Architect | EPFL Graph Search

An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that have human occupancy or use as their principal purpose. Etymologically, the term architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek (arkhi-, chief + tekton, builder), i.e., chief builder. The professional requirements for architects vary from location to location. An architect's decisions affect public safety and thus the architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum (or internship) for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. Practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction though the formal study of architecture in academic institutions has played a pivotal role in the development of the profession.

A Grammar of Muqarnas: Drawings of the Alhambra by Jones and Goury (1834-1845)

Ignacio Ferrer Perez-Blanco

The muqarnas of the Nasrid Alhambra stand out as one of the most singular architectural episodes o f Medieval Islamic art due to their sophisticated three-dimensional construction, whose layout remains little known. In 1834 and 1837, the architects Owen Jones and Jules Gouty visited the monument in Granada and accomplished surprising drawings thereof later published towards 1842-1845 as chromolithograph prints, which represented its architecture, ornaments, and muqarnas in a systematic way for the first time. In order to value their pioneering drawings, the historical data is briefly reviewed and several previous drawings of the Alhambra are cited. After consideration of a few questions regarding the process of data collection in Granada, a comparative analysis is presented of a cornice, a capital, an arch and a pendentive, with photos and computer-aided drawings. Thus, the principles or elementary grammar of muqarnas groupings described by these architects are highlighted, as well as the precision of their images, which resulted crucial to integrate and disseminate the architectural legacy of the Alhambra in the contemporary Western culture.

2019

Images des microcosmes flottants

Olivier Nicolas Meystre

This research focuses on the premise that depiction is quintessential to the conception of an architectural project. The representation also provides insights regarding how the architects design the architecture. This thesis is intended towards understanding new forms and paradigms of design mediation that have emerged over the last two decades in Japan. It unravels and highlights the historical, theoretical aspects and analyses the evolution, convergence and major trends in the field of architectural representation. Based on bibliographical sources and exclusive, unpublished interviews with the prominent Japanese architects of the period under consideration, this work presents six cross-functional themes with the objective to identify and examine the critical tools that could be used in the conception and representation of the contemporary Japanese architecture. The understanding of the underlying techniques reveal a very hybridised landscape of digital and analog tools with a paradoxical objective of imparting a manual effect to the entire expression. The treatment of light in the images of the project is characterised by overexposure and dispersion that adds an elusory, unseizable dimension to the objects and spatial limits. In a similar fashion, the graphical limits, are either diminished or diluted giving an impression of a space with evolving outlines. The pseudo-naive expression of multiple images, achieved by the profusion of familiar objects, obliterates the orthodox hierarchy among the architectural elements and opens up the possibility of evoking and imagining tiny, soothing universes in an architecture which is otherwise radical to the beholder. The point of view used in images transcend the Euclidean realism, producing an imagery that seems to float in free space. Finally, the genealogy of relationship between masters and students permits the tracing of the lines of influence, how the craftsmanship changed hands and percolated down the professional world. The specificities in the Japanese representation are a testimony to the complex approach of the architects towards an architectural project, where all the attributes of space are questioned and redefined but still the undercurrent of tradition continues to have a pivotal influence.

EPFL2015

La création d'une japonité moderne (1870-1940), ou Le regard des architectes européens sur le Japon

Irène Elizabeth Vogel Chevroulet

This thesis questions the fundamentals and modes characterising the European architects' way of looking at Japanese architecture and garden art between 1870 and 1940. It establishes the corpus of the major writings and of other texts published by their Occidental and Japanese contemporaries in English, French and German. We analyse the writings' major issues, outstanding specifics and realisations. We detect and describe the creation of a modern Japan-ness through the writings of four major protagonists. Firstly, Josiah Conder was professor of Architectural History and Theory at Tokyo Imperial College and later considered as the "father of modern architecture" in Japan. We discuss his articles and books, published between 1877 and 1893, as being inaugural as well as forerunners of Japan-ness. Between 1903 and 1910, the architect Chûta Itô and the art historian Kakuzô Okakura gave its premises in their publications. The engineer Franz Baltzer as well as the architects Ralph A. Cram and Frank Lloyd Wright confirmed some of these ideas in their books published between 1903 and 1912. Secondly, we study writings from an architect who never traveled to Japan : Robert Mallet-Stevens. His articles, written in France from 1911 et 1913, were an indirect reference to Conder's articles. Thirdly, we analyse the theoretical and innovative works published by Bruno Taut between 1924 and 1937. We look at the way in which he valued and consolidated an intercultural Japan-ness. We question the existence of a Japan-ness in garden arts' writings. We establish how his contemporaries spread Japan-ness specificities : the architects Wajiro Kon, Kôji Fujii, Tetsuro Yoshida, Sutemi Horiguchi, Wells Coates, Richard Neutra and Antonin Raymond, the art historian Jirô Harada, the landscape designers – Tsuyoshi Tamura, Percy. S. Cane et Christopher Tunnard –, and the writer Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. We identify which specificities had already been defined by Itô, Kon and Horiguchi before Taut validation. Fourthly, Charlotte Perriand confirmed this established modern Japan-ness as a source of inspiration with her notes taken during her stay in Japan between 1940 and 1941. The thesis chronicles the impact of her notes onto some of her realisations in Japan and later in France. Thanks to this comparative analysis of texts, the thesis argues that the European gaze towards Japan is reflecting its preoccupations towards justifications for its own architectural development. This gaze is also orientated by the interests of the Japanese themselves. These are looking for an international recognition of their traditional architecture. We describe then how Japan-ness is created through writings and how it works as an appropriation of modernity enabling Japanese architecture to step in an avant-garde role. This creation follows two stages. The first one is a process of distinction from Asian architecture by identification and reinforcement of Japanese specifics. At its core lies the discourse upon the differences of the Japanese shintoist and zen soul. The second one is a process of sorting out common specificities with Western avant-garde ones. This time, the discourse concerns abstract similarities. The whole set of Japan-ness specificities defines an intercultural architecture which distinguishes itself both from Japonisme and from Occidentalisme. Lastly, the results show the profits gained by this European gaze and taken into account in their own architecture.

EPFL2009