About this Event
Join us for the next Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series of 26/27 by Jason Nguyen.
This lecture will be hybrid. Please book your ticket for attendance in person or online. You will receive access to the online event via email the day before the event.
Abstract
Over the modern age, measurement has formed one of the bases on which architecture has been conceived, built, and evaluated. This talk uses one instance in this history—a dispute over two metrics, known as toises, between the masonry guild and the Police Lieutenancy in the halls of the Louvre in 1667—to frame a larger set of questions concerning the cultivation of legal jurisdiction, the politics of labour, and the cascade of paperwork that came to condition professional architectural practice in early modern Paris. Through the interplay of ritual and procedure, the event announced the police’s authority in matters of construction, relocating control from the building site to the bureau and binding architecture to a nascent concept of civil society.
About Jason Nguyen
Jason Nguyen is an Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He is an architectural historian, with interests in the professionalization of the architectural trade, the impact of science and technology in design, and the interplay of architecture and commerce in the early modern world.
Image caption: Jacques Lagnier, “Qui bastit ment,” or, “He who Builds, Lies,” from Recueil des plus illustres proverbes (Collection of the Most Famous Proverbs, 1657), vol. 1, 60, etching and engraving on paper, 25.4 x 19 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), Département des estampes et de la photographie, RESERVE QB-201 (42)-FOL.
Access
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Event venue & nearby stays
Adam House, Basement Theatre, The University of Edinburgh, 3 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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