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Architecture, Art, Books, Mark David Major, Review

FROM THE VAULT | The Little House | An Architectural Seduction

FROM THE VAULT
The Little House: An Architectural Seduction
By Jean-François de Bastide (Translated by Rodolphe el-Khoury), Preface by Anthony Vidler
Review by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Though based on a 19th century publication, The Little House: An Architectural Seduction is, in fact, an 18th century French text, Le Petite Maison by Jean-François de Bastide. As Anthony Vidler points out in the preface, it is a peculiar French attempt to synthesize two disparate literary genres, which was quite common at the time (and still frequently occurs today to varying degrees, think of recent attempts combining juvenile romance with erotic horror in fiction titles such as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In, or Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies). In the case of The Little House, it is the genres of the erotic romance and architectural treatise, which are synthesized by Bastide. The architectural treatise portion is beautifully composed of meticulous drawings of plans, elevations, and interior design details of the Marquis de Tremicour’s petite maison, which is visited on a dare by the virtuous Mélite. Much of the text is given over to descriptions of Tremicour’s collected objects displayed in the house. The design of the little house itself is strongly reminiscent of 16th century Palladian villas, which were also frequently used as display settings for wealthy collections of art, tapestries, inventive domestic wonders and what not rather than actual homes (the nearest American equivalent would be Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello though Jefferson’s home was also a fully-functional farmstead). The romance portion of the story details Tremicour’s attempts to use his petite maison and its collection of expensive objects to seduce Mélite.

Despite Vidler’s heavily-jargon-weighed efforts to convince readers to assume a French Libertine perspective (an “alien culture”, according Vidler) in reading the text, The Little House actually reads like an appraisal of Tremicour’s worth as measured in his financial outlay on the house and the objects contained within; in this case, worth is a measure of taste that can be purchased. Vidler argues taste in the 18th century French sense is actually an aspect of touch (both literally and metaphorically, how we are physical and emotionally ‘touched’ by a person or thing). Vidler’s argument is not entirely convincing and it’s easy to wonder how the reader might react differently to the text in the absence of Vidler’s prefatory comments. Mélite’s conflicted feelings about Tremicour during her visit emerge, on one hand, from her distaste of the man and his reputation and, on the other, her appreciation of the liberating nature of his wealth in enabling him to obtain the best of things. This serves as an interesting contrast to Mélite, who is explicitly stated to have earned her taste through learning and experience (her age and wealth status are not mentioned though it’s safe to assume she is not a child and comes from a well-to-do French family). This seems to make Mélite’s dogged resistance to Tremicour’s (sometime clumsy) attempts at sexual seduction into a nature-nurture didactic whereby nature (one who is born with taste, i.e. Mélite) overcomes nurture (one who has purchased taste, i.e. Tremicour). Tremicour does have something of a nouveau riche quality about him, despite his title. However, this possible reading of the text is undercut by a revision to the ending of The Little House. According to el-Khoury’s notes, Mélite succeeded in her efforts to resist Tremicour’s attempted seduction in his petite maison and she retired to the country to recover from the ordeal in Bastide’s original ending. el-Khoury is unclear if Bastide himself changed the ending (i.e. original ending was in draft form) or if the translator has changed the ending using a 20th century perspective. Thus, The Little House ends with a threat, Mélite’s last words being “Tremicour, leave me! I do not want…”, and then brief acknowledgement of Tremicour’s success in seducing the virtuous girl. This revision is disturbing because it changes the tale from an architectural seduction into a libertine rape. The Little House thereby reasserts the purview of the masculine (of Tremicour, perhaps of the male contributors to this modern translation) over the feminine (of Mélite) in architecture and Mélite becomes, metaphorically-speaking, only another object to be collected. It is possible this review is skewed with a distinctive 21st century perspective about women but no matter how much some of us may wish to be a French Libertine, we are not.

The Little House: An Architectural Seduction
By Jean-François de Bastide (Translated by Rodolphe el-Khoury)
Preface by Anthony Vidler
Originally published as Le Petite Maison, 1879
Princeton Architectural Press, 1996
116 pages

Available for purchase from Amazon here.

From the Vault is a new series from the Outlaw Urbanist in which we review architectural and urban design texts, with an emphasis on the obscure and forgotten, found in the second-hand bookstore.

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Architecture, Concrete Blonde, Essay, Photography, Urban Patterns, Urban Planning

PHOTO ESSAY | Havana, Cuba | Part 2

PHOTO ESSAY | Havana, Cuba | Part 2
Photographs by Concrete Blonde

Part 2 of a brief photographic essay of architecture and urban space in Havana, Cuba courtesy of Concrete Blonde. Again, the urban vocabulary of Havana is remarkably consistent: the street life of urban balconies, the use of balcony gardens in softening the urban streetscape, rooftop terraces, abundant use of urban sidewalk arcades, and the use of color.

Looking over a Havana neighborhood through an open window with the harbor in the distance.
Havana street life above and below, courtesy of a ground-level retail shop and second floor balconies.
A narrow shopping street in Havana, Cuba.
A lavishly-vegetated garden in the courtyard of a public building in Havana, Cuba.
Vegetation hanging from a second floor balcony soften the hard edges of the urban streetscape in Havana, Cuba.
Upper-level balconies introduce additional street constitution and casual surveillance of the street in the urban environment of Havana, Cuba.
Balconies and sidewalk arcades defining the street vocabulary of Havana, Cuba.
A street space well-used by pedestrians in Havana, Cuba.
A narrow street width in Havana, Cuba.
Finally, a light well made of empty bottles at a local restaurant in Havana, Cuba; included here only because it’s so ingeniously cool.
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Architecture, Concrete Blonde, Essay, Photography, Urban Patterns, Urban Planning

PHOTO ESSAY | Havana, Cuba | Part 1

PHOTO ESSAY | Havana, Cuba | Part 1
Photographs by Concrete Blonde

Part 1 of a brief photographic essay of architecture and urban space in Havana, Cuba courtesy of Concrete Blonde. In terms of urbanism, the most interesting aspects of these photographs are: the street life of urban balconies, the use of balcony gardens in softening the urban streetscape, rooftop terraces, abundant use of urban sidewalk arcades, and the use of color. In terms of political ideology, it seems symbolic that many of the cars (most likely of origin in Eastern Europe) and best architecture (at least, in terms of design if not actual age) predates the Communist Revolution lead by Fidel Castro in 1959; make of that what you will. However, the result is an urban treasure trove awaiting re-discovery and historic rehabilitation.

Havana streetscape showing sidewalk arcades and second-level balconies.
Rooftop terraces in Havana, Cuba.
Heavily-vegetated balconies in Havana, Cuba.
From this perspective, notice how the line of sight sneaks pass the corner of buildings to continue along the space of the street. Architects and planners ignore such nuances of the urban pattern at their peril.
Fantastic mural incorporated into the design of an otherwise mundane Modern building.
Contemporary pedestrian plaza, probably a conversion of an old tram/rail line running down the middle of the street. Though beautifully done, notice how empty the plaza appears during the middle of the day due to the generous street width, especially in comparison to the following photo of a heavily-populated street in Havana with a narrower street width.
A typical street scene in Havana, Cuba.
Churchyard plaza in Havana, Cuba.
Urban balconies defining the facade of an early twentieth century (1930s?) building in Havana, Cuba.
Sidewalk arcades, balconies, and rooftop terraces on another street in Havana, Cuba.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Havana, Cuba Photographic Essay coming soon on The Outlaw Urbanist!

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Architecture, Editorial, Mark David Major, Poor Richard, Urban Planning

More Poor Richard | Part 10

More Poor Richard, Part 10
by Mark David Major, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Architecture and Cities

91.       Excessive use of beige represents an irrational fear of white.

92.       A skyscraper isn’t any more a penis than a basement is a vagina.

93.       The horizontal brevity of a skyscaper is inversely proportional to its vertical repetitiveness.

94.       Skyscraper (skí·skrãp·ər) To wear down the heavens without regard by forceful strokes of an edged or rough building.

95.       Too often, skyscapers are not about playing well with others but about playing excessively with yourself.

96.       Urban circle jerk: a tradition in which architects, usually men, design unrelated skyscapers in close proximity to one another

97.       Suburban circle jerk: the same as an “urban circle jerk” but with only smaller… er, buildings.

98.       Design is in the details, meaning in the whole.

99.       Urban planning suffers from a deficiency of heroes and an excess of sidekicks.

100.     Planning a great city is heroic. Dare to be a hero.

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Essay, On Space, Phenomenology, Philosophy

On Space | The Structural City

On Space | The Structural City
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

The spatial experience of the city is a child’s playground of structures, of a faraway multitude and its near-invariants, a beingness trivial and noble, earthy in its dimensions but astral in meaning. The foreground is composed as the background is configured, imposed by the actions of local actors but emerging on a global stage of meaning and consequence. We are its actors and the playwright, telling the story and bringing it to life for an audience that is ourselves, as if performance could thrive across a mirror of timeless depth and perception, an infinite recursion writ large and whispered softly. The city is a presentation – and representation – of our best and worst selves, of our past and our future, denoting significance in the moment of the present, the here and now of our lives, of the everyday errands of individual importance but (seemingly) societal inconsequentiality. We think, therefore we are but also we move, here we were and will be. These abstract and material constructions of the city reach for the horizon and to the sky, never attaining either but embedding the object with a purpose, with a meaning, and with a question that simultaneously transcends and surrenders to the entities populating the streets, spaces, and buildings of the city. It is transcendence and capitulation to the physical and the spatial, to the kinetic energy of movement and the static inertia of place, to the functioning of the urban object, that at once determines and allows its formation and articulation.

It is an entity that births and devours itself, this Urban Ouroboros, forming protective walls against unseen intruders and unknown dangers. We are the beginning of our story, its past prologue. We are at the center of our story, its extant climax. We are the edge of our story, its future denouement. But it is not the genesis, neither the center nor even the edge that carries the value of our actions. It is the path lying in-between, from where to here to there, from the mere act of marking a path in the landscape to the volatile core of our beingness in the city, and further to the tranquil border that defines the state of being within or without. The grid is the thing. The grid is its genesis, it generates and swathes, offering a translucent skin, which reveals the heart and muscle, pulse and rhythm of the city. Its skin is spelled out in the superordination of geometries both great and small, widths of mysteriously known paths, lengths of promising unspoken journeys, and rigid alignments of mass and light. Hierarchies are simply defined, and structures are mystically revealed in the body of the city; a city of collective memory, of shared purpose, and of forgotten desires that we carry along with us on the path. It is achieved with frightening efficiency, which we consciously retreat from, to our own detriment, yet cannot deny, to our own blessing. The dynamics of the city rise and fall with our intentions, with our mistakes, and with our unending beauty in the body of the collective. Its effects are systematic across and embedded within body and mind, perpetuating the rapid spread of malignancies and their antidote. A city is an object of cosmic imagination grounded in a foundation of our earthly desires and guttural sins. It all these things, and more… much more.

On Space is a regular series of philosophical posts from The Outlaw Urbanist. These short articles (usually about 500 words) are in draft form so ideas, suggestions, thoughts and constructive criticism are welcome.

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