Review: Edifice & Artifice: Histoires constructives by Robert Carvais, André Guillerme, Valérie Nègre, Joël Sakarovitch, editors

Abstract

Robert Carvais, Andre Guillerme, Valerie Negre, and Joel Sakarovitch, editors. Edifice & Artifice: Histoires constructives . Paris: Editions A. and J. Picard, 2010, 1277 pp., 649 b/w illus. €79 (paperback), ISBN 9782708408760 The history of construction stands out today as an exceptional area of growth, as witnessed by the number of participants in its national and international meetings and the literal weight of publications in the field.1 Construction history encompasses not only the process of building, but also the theory of structure, use of materials, evolution of techniques and professional practices, and regulations relating to all of these matters. The Construction History Society, with its modest-sized annual journal founded in 1985, has now sponsored three international congresses since 2003, with a fourth scheduled for 2012 in Paris. In terms of national organizations, the Spanish have taken the lead, with the Sociedad Espanola de Historia de la Construccion holding conferences nearly every two years since 1996, accompanied by published acts. The year 2008 saw the founding of the American Society of Construction History and a French congress in Paris. The proceedings, consisting of over 120 papers, have been published in Edifice & Artifice: Histoires constructives. The abundance of interesting information and informative insights in this volume is staggering, and the organizers are to be commended for having edited the papers to assure a consistent level of quality. The range of these essays extends from Alain Chassagnoux's three-stage periodization of brick vaulting in Persia (third- fifteenth centuries) to Giulia Marino's study of the CAF building in Paris (1953–59), with its ambitiously cantilevered floors extending out 4.5 meters and the complexities of its aluminum-frame curtain wall using the patented WALLSPAN system.2 Thanks to a broad definition of construction history, one finds articles such as Motoki Toriumi's chronicle of the emergence of a landscape aesthetic of the river view in Paris from the time of Catherine de' Medici and Henri III in the sixteenth century, and then reaching into the reign of Louis XIV, …