une femme mariée by Jean-Luc Godard. Pierre, Charlotte and Leenhardt begin a succession of monologues in three sections: Pierre speaks of memory, Charlotte of the present, while Leenhardt concludes by defining intelligence and praising compromise. His monologue is partly transcribed here.
Palais de la Découverte, Technical Monumentality and Ovoid Forms
During the 1937 Paris Universal Exhibition, three adopted French architects proposed a highly technical building, the Palais de la Découverte (Palace of Discovery), far removed from the new theories of modern architecture.
La Maison de la Publicité, an High Tech Architecture Ahead of its Time
La Maison de la Publicité is a project designed by Oscar Nitzchke in 1936. The building, a kind of media machine, presents a façade with a fine metallic structure, covered with changing advertisements, long before the first examples of high-tech architecture.
Une femme mariée
Une femme mariée is Godard’s eighth film. The main subject of the film is a woman in her twenties, Charlotte, of course without a conscience of its own, and presented as empty of substance, as is often the case with Godard. She leads her life between her husband Pierre and her lover Robert but doesn’t know which one to choose.
Cemeteries: le champ de repos
Following his appointment as administrator of the department of the Seine in Paris in 1799, Jacques Cambry discovered the Parisian cemeteries in an appalling state. He then published a report augmented by an urban and architectural proposal. This came in a context favourable to the evolution of the Parisian cemeteries.
Une femme est une femme
Une femme est une femme is the third Godard movie. It centers on the relationship between Angela (Anna Karina) and Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy). She wants to have a child with him, he doesn’t.