Historien | EPFL Graph Search

vignette|Buste d'Hérodote, av. J.-C., musée de l'Agora antique d'Athènes. Un historien ou une historienne est une personne qui étudie ou publie sur l’histoire en produisant un discours ou un écrit respectant une méthode scientifique. Il a pour tâche de produire des recherches originales en rapportant des faits passés, de les catégoriser, puis d'en proposer une interprétation équilibrée et justifiée par des sources, sous le contrôle du public informé. Le titre d'historien n'est pas reconnu professionnellement et repose plutôt sur la reconnaissance par ses pairs. L'historien est souvent comparé au journaliste d'investigation, au détective ou au juge d’instruction, et il a tout intérêt à se conformer à une méthode reconnue. Il y va de la crédibilité de sa contribution et de ses conclusions. Dans la société, le rôle de l'historien est large. Il est par exemple appelé à intervenir dans des procès, des expertises d'art, des commémorations, des inventaires de monuments historiques, des a

Graphical details: the secret life of Christopher Wren's drawing of the weather clock

Ion-Gabriel Mihailescu

Historians have unanimously credited Christopher Wren with having constructed a weather clock (a self-registering instrument) in the early 1660s. This conclusion was based on the account of the French diplomat Balthasar de Monconys, which included a sketch uncannily similar to an undated drawing by Wren of the weather clock. By critically re-examining the available sources, I argue that one can infer that Wren never actually constructed a weather clock. What Monconys saw and sketched was, in fact, a drawing produced by Wren for a meeting of the Royal Society that took place on 8 January 1662. I further show that there is strong evidence to assume that Wren's drawing for the Royal Society is the undated drawing preserved at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The new context in which I place Wren's drawing provides an incentive to look at it with fresh eyes. Though the drawing does not represent a device actually constructed by Wren, it still bears (unexpected) connections to the material world that surrounded him. The analysis of the drawing developed in this article will be relevant for historians interested in the role that images can play as historical evidence.

2021

GIEDION GOES TO STOCKHOLM. A look at Swedish efforts in the social and housing question

Chiara Monterumisi

The journeys throughout Europe for attesting the state of contemporary architecture brought the great passionate promoter of the Modern Movement, Sigfried Giedion, also to Stockholm. One month after the opening of the 1930 Stockholm exhibition, generally considered as the precise event from which new functionalist architecture become manifest, the Swiss historian came in contact with the Swedish efforts in the social and housing question. This was the result of the future-oriented program of the exhibition of which Giedion was updated by Swedish delegation since the late 1928. Housing prototypes produced for the sake of the event and few first housing interventions built in Stockholm, responded to new standards, techniques and expressive language. All of this positioned Sweden to equal the results achieved by other countries in the forefront like Germany, Netherlands, France and Russia, which had previously faced the same problems. The participation of the Swedish delegation for the first time – namely Sven Markelius and Gunnar Sundbärg – to the II CIAM in Frankfurt (1929) had contributed in this regard as well. The goal of the present contribution is to examine in detail two extensive accounts of Giedion (Stein Holz Eisen, July 1930 and Cahiers d'Art – re-print in Bauwelt, September 1930), particularly focusing on how Swedes tackled the housing issue. His look shed the light on three key figures, namely Sven Markelius, Eskil Sundhal and Sven Wallander, that are recognised as those who, at first, attempted to address the discussion on the ‘minimum dwelling’. No doubts that Giedion contributed to include Sweden in his heterodox portray of modern architecture, via capsizing the initial viewpoint of a country at the fringe of the uropean animated debate. His comments literally paved the way for spreading Swedish interventions with regard to housing across many journals and publications even outside the national borders. A particular attention goes also to the analysis of the features of three housing projects he presented in the papers in order to contextualize and compare them to a larger extent.

2019

GIEDION GOES TO STOCKHOLM. A look at Swedish efforts in the social and housing question

Chiara Monterumisi

2019