The fragment and the whole. Architectural constructs in comprehensive settings. Exhibition spaces, the garden treatise and the voyage pittoresque in France between 1750 and 1850.

 This project aims to study the ambiguous role of the visitor, as both a constructive and disruptive agent in the development of comprehensive spaces of display, between 1750 and 1850 in France. One particular object-document and its relationship with the visitor is focused upon: the architectural construct. The relationship between construct and the visitor is studied in two types of sources: the garden treatise and the voyage pittoresque. These sources are from the angle of object representation and spatial arrangement intimately connected with representation and arrangement in the early long nineteenth century museum, like Lenoir’s Musée des monuments Français (1795-1816)shows (Carter, 2007). Themes like (narrative) engagement, materiality, the body and bodily experience, the in situ understanding of (historical) objects, people and events, parcours, perspective, legibility-illegibility and deciphering are central aspects of this relationship to be studied.

Keywords:architectural

Disciplines:Design practice