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Un livre est un document écrit formant unité et conçu comme tel, composé de pages reliées les unes aux autres. Il a pour fonction d'être un support de l'écriture, permettant la diffusion et la conservation de textes de nature variée. Sur le plan matériel, un livre est un volume de pages reliées, présentant un ou des textes sous une page de titre commune. Sa forme induit une organisation linéaire (pagination, chapitres, etc.). Un livre comporte généralement des outils favorisant l'accès à son contenu : table des matières, sommaire, index. Il existe une grande variété de livres selon le genre, les destinataires, ainsi que selon le mode de fabrication et les formats, ou selon les usages. Sauf exception, tel le livre d'artiste, un livre est publié en plusieurs exemplaires par un éditeur, comme en témoignent les éléments d'identification qu'il comporte obligatoirement. Œuvre de l'esprit conçue par un auteur, le livre sert d'interface avec un lecteur. Objet culturel lié à l'histoire huma

Le "Fragmentum de inventionibus scientiarum" de Diego Palomino

Nouara Chekhar

The objective of this PhD thesis is the translation of, and the mathematical commentary on, a 16th-century Latin book. Its author, Diego Palomino is not well known. With a background in theology, he was a prior. In order to obtain his PhD at the University of Alcala (Madrid), he submitted a work, De mutations æris, in which he included a collection of what seems to be readings notes, entitled Fragmentum de inventionibus scientiarum. His readings have been drawn from various famous mathematicians of his time and ancient ones. The originality of his work relies mostly on his inventiveness and his style —which can be sarcastic— making the reading of it quite interesting and lively. His work consists for the main part in explaining some unclear demonstrations, or bringing new methods of solution ; he also innovates in solving pairs of indeterminate equations by providing the complete set of integral solutions. Before him, only one mathematician (Abu ̄ K ̄amil, at the end of the 10th century) did so, the other mathematicians restricting themselves to giving only one solution or a pair. Palomino did not hesitate in criticizing a well-established theory in ancient mathematics, namely Archimedes —although his critics seem to rely on a faulty edition. His book is entitled to have a significant place in the history of mathematics, for it both maintains the rigor of Greek classical mathematics and announces innovation, as did the 17th century, culminating with the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus.

EPFL2012

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

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

Irène Elizabeth Vogel Chevroulet

EPFL2009