Synopses & Reviews
The "tyranny of the private realm" is destroying our cities. Modern architecture, with its insistence on the mute object and its rejection of the conventions of street and square, has abdicated civic responsibility and eschewed the urban forms that express and promote it. In this eloquent and extensively illustrated study of the evolution of a modern conception of space, Michael Dennis explores the social, psychological, and especially the formal transformations that that led architects to trade the city of public space for a city of private icons. The French hôtel, an aristocratic town house developed largely in Paris between 1550 and 1800, is a sophisticated instrument of urbanism that both chronicles the demise of the public realm and offers architectural techniques for reconstructing a spatially rich city. In its development from Italianate prototypes to an urban courtyard building and finally to a freestanding pavilion in a private garden, the French hôtel illustrates the transformation of the city from one of platonic voids to one of platonic solids, from one of buildings that define space to one of buildings that treat space as merely left over.
In reconstructing the origins of the modern city—and the modern sense of privacy—Dennis focuses on the plan of the hôtel and on the relationship between the external and internal organization of buildings. He identifies three distinct hôtel types—Baroque, Roccoco, and Neoclassical—and examines the urban and social changes reflected in their sitings and facades and in such details as the sequence of public and private rooms, patterns of circulation, and the proliferation of rooms with special functions.
By studying the plans, Dennis asserts, modern architects can recapture the language of urbanism and learn how to reconcile modern and traditional modes of building organization and spatial development. The extensive documentation he provides—nearly 400 illustrations, including historical maps of Paris, hôtel plans, and photographs of extant hôtels—encourages that study and significantly extends the tradition of illustrated architectural treatises by Marot (c. 1670), Blondell (1752-1756) and Krafft (c. 1802), establishing this book as the definitive scholarly work on the French hôtel.
A Graham Foundation Book.
Review
"Michael Dennis writes clearly, and his well informed text is copiously illustrated with period drawings beautifully reproduced .... Parallel to the study of houses is a history of Parisian squares, showing how they too became less dense and more open, being gradually transformed from outdoor rooms to nodes in a traffic system. All this history is illuminating, and many architects will find the book worth reading for it alone."
—Peter Blundell Jones, Architects Journal
Synopsis
Court &Garden explores the social, psychological, and especially the formal transformations that led architects to trade the city of public space for the city of private icons. This detailed history of the French hôtel - an aristocratic town house developed largely in Paris between 1550 and 1800 - reveals the hôtel to be a sophisticated instrument of urbanism that both chronicles the demise of the public realm and offers architectural techniques for reconstructing a spatially rich city.
Michael Dennis is a practicing architect. He has taught and lectured widely, and was the 1986 Thomas Jefferson Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia. A Graham Foundation Book.
Synopsis
Court & Garden explores the social, psychological, and especially the formal transformations that led architects to trade the city of public space for the city of private icons.
Synopsis
The tyranny of the private realm is destroying our cities. Modern architecture, with its insistence on the mute object and its rejection of the conventions of street and square, has abdicated civic responsibility and eschewed the urban forms that express and promote it. In this eloquent and extensively illustrated study of the evolution of a modern conception of space, Michael Dennis explores the social, psychological, and especially the formal transformations that that led architects to trade the city of public space for a city of private icons. The French
About the Author
Michael Dennis is a practicing architect. He has taught and lectured widely, and was the 1986 Thomas Jefferson Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia.